ANNA PIAGGI

Anna Piaggi is an Italian fashion writer and style icon.

Anna Piaggi worked as a translator for the Italian publishing company Mondadori, she then wrote for fashion magazines such as the Italian edition of Vogue and, in the 1980s, the avant-garde magazine Vanity. She is known especially for double page spreads in the Italian Vogue, where her artistic flair has been given free expression in a montage of images and text, with layout by Luca Stoppini. Since 1969, she has used a bright red manual Olivetti valentine typewriter for her work.

Piaggi has a large clothes collection, including 2865 dresses and 265 pairs of shoes, according to a 2006 exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. She dresses in an exuberant, unique and eclectic way, never appearing in the same outfit more than once in public. Such is her influence and knowledge in the fashion world, Manolo Blahnik has dubbed her 'The world's last great authority on frocks'.
Her associates in the fashion world include the fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld (from the 1970s), who has often sketched her, and Manolo Blahnik, who is the designer of many of her shoes. She is the muse of British milliner Stephen Jones.




Anna Piaggi with Karl Lagerfeld





Anna Piaggi with Stephen Jones.



 She is also an admirer of British clothes designer Vivienne Westwood and her hats, made by Prudence Millinery. She is rarely seen without fingerless gloves, mostly by UK designer label Glovedup Gloves (www.Glovedup.com). She has lived in New York and has visited London and Italy periodically since the 1950s.

Piaggi was married to the photographer Alfa Castaldi in 1962 in New York. Castaldi died in 1995.