Maria Antonelli Biography
Maria Antonelli (1903 - 1969) was an Italian stylist. At a very young age she began working at the Battilocchi tailoring shop in Rome. In the second half of the 1930s he opened the Maria Antonelli – Confezioni Modelli atelier, where he initially created models in line with French fashion, but soon refined an exquisitely Italian style. From the beginning he created models for the great actresses of Italian cinema of the time, such as Clara Calamai, Alida Valli, Anna Magnani, Mariella Lotti. She took part in the second Italian fashion show organized by Giovanni Battista Giorgini in Florence in July 1951. Between 1952 and 1953, Maria Antonelli founded, together with Germana Marucelli, Vita Noberasco, Jole Veneziani, Sorelle Fontana and Emilio Schuberth, the Comif, a committee that had the task of involving the textile industries in the promotion of the nascent Italian High Fashion. In 1954 he created the wedding dress for the English actress Dawn Addams on the occasion of her wedding in Rome to Prince Vittorio Massimo. In 1958 he experimented with a ready-to-wear line, Antonelli Sport, which conquered overseas markets. Designers of the caliber of Mario Vigolo, Antonio Pascali, Lino Pelizzoni, Elio Costanzi, Chino Bert, Giulio Coltellacci, Pino Lancetti, André Laug, Silvano Malta worked in his atelier.
