Feminist genealogies, archival constellations and women’s labour in fashion films: Anna Piaggi: una visionaria nella moda (2016) and Triangle (2014)

Abstract

In this article, I examine how Alina Marazzi and Costanza Quatriglio deal with the world of haute couture and off-the-rack fashion, and with the turn to the archive in their documentaries. They construct feminist genealogies (between maternage and spectral sisterhood) in the fashion world and adopt different modalities of montage (between gleaning and détournement). In Anna Piaggi: una visionaria nella moda (‘Anna Piaggi: A fashion visionary’) (2016), Marazzi focuses on Anna Piaggi, a renowned fashion editor for Vogue Italia. In contrast, Costanza Quatriglio in Triangle (2014) centres her story on the 123 women textile workers, victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York in 1911, in counterpoint to her interview with Mariella Fasanella, the only survivor of a collapsed sweatshop in Barletta, Italy in 2011. The two filmmakers produce a short circuit in fashion films among feminist genealogies, archival constellations and women’s labour in the fashion industry, activating a feminist and ethical stance.