SPELLING ITALIAN FASHION: Readying for the debut of the video series “Italian Fashion From A to Z,” author Grazia D’Annunzio wants viewers to keep in mind that fashion is serious, not frivolous.

Produced by Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at Latest York University, the series features videos dedicated to famous Italian designers and types. It also highlights the roots of the made in Italy initiative, with a have a look at the pioneers in addition to emerging talents. Starting on Tuesday, a recent episode will probably be released every Tuesday on YouTube and on Casa Italiana’s site.

D’Annunzio, who’s a journalism professor on the Universita Statale di Milano, cooked up the thought for “a straightforward dictionary for fashion” that’s geared toward students and people who find themselves thinking about fashion. She began working on it in the course of the pandemic in 2020. “It took me a few years to complete it because fashion is a living creature. Sometimes you could have to shine every thing and update it. Hopefully, every thing will probably be good until January. We’ll see if we have now to vary anything after the brand new yr,” she said. D’Annunzio will chat with Casa Italiana director Stefano Albertini concerning the series at a special event Monday night.

Alphabetizing Italian fashion wasn’t a snap, considering the challenges of the letters “X,” “W” and “Z,” she said. Each letter is linked to an adjective that’s linked to a designer or group of designers with the aim being to present the foremost Italian designers, forgotten but essential ones, and founders of Italian fashion of the twentieth and twenty first centuries. Armani, Versace, Prada, Ferré, Dolce & Gabbana, Max Mara and all the large names made the cut.

“But you’ll be able to’t forget the start of Italian fashion,” the filmmaker said. “It didn’t start with Armani, Missoni and even Walter Albini. It was within the early Nineteen Fifties in Florence. Giovanni Battista Giorgini, an aristocrat and Italian entrepreneur, who is taken into account the founding father of Italian fashion put together a bunch of Italian designers — Emilio Pucci, the lesser-known Germana Marucelli and others to point out in Florence.”

Each episode within the A to Z series will range from three to quarter-hour long and can provide students with a glimpse of the wonder and talent in Italian design in several forms.

“Italy is known for excellent craftsmanship, great attention to details and top quality. All the designers I’m going to present are famous for his or her exquisite taste, great fabrics, embroidery and craftsmanship,” D’Annunzio said.

With the YouTube series good to go, D’Annunzio is working on a book written in Italian about fashion and film and continues to show in Milan. She can be crafting a Zoom conference with a University of Bologna colleague about Italian fashion within the U.S. that may debut next fall with international scholars.

“Italian fashion is growing immensely with young designers which might be very Gen Z,” she said.

Partial as she is to Italian designers, the Latest York-based D’Annunzio, who worked as Vogue Italia’s special projects editor within the U.S. from 1995 to 2016, said she wears Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Ralph Lauren and other American designers, too. “Living here in Latest York, you could have to have a ‘metropolitan look.’ Once I got here here within the ’90s, Calvin, Donna, Ralph and Isaac Mizrahi were so hot that having a chunk of that made me — not appear like — but feel a part of the larger community,” she said. “But I like Italian fashion, yes.”