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Beauty Icon: Anna Piaggi
With her kiss-curled blue hair, pencil-ringed eyes, colorful canes, and fantastic hats, Italian
Vogue's Anna Piaggi is unmistakable and unmistakably influential. Her fans range from Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana to
Another Magazine's Jefferson Hack to her pal Manolo Blahnik, who calls her "modern beyond belief." Another friend, Karl Lagerfeld, chronicled 12 years of the journalist and self-styled fashion diviner's "anna-chronistic" looks—think a navy-blue Balenciaga suit padded at the hips with the croissant-shape pannier of an opera singer, or a priceless Poiret coat worn over Missoni pajamas—in his 1986 tome,
Lagerfeld's Sketchbook. What the designer called Piaggi's "
appetit graphique" is equally evident in her witty magazine work. She's produced more than 7,000 editorial pages, and
Vanity, an illustrated journal she curated in the early eighties, is cultishly collected. Now, with
Fashion-ology, a Topshop-sponsored exhibition at London's Victoria and Albert Museum through April 23, this muse and style icon is set to win a whole new set of followers.
Anna Piaggi and her husband, the photographer Alfa Castaldi, in
L'Uomo Vogue, 1969.
Photo: Oliviero Toscani / Courtesy of
Vogue Italia
Anna Piaggi, 1970's.
Photo: Wayne Stambler / Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum
Anna Piaggi and Karl Lagerfeld, photographed while making Lagerfeld's film
Views and Interviews, 1977.
Photo: Jacques de Bascher Archive
Anna Piaggi, in a sketch by Karl Lagerfeld.
Illustration: Karl Lagerfeld / Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum
Anna Piaggi, wearing a cape by Gallenga, and Karl Lagerfeld, 1978. Piaggi's collar is an underskirt from a formal ensemble previously worn by Lagerfeld, and the mask is a Perspex collar by Pierre Cardin.
Photo: Renato Grignaschi / Courtesy of
Vogue Italia
Anna Piaggi, 1980.
Photo: Courtesy of
Vogue Italia
Anna Piaggi selects images for
Vogue Italia, 2004.
Photo: Bardo Fabiani / Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum
Anna Piaggi, wearing a dress designed by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, cape by Angela and Giovanni Grimoldi, and hat by Stephen Jones.
Photo: David Bailey for
Another Magazine / Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum