The fashion world is mourning the loss of Anna Piaggi, an Italian fashion editor and writer famed for her blue hair and eccentric, vintage-tinged style.
The woman described by photographer Bill Cunningham as a “fine poet in clothes”, died in her home in Milan on Tuesday at the age of 81, the Telegraph reports.
Piaggi, who contributed to dozens of Italian fashion magazines including Vogue Italia, was a runway fixture, garnering attention for her collection of hats, brightly colored fur stoles and boas and prediliction for layering wild patterns.
In 2006, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London put her astonishing collection of fashions on exhibit.
The collection, dubbed “Fashion-ology,” included 265 pairs of shoes, 29 fans, 932 hats, 2,865 dresses, 24 aprons and 31 feather boas, according to the International Herald Tribune.
“English hatmakers for me are really the best – and I feel better if I have a good hat on,” she said at the time.
Since the 1960’s, Piaggi counted fashion luminaries such as Vivienne Westwood, Stella McCartney, Karl Lagerfeld, Manolo Blahnik and Stefano Gabbana as friends and admirers.
Fans of Piaggi’s vintage mas-up style and uncompromising devotion to fashion took to Twitter to offer condolences.
Nina Garcia, Cynthia Rowley, Anna Della Russo were among the thousands who tweeted their appreciation for the doyenne of dressing.
“So sad to hear that Anna Piaggi, one of my last icons of beauty & fashion has passed,” Burlesque performer Dita Von Teese. “She was the height of glamorous eccentricity.”
In the documentary ‘Bill Cunningham: New York,” the photographer Bill Cunningham described Piaggi as a “fine poet in clothes.”
