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# 84 OCTOBER 17 , 2016
# 84 October 17
read more #Italian Little Italies
THE ITALIAN WAY:
The Colors of Traditions
By Elda Buonanno Foley
ring a color that, in fashion, especially,
has always been considered an example
of style, elegance, and classy attire and
as Franca Sozzani (Director of Vogue
Magazine, Italy) refers to, “black is more
than a color. It is a way of dressing”. In
her words, the color black is always chosen because it slims down the figure, it
goes with any other color or garments, it
is a quick “fix” for daily and nightly choices, and it can transform the dress from
casual to elegant with the addition of a
simple accessory. It is, in Sozzani’s words
a real “pass partout”.
However, the principle I am addressing
here is not the choice of the modern woman who is used to navigating in the big/
small public and/or private arenas. The
principle I am alluding to, is the choice
of wearing the dark color to commemorate, celebrate and ultimately respect
the memory of somebody who is recently passed.
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Italy, it is a remarkable sample of those
antique, secular traditions that we have
been passed from generation to generation. Seemingly, wearing black clothes
to mourn the dead goes back to the Roman Empire period, when the Romans
(especially the wealthy class) would use
dark colors in respect of local laws that
forbade the use of precious fabrics and
colored garments during the funeral “season”.
In 1216 Pope Innocent II established that
the church and its representatives would
have to choose “black and purple” for
all sorts of events related to funerals (to
note, this is still true today). After a break
in the medieval period (when the color
white was the preferred color in these
occasions), and under the Spanish influence, especially in the South of Italy
and around the XVI century, we would
start encountering the dark color (including the black veil to cover the head) for
funeral reasons.
Although this seems to be true for older generations and in certain areas of Just to note that the color is not chosen
In my latest trip to Italy a month ago, I encountered an old acquaintance of mine
who, I later discovered, had just recently
lost her husband. What was surprising
and, in a way, remindful of the old character of Italian traditions, was that she
was wearing “black” and, as she later
confirmed, she would have worn dark
clothes for almost a year in a sign of respect for the deceased.
Nothing wrong or strange about wea-
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