Experience, imagination, inspiration. The basis of any pattern, the basis of any design. And, for inspiration, there is no shortage of subscription magazines that pass from hand to hand and that the employees of Gallia e Peter study in their every image: they leaf through them carefully, make notes in their notebooks, think about them for days on end, discuss them among themselves. Among the most beloved is Chapeaux, a Swiss magazine, published by Zurich-based Edtions Th. Weder. Each issue costs 9.50 francs, subscription 32 (with a 5 franc surcharge to receive it in Italy). Month after month, among those pages with an international scope that bear the subtitle Modèles, milliners begin to imagine and find ever new cues for their creations: on there are collected, time after time, the most innovative and original elements, the most modern combinations, the most sought-after materials. It is through those pages that they decline all the forms that hats can take depending on the time of day when they are used. Basques and cloches in the morning (very simple and unpretentious trimmings), velvet hats in the winter afternoons (to match furs) and straw hats in the spring, embellished with flowers and fluffy feathers. After five o'clock comes the time for bonnets, half moons, toques with veils and crystals: adorning them with flowers, sequins, marabou, rooster, ostrich feathers, according to the taste of the patron. At the close of the day it is time for evening hairstyles, perfect for premieres at the theater or elegant dinners at friends' houses. For each time of day an ideal hat that Chapeaux describes with meticulousness and scrupulousness, without forgetting the most ambitious and undeniably, ardently complex occasion: that of the veil and bridal hairstyles. The most complicated, feared and loved by every self-respecting milliner. Today, a collection of Chapeaux (a piece of publishing history and a piece of fashion history) is preserved in the personal archive of Laura Marelli, who acquired it from some fellow milliners who had collected those numbers in their atelier on Via Monte Napoleone, a few streets away from Gallia e Peter. A complicity between colleagues that in the golden years of millinery was composed of exchanges, suggestions, collaborations. And which today finds material evidence in this collection of magazines, as elegant as ever. Precious as then, precious more than then.
