Experience, imagination, inspiration. They are at the base of any model and any design. For the inspiration the magazines on subscription pass on to one person to the other and the employees of Gallia e Peter study every pictures: they skim through them and take notes on their note books, they think it over for days and discuss about them together. Among the lovest is Chapeaux, a Swiss magazine, published by Th.Weder from Zurich. Every issue costs 9.50 francs, a subscription costs 30 francs (with 5 francs extra if it is to be sent to Italy). Months after months, on those pages with an International breath called Modèles, the milliners start to use their imagination and find new hints for their creations: on them the most innovative and original elements, the most modern matches, the most refined materials are collected. It is through those pages that the hats take different shapes according to the different times of the day. Berrets and cloche hats in the mornings (with very simple and not too refined trimmings), velvet hats in the winter afternoons (to be matched with furs) and straw hats in spring, enriched with flowers and soft feathers. After five it is time for cowls, half-moons, toques with veils and crystals: to decorate them flowers, paillettes, marabou, cock, ostrich feathers according to the customers’ taste. At the end of the day it is time for evening hairstyles perfect for the first debut at the theatre or for elegant dinners at friends’. For any time of the day an ideal hat that Chapeaux describes in details, without forgetting the most ambitious, undeniably and passionately complex occasion: occasion with veils and bride’s hairstyles which are the most complex, feared and loved by every milliner. Nowadays a collection of Chapeaux (a part of the history of publishing and a part of the history of fashion) is held in the private archives of Laura Marelli, bought from some milliners and collegues who collected them in their atelier in via Montenapoleone, near Gallia e Peter’s. A complicity among collegues which, in the golden years of milliner’s was based on exchanges, suggestions, collaborations which are testified in this collection of very elegant magazines, as precious as before, more precious than ever.
