Nineteen years or where it all began
It is 1966 when Nadia shows up for the first time, 19 years old, at the atelier of Gallia e Peter. Let's try to imagine her. She wears her hair short like Caterina Caselli, who stunned Sanremo that year by singing "Nessuno mi può giudicare, nemmeno tu" (Nobody can judge me, not even you). She must find a way to cope with the tension, Nadia, as she walks down Monte Napoleone Street, where she has passed many times to peek at the precious shop window at No. 3. Almost every day a different hat, perhaps along with a scarf or with flowers. Nadia doesn't know it yet, but to change it you go through the concierge's office, and every morning an attendant from Gallia e Peter does her best: greets the doorman, picks up the hat from the day before, places the new one. There in the atelier (even this Nadia does not know yet) are, among others, Nuccia, Clara, Giancarla. They will become lifelong friends and colleagues, although Nadia now shows up to help in the warehouse and it doesn't even cross her mind to apply as a milliner. She does not like sewing at all (so she thinks, at least). Still, her grandmother at age six sent her to study with a seamstress who taught her how to sorfilo clothes, the sewing of long, sparse stitches to equip fabrics with hems and prevent them from fraying. Of one thing, however, Nadia is certainly sure as she crosses the threshold of the atelier: she wants manual labor, which is what she does best and gives her the most satisfaction. Her hands are her greatest asset. They are her talent.
The debut
That morning in 1966 Nadia faced her first interview, but the real job did not come until the following year, when in September 1967 her "crazy heart" finally found its place on that central Milan street. At first it was in the warehouse that Nadia began her service, among boxes, fabrics, materials, suitcases, drawers, accessories. Between the warehouse and the workshop, Signora Mariuccia has had a stall placed. The milliners rush there in turn, rest their elbows on it, face toward the warehouse and ask Nadia to be quick and stretch metracci for them, Gros Grain and then flowers, canvas, ornamental materials for hats. A new order has arrived and we must be quick because delivery is but a few days away.
Mrs. Giancarla and the brides' lace
Each of the milliners at Gallia e Peter - Nadia realizes this right away - has her own specialty and guards it with a touch of jealousy. Giancarla, for example, is the eldest of them all and the most ingenious at imagining headdresses for brides: all the customers look for her and Mrs. Mariuccia when a daughter is to tie the knot, and many ask if it is possible to repair that old lace recovered from a trunk in the attic. At that point Giancarla exchanges a glance of understanding with Lady Gaul, then nods proudly and sets to work. Today Giancarla no longer remembers (the memory of facts is sometimes less long-lived than the memory of hands), but those who knew her still see her before their eyes. Weaving locks of gray hair used as delicate threads, Giancarla repairs the small holes with which time has worn away the materials and returns lace to its rightful owners and to a new life. She restores antique textiles, as an artist would a restorer today.
Mariuccia and an all-female enclave
For brides and their mothers, Giancarla and the Mariuccia girls are always the most attentive, the most imaginative, the most creative in town. So even though at first she is the youngest of all, Nadia begins to observe each of these talented colleagues. Signora Mariuccia takes her under her wing and makes her part of the group of women she has begun to gather around her since the 1930s. Women who, like her and her mother-in-law Cornelia, have made their work an art form, but also a female redemption and an opportunity to create a new community. Because at Gallia e Peter, in addition to Signora Mariuccia and her employees, there is also her daughter Lia, who is named after her paternal grandmother and will become one of the most beloved employers that the Milan of those years can remember (decades later, Nadia is still moved thinking about her: a fellow traveler, a confidante, a support, a point of reference, a friend). And then there's little Laura Marelli (who in Nadia's early years is still a baby and everyone calls Lauretta) and Aunt Cocca, a life-long hundred years round, Laura's aunt on daddy's side, but Aunt Cocca for everyone, including Nadia. A female enclave, a workshop, an atelier, a workplace where different generations intersect. But also a place where the most fascinating women in Milan go to commission their hats and to converse as in the Parisian Salons of the Ladies of the 18th century, where events and parties were celebrated but, above all, people enjoyed each other's company and the subtle, sometimes lovingly gossipy, art of conversation.
Arab princesses, charming Japanese ladies, baronesses, countesses and extrovert sisters
From Monte Napoleone, pass the most charming, seductive, cheerful, well-groomed, modern, bizarre ladies who frequent Milan. There is an important Arab princess; there is Mrs. Morou, who is said to be the richest woman in the whole of Japan; and then Baroness Blanc, owner of the Manzoni Theater, who gives the girls of Gallia e Peter free tickets to go to the theater or the cinema; and again the beautiful Countess Sisini, owner with her husband of the Settimana Enigmistica and a lover of turbans; Mrs. Taccani, wife of a famous architect and very attached to her dog; and again the young ladies Nedda and Gigina Necchi, who could come to the atelier with a walk from their residence on Mozart Street, the famous Villa Necchi Campiglio where Gallia e Peter hats still make a fine display in the wardrobe of the whimsical sisters.
Parties, events, precious tiaras and La Scala premieres
Whether it is for the La Scala premiere or carnival parties, the atelier, especially at certain times of the year and certain times of the day, is in full swing. Nadia realizes this especially when she starts working on the sale and in the workshop. Lia decides this one day. At a certain point, when Mariuccia (who had an innate talent for relating to customers and making them feel at home by giving the hats the final cue that was the unmistakable touch of Gallia e Peter, the touch of her own elegance) passes away, it is important to have new recruits to welcome visitors to the atelier. Nadia is among those levers. She works until eight o'clock in the evening, gets carried away enthusiastically by the appointments of the grande dames who, without her and her colleagues' help, could not transform themselves in view of those social events so awaited, so precious, so important. Every night, they have to be different, they have to renew themselves, tell their stories, demonstrate their personalities. And this is where the girls of Gallia e Peter spring into action. Nadia tries to make the craft her own. No one stops to teach her: the art of millinery is learned in the field, choosing materials, matching them, imagining, even making mistakes. There is no written rule, no handbook. Nadia sets to work, studies her colleagues' hats, observes their characteristics and finishes. In particular, she follows Giancarla's work and her grooming of brides. Sometimes she leaves the atelier and goes directly to the customers' homes. Like when she has to mount a bridal veil on the tiara of a young daughter of the Mangelli Bears. The tiara is so precious that Nadia does not feel like carrying it around town in the nice round boxes at Gallia e Peter. She prefers to go in person to the Orsi Mangelli house, among those jewels of incalculable value. Other times Nadia and her colleagues have to sit on the floor in the Monte Napoleone salon. It happens when an exclusive Gallia e Peter model is commissioned : a handkerchief cut of six meters of tulle, three on each wing, two corners crossed, three milliners at work at the same time. Only very few ladies in town can afford it.
How an atelier hat is born
Every Monday, Nadia prepares the week's plan. On average, a hat takes as much as two to three days of work. It starts with the spaltrì form, a hand-worked sheet of straw that-given the shape-is hardened with more spaltrì and then with bisca, the glue to harden the shaft. On the wooden form, on the other hand, hatmakers work (although Gallia e Peter would revolutionize this rule as well and at one point knew how to turn the form itself into a hat). The collaboration between milliners, tailors, suppliers must be a perfect machine. Dress, gloves, shoes, hats, handbags, jewelry-everything is seen as a whole, and every single piece is not only important, but essential. Often it all starts with a certain cut of fabric that guides in the construction of a look in which the shoes can be covered in the same pattern as the dress. Signora Mariuccia taught this to all, with her trips to Paris where she would buy models from Chanel, Givenchy, Dior to reproduce in Milan original versions of them customized and authorized with special labels by the great maisons. With her pedal-powered machine Nadia became more and more expert. She herself, who never wears hats because she finds they look bad on her to the point that she refuses to try them on even when the wealthiest clients ask her to: "Madam, the hat is perfect, I assure you. But if I wear it, she will end up not buying it, because I don't have the head for it. I don't have the head for a hat." From the very beginning Nadia has this diamantine conviction: there are even insignificant women who, with a hat, become beautiful. But there are others who, with a hat, lose their charm. Different solutions have to be found for them: it is necessary to go down new paths and be even more ingenious.
Lia, the most beloved
Alongside Cornelia (called Lia), Nadia learns to baste and prepare drums, something that, unlike Mama Mariuccia, Lia loves to do. She has a special flair, Lia, an impetuous and irrepressible imagination. She knows how to push the envelope, and of this talent she will give her daughter a gift, passing on to her the ability to invent an unexpected hat from nothing. She is patient. A quality, Nadia knows well, that all of them must possess. Because their work puts them in a position every day to learn something new, to take the time to learn and reinvent themselves. Theirs, in those years, is not simple execution. It is the art of malleability, of endurance, of imagination, thanks in part to the extraordinary natural fibers they choose for their compositions. Gallia e Peter spares no expense: only the best materials around in those magical years pass through their hands.
Laura, the volcano
As the big designers catch on, work begins to change for Nadia and her colleagues. The atelier has to change location and moves to Via Moscova. The change of pace that the fashion system requires is a complicated acceleration to accept. But, again, Gallia e Peter has an ace up its sleeve. Next to Mariuccia, next to Lia, next to Giancarla, next to Nadia also, little Lauretta has grown up. And from Mama Lia she has not only inherited talent and imagination. She also has the resourcefulness and the ability to reinvent the world around her. Lauretta, who is now Laura Marelli, is a volcano: she breathed in the 1970s and in the decade that followed she understood that she could begin to collaborate with the great designers without bending to patterns but experimenting as only milliners can. And she also understands, Laura, something that her ave may not have perceived in her scope: that of Gallia e Peter is an extraordinary women's story. It is not just a story of hats, it is a story of memory, of revolution, of art. So the atelier becomes an even more experimental laboratory and organizes exhibitions and displays that trace the history of costume and attract intellectuals, journalists, scholars, designers. What the atelier did in those years was reminiscent of what Omega Workshop had invented for design in turn-of-the-century England. Women had been prominent there, too. Sure there were Roger Fry and Duncan Grant. But there were also Vanessa Bell, sister of Virginia Woolf, Dora Carrington, Nina Hamnett, Winifred Gill. And the craftswomen who had started the enterprise with them.
The memory of the gesture
It was at that time that Nadia began to sense that the memory of the gesture, the memory of her hands, is much deeper than she could imagine. That what she and the others shared in those years far surpasses passing trends and created something they will always carry with them, even now that they use man-made fibers, even now that everything out there looks different, even now that their hats they make for Lady Gaga, at Moschino's request. Because when they gather around the table to share a pan of lasagna, even now that they are ladies of a certain age, their eyes remain those of the girls from Gallia e Peter. The ones who changed the history of fashion and the ones who created for themselves a life of independent, working women, paving the way for so many others after them. As would have Mariuccia Gallia and also her daughter Lia and, before that, Angela Paschero - Mariuccia's mother, Lia's grandmother, Laura's great-grandmother. All women. And a memory passed between them. From hand to hand. Who knows if in 1932 she could have ever imagined that she would get this far, Mariuccia, when for the first time Gallia e Peter had opened its doors and the first customer had set foot in the atelier that thirty years later would welcome Nadia. "Please come in. I'll tell you what we do in here."
It would be her hands, that day, that would do the talking.
