Gigliola Savini Perrone and her husband Ettore, who ran the men’s wear firm Brioni together for many years, were at F.I.T. on Thursday evening for a cocktail party in the Bruce and Rita Roberts Room there. The event was to launch a new book about their former company and Gigliola’s father, “Gaetano Savini: The Man Who Was Brioni” (Assouline). She wrote the preface to the tome, which is by Fernando Morelli, Lea Della Cagna and Michelle Tolini Finamore. The book is full of appealing, often colorful, ads and articles from newspapers and magazines, along with sketches and runway and family photographs, celebrating the man who spearheaded the Peacock Revolution that brought bright color, light fabrics and imaginative details to men’s wear.
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Martine Assouline, who, with her husband, Prosper, owns the house that published the book, was there with their son Alexandre. They were laughing about a cell-phone picture which appeared to show her with Pope Francis, who was standing in an open car and raising his arm, but which actually featured a very convincing cardboard cutout of the pontiff. A number of F.I.T. administrators, among them Joanne Arbuckle, dean of the school of art and design, and Patrick Knisley, acting dean of the school of liberal arts, were also there.
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“I was a young lawyer just starting out, and he came to me and asked me if I would help run the firm,” Ettore said of Gaetano Savini, whose son, Giorgio, whom he had intended to groom for that role, died in a car accident at 24. “I knew that it was very important. He was like a father to me.”
Finamore, who is curator of fashion arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, called working on the book, “fantastic, a unique experience,” and noted that Gigliola had “a family archive related to the company” at home. “It was nice to do something in men’s wear,” she added, saying that she usually works on women’s fashion and that her museum will devote an exhibition to Brioni in 2017.
Gigliola Perrone and Finamore gave brief speeches. Perrone pointed out that the book is being published on the 70th anniversary of the company, and that it’s coming out in English first, since it was America that originally made her father famous. Arbuckle, for her part, revealed that the Gaetano Savini Brioni Foundation has created a $30,000 scholarship which will go to two students who are doing a research project based on the Brioni archives for three years.