Fashion by Chance

In Fashion by Chance Italian fashion designer Cleonice Capece provides a vivid and richly documented account of how creativity, entrepreneurial courage and institutional support played a key role in the success of ‘Made in Italy’. Capece offers the testimony of someone directly involved in the fashion world, working during the key years of Italian fashion, between 1960 and 1974. Her designs were sold in more than thirty countries – around Europe, The United States, Canada, Lebanon, Singapore, and Japan – by boutiques and department stores such as Harrods and Fortnum & Mason in London; B. Altman, Bergdorf Goodman, I. Magnin, Lord & Taylor, and Saks in New York; Holt Renfrew on Montreal; and Isetan and Matsuya in Tokyo. Her collections were shown twice a year in Florence at Palazzo Pitti, Paris, London, Dusseldorf, New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Singapore. In addition to an engrossing story told by a designer involved in creating the ‘Made in Italy’ brand, the book features an extraordinarily rich iconographic documentation of the designer’s activity – mostly published here for the first time – including fashion shoots, press clippings, personal archive material, and drawings.