Anna Piaggi

Anna Maria Piaggi (22 March 1931 – 7 August 2012) was an Italian fashion writer and style icon.

Piaggi was born in Milan on 22 March 1931. She worked as a translator for an Italian publishing company Mondadori, then wrote for fashion magazines such as the Italian edition of Vogue and, in the 1980s, the avant-garde magazine Vanity. From 1988 she designed double page spreads in the Italian Vogue, where her artistic flair was given free expression in a montage of images and text, with layout by Luca Stoppini.

She used a bright red Olivetti "Valentina" manual typewriter designed by Ettore Sottsass in 1969. Piaggi had a large clothes collection, including 2,865 dresses and 265 pairs of shoes, according to a 2006 exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. She dressed in an exuberant, unique and eclectic way, never appearing in the same outfit more than once in public.

Piaggi appeared in the documentary Bill Cunningham New York on the New York Times fashion and social photographer Bill Cunningham.

Piaggi married the photographer Alfa Castaldi in 1962 in New York. Castaldi died in 1995. Piaggi died in Milan on 7 August 2012.

• Piaggi, Anna and Karl Lagerfeld. Karl Lagerfeld: A Fashion Journal. Thames and Hudson, 1986. ISBN 0-500-01395-0.
• Lagerfeld, Karl. Lagerfeld's Sketchbook: Karl Lagerfeld's Illustrated Fashion Journal of Anna Piaggi. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988. ISBN 1-55584-019-1.
• Piaggi, A. Africa di Missoni per Italia 90, Anna Piaggi and Gianni Brera. Edizioni Electa, 1990. ISBN 88-435-3410-6.
• Piaggi, A. Anna Piaggi's Fashion Algebra, Anna Piaggi. Thames and Hudson, 1998. ISBN 0-500-01876-6.
• Piaggi, A. Doppie pagine di Anna Piaggi in Vogue. Leonardo Arte, 1998. ISBN 88-7813-883-5.
• Piaggi, A., Wintour, Anna, Michael Roberts, André Leon Talley, and Manolo Blahnik. Manolo Blahnik Drawings. Thames and Hudson, 2003. ISBN 0-500-28413-X.
• Clark, Judith (editor). Anna Piaggi Fashion-ology. Victoria and Albert Museum, 2006. ISBN 0-9552335-0-X/ISBN 978-0-9552335-0-0.