‘Who’s that guy getting all worked up?’ This is how Luchino Visconti addressed Umberto Tirelli when he first met him in 1956. His partner Dino Trappetti called him ‘a firework’ while ‘unstoppable’ was the adjective costume designer Pietro Tosi had chosen for him.
Umberto Tirelli, whose tailor’s shop is now part of cinema history, was born in 1928 in Gualtieri (RE) and began working as a window dresser at a Milanese boutique in Via Montenapoleone. He soon began collecting vintage clothes – a passion he would nurture for the rest of his life – but his career really took off when he met Luchino Visconti, as it was the great director who offered him a job at Safas (Studio Artistico Forniture Abbigliamento Spettacolo).
A tale of passion and friendship
Within a few years, Tirelli became the director of Safas. In 1964, he decided to set up on his own with the help of his friend Dino Trappetti, an amateur actor and later press officer of the Spoleto Festival and Tirelli’s long-standing partner.
The Sartoria Artigiana Teatrale Tirelli initially started with two sewing machines, five seamstresses, a milliner, a secretary, and a driver-warehouseman. Tirelli immediately began making costumes for important theatre productions. Still, Luchino Visconti was decisive again, placing an order with him to make the costumes for Il Gattopardo. The black suit worn by Claudia Cardinale for the mass was to become a cornerstone of the company.
‘Now I am Medea’
Among the moments in Tirelli’s story that have become myths is the one with which Umberto Tirelli and Guido Vergani’s book ‘Vestire i sogni’ (Dressing Dreams) opens: dressing Maria Callas for Medea. Costume designer Piero Tosi had chosen to dress the diva literally in rags, but everyone feared her wrath. When Callas looked in the mirror and said she finally felt like Medea, it was a relief for everyone.
But the anecdotes that could be told are potentially infinite if you think that almost the entire history of cinema has passed through the doors of Sartoria Artigianale Tirelli.
Seventeen times Oscar
Over the years, Tirelli Costumi’s activity has developed mainly in two different directions: that of costumes for the theatre, driven by fantasy and invention, and that of the cinema, with philological reconstructions. Casanova, Death in Venice, The Age of Innocence, Amadeus, La Dolce Vita, and The Great Beauty are just some of the cinema masterpieces which bear Sartoria Tirelli’s signature. Over the years, the company has contributed to the winning of seventeen Academy Awards and owns a collection of over three hundred thousand dresses, exhibited in a space of over seven thousand square metres and divided into historical periods. These include the original dresses of Queen Margaret and a collection of fifteen thousand pieces dating from the 17th century to the present day, with dresses by Chanel and Christian Dior.
Diamanti and dreams to dress
Last but not least, Tirelli’s workshop was chosen by Ferzan Özpetek as the setting for his new film, Diamanti. Where else could scriptwriters and actresses have gone to learn how to tell the story of working inside a tailor’s shop?
Tirelli’s story continues along with that of the cinema: congratulations to those who never stop ‘dressing dreams’!
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