Vintage La Rinascente poster Vendita del Bianco Feb 1925 – Vintage Fashion Poster – Marcello Dudovich

By the end of the nineteenth century, the vibrant, colour poster revolution that had captivated France had swept to other cities around the globe. The humble poster quickly became an inexpensive way for companies to get their message out and promote their products. They were used to sell everything! From champagne, fine wines and beer to toothpaste, soap and cars to bicycles, chocolate and sweets. Among the first to realise and fully exploit the huge potential of this new form of communication were French department stores such as Le Bon Marche, Printemps, and Les Grands Magasins.

Further afield, it was Italy’s first department store La Rinascente that was among the first to realise and fully exploit the huge potential of the new colourful form of communication in Italy. Keen to advertise their fashion and product ranges La Rinascente employed some of the most famous Italian poster designers of the era. Artists including Mario Bazzi, Gino Boccasile, Leonetto Cappiello, Aldo Mazza, Walter Resentera, Nanni Schipani and Renato Vernizzi, all took a turn at creating posters for the popular store. However, it was the work of Marcello Dudovich that is probably best known for his poster work for the company. The famous Italian artist created over 75 works for the luxury emporium. His work included brochures, marketing materials and, of course, advertising posters.

Dudovich’s posters appealed to the women that would shop at the store with aspirational images. Young, elegant, beautiful and enigmatic were illustrated. According to the Rinascente website, Dudovich’s women were homemakers, attentive to their households as well as worldly wise and ready to embrace life. They were depicted wearing the latest fashions whether they were pictured on the city streets, skiing in the mountains, relaxing on the beach or strolling in the countryside. They could be wrapped in cosy furs in the winter, waterproof coats in autumn or beachwear in the summer. Dudovich’s posters showed Italian women that whatever social situation they found themselves in,  their desires could be met by a trip to the department stores of Rinascente.

La Rinascente – Italy’s first department store

The roots of Italy’s first department store can be traced back over 150 years, to 1865 when brothers Luigi and Ferdinando Bocconi opened a shop in Via Santa Radegonda in Milan. It was the first in Italy that sold ready-to-wear clothing. By the following year, they employed more than a hundred workers to manufacture ready-to-wear suits for men. Over the next decade, the company opened stores in Rome, Genoa, Palermo, Triest and Turin. In 1877, they opened the department store Aux Villes d’Italie at the Hotel Comfortable. It was based on the model and success of the French department store Le Bon Marche. It was the first of its kind in Italy. In 1880, the store had a change of name to  Alle città d’Italia with new stores opened in Rome in 1887 and Milan in 1889.

In 1917, Senator Borletti bought the company from the Bocconi Brothers. Next, he commissioned the Italian poet Gabriele D’Annunzio to come up with a new name. His suggestion was La Rinascente, Italian for The Resurgent was a name to convey the idea of the ‘rebirth’ of the store. The name stuck. Between 1919 and 1920 the stores in Turin, Genoa, Bologna, Florence, Rome, Naples and Palermo were revamped. Over the following five years, other nine stores were opened offering high-quality, luxury products at prices that would appeal to both the high and middle-low income classes.

The first poster commissioned for the newly named department store was created by the renowned artist Aldo Mazza. It was produced in 1921 to announce the reopening of Rinascent’s Milan store.  It had been completely rebuilt, enlarged, transformed and expanded to include a variety of additional services such as a bank, a hair salon for women and men, a tearoom with an orchestra and a post office. Mazza’s poster depicted a burnt trunk of an olive tree with new green sprouting branches, in reference to the new building rising from the ashes and the company’s resurgence.

La Rinascente Vendita del Bianco poster

Rinascente’s long-running association with the Triest-born artist Marcello Dudovich began in 1923. The Vintage La Rinascente poster listed on this page was created in  1925 to announce the department store’s ‘White Sale’ in February of that year.

Dudovich’s fabulous image depicts a young girl offering a beautiful bouquet of blooms to an exquisitely attired woman. Her airy white dress sways around her as she moves. Her calf-length dress is complemented by a large white cloche hat pulled down almost over her eyes and a white shawl blowing in the wind. The outfit is topped off with the perfect large parasol – an essential fashion accessory in the 1920s. The elegant scene is set against a lush yellow-green background with the words La Rinascente appearing at the top of the print.

It’s a wonderful art deco style vintage advertising poster for La Rinascente by  Marcello Dudovich Dal 15 febbraio vendita del bianco. During his twenty-three year association with the company, the artist created dozens of advertising posters for the company, sometimes as many as half a dozen in a year. The Trieste-born artist would go on to create advertising posters for the company until 1956.

Other Marcello Dudovich posters

Marcello Duduvich’s poster artwork was inspired by the work of artists such as Edward Penfield, Adolfo Hohenstein and Alphonse Mucha. His reputation however comes from developing those influences into his own unique and distinctive style.

There are few artists in Italy who have been as celebrated and influential as Marcello Dudovich. If you are only going to have one Dudovich poster, you’ll go a long way to choose a better one than this.