European Fashion Heritage Association

Journal Designers

Popy Moreni: Eclectic Fashion

15.07.2018
1980sItalian fashionItalian stylerunway

‘(…) potentially, I love everything!’

(…) potentially, I love everything: the real and the false, the authentic and the copied, the straight line and the curve, elegance and vulgarity, the good and the bad, the law-abiding and the outlaw. I would like to do everything!

Popy Moreni is the pseudonym of Annalisa Moreni, is a Italian fashion designer who worked in Paris throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

After studying at the Istituto Statale d’Arte, Moda e Costume, in Turin, the city where she was born, in 1964 she moved to Paris where she began her career as design assistant to Maïmé Arnaudin. She then went on to be the head designer in Arnaudin’s Mafia design studio, Paris and subsequently in Promostyl and Timmi. In 1973 she established own design and consulting office, opening her first boutique in Paris in 1976. Her first collecction was shown in 1980, and encapsulated the codes of her recognizable style in design: reference to baroque art and Italian commedia dell’arte, with costumes such as those of Arlequin and Pierrot transformed into everyday wear and casual attires.

Apart from concentrating on clothes and accessories, Moreni also designed housewear and childrenswear collections. She is remembered for her fragrances, such as Cirque, released in 2000. Her work in fashion is considered so important for French culture that in 1986 she was named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.