Fashion designer Mila Schon, 89, passed away last Thursday night.

She was well known for her peculiar style, in which classical lines elegantly presented modern features : pieces of art in part inspired by contermporary artists such as Lucio Fontana.

Considered an icon, her dresses were wore all throughout the world. From Jackie Kennedy and the Rockfellers in the USA to Mina, Milva and the Agnelli family in Italy, the upper classes have always shown to deeply appreciate her style.

''We have lost one of the pillars of Italian fashion. She has done a great deal of good for Italian fashion around the world"  said Mario Boselli, head of the Italian Chamber of Fashion. 

Milan city council also definied Schon ''an ambassador for Milanese elegance'' when asking to the citizens a minute of silence for her on Friday.

Schon’s real name was Maria Carmen Nutrizio. She was born in 1919 in a territory once part of the  Italian Dalmatia but nowadays annexed to Croazia. She moved in Italy when she was just a little girl, and she was helped by her wealthy aristocratic family to open her first small atelier in 1958. She was mainly inspired by Balenciaga and Dior’s styles, whose clothes she used to buy. She then waited 7 years before organizing her first important fashion show in 1965 in Florence.   

That was a fundamental year for her career: from that time on she gained more and more success and she finally opened her first boutique in via Montenapoleone, Milan’s Fashion Street.  

By 1971 she managed to complete a whole line for both men and women and, later on, she also began designing accessories and making perfumes.  

Her style proved to be polyvalent: several companies decided to refer to her for the production of their employees’ uniforms. Among them, Alitalia and Iran Air.  

 By then her shops were spread in many Italian cities, in Los Angeles and in Japan – where she also produced and sold lingerie, watches and lighters.

Years of devoted work brought Schon to win the Golden Lion for career achievement in 1985.

Although the Japanese corporation Itochu bought her group in 1993, she still managed to supervise the designs produced under her griffe. She maintained this role also when the property of her former company passed to the Mariella Burani Group in 1999. Thus her brand has continued to be synonymous of high quality and classical Italian style until today.

Schon died not without having assisted to a recent and properly great celebration in her honor: just in July the Roma Fashion Fest, Alta Roma, paid homage to the 50 years of the Schon house with a documentary and a retrospective of her most famous creations.

(M.M.)