Gabriella Pescucci

There is a new television series on Showtime called The Borgias. Always a sucker for a period piece, I tuned in...

Wow! It's beautiful! Historical inaccuracies are a bit disturbing but it's worth tuning in to enjoy the costumes!

It did not surprise me in the least to discover that the costume designer for this series is the extremely gifted, academy award-winning Italian costume designer Gabriella Pescucci.

Gabriella Pescucci has caught my attention many times with her talents, perhaps you have admired her work without knowing who she was, there is a list of her projects here. She studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence and has worked with some of Italy's most famous costume designers, directors, filmakers and theatres. She worked with the Tirelli Costume firm in Rome, click on their name to explore their website for some eye candy!

If you can make it to Turin for the 150th anniversary celebrations, you can check out the Fashion in Italy exhibit at the Venaria Reale under the art direction of Gabriella Pescucci and Franca Sozzani which has some pieces from the Tirelli collection.

There is an interview with Gabriella Pescucci in the book Costume Design by Deborah Nadoolman Landis, and you can feel the love of what she does through how she describes working on costumes and with fabrics. Here you can see a short video of her talking about how she enjoys her work, and here there are a few seconds of her describing her work (with subtitles) on The Borgias (at 1:40).

Explore the Showtime website Borgia Wiki for more on the costumes of the series, as this show is brand new there is not a lot of material there but they add more after each episode.