Mariuccia Mandelli:​ Maverick designer who shook up the fashion world with clothes that fulfilled feminist ideals

"I tried to liberate women by eliminating what was superfluous, adapting clothing to daily life."

Mandelli basks in the applause ofher models on the catwalk in Milan in 1995 (Reuters)

Mariuccia Mandelli, an Italian fashion designer who electrified the runway with shorts known as hot pants, knitwear emblazoned with animals and trouser suits for the modern yet feminine working woman. Mandelli was regarded as royalty in Milan for more than half a century. A former junior school teacher, she launched Krizia, her fashion label, in the mid-1950s, drawing its name from a Platonic dialogue about female vanity.

A decade later, still relatively unknown, she stunned the insular Italian design world by claiming an important fashion prize for a collection presented at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. The award identified her as both a significant talent and a maverick: Unlike many of her contemporaries, she had eschewed wild colours in favour of black and white.

Blacks, browns and creams remained prominent in her palette for years. Her independent streak, likewise, lasted. Umberto Eco, the author and philosopher, quoted in W magazine, observed that Mandelli "invents the taste of her own public."

She designed clothing for children and for men, and the Krizia line included jewellery, perfume and champagne. But she was best known for women's wear that was seen as contemporary and daring, a reflection of the feminist movement that coincided with her rise as a force in design. "Women at the time expressed the will to change the system," she once said. Designers, she said, took their lead. "I tried to liberate women by eliminating what was superfluous, adapting clothing to daily life."

She used fabrics that were mainstays of men's clothing, such as pinstripe wools. She favoured trousers over the more traditionally feminine skirt. And she made innovative use of pleats to project both power and style. But she disdained women's fashion that copied menswear, including the style of trouser suit that was once promoted for career women.

"We are going toward the year 2000 and women should go ahead and not backwards and strike out on their own," she said in 1984. "To copy mannish clothes is to repeat an error. It is rather useless and a bit ridiculous to dress like a man to bolster your position"

In the 1990s, amid the Clean Hands investigation that revealed corruption in Italian government, Mandelli was found to have paid a bribe to tax officials, who she claimed had strong-armed the money from her with threats to delay production at her workshops. Her conviction was later overturned.

Mariuccia Mandelli, fashion designer: born Bergamo, Italy 31 January 1925; died Milan 6 December 2015.

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