Anna Piaggi (1931-2012)

Italian fashion editor and style icon Ann Piaggi died yesterday at the age of 81.

Piaggi was born in 1931 in Milan, according to Italian Vogue.

While working as an interpreter at a press agency in the 1950s, she met the photographer Alfa Castaldi, who was a major contributor to Italian Vogue and who introduced her to the profession of fashion magazines. They were married in 1962 and worked together until Mr. Castaldi’s death in 1995.

From 1981 to 1983, Ms. Piaggi was the editor in chief of Vanity, a magazine that developed a cultlike following. Many covers were illustrated by Antonio Lopez.

When Franca Sozzani became the editor of Italian Vogue in 1988, she said she wanted to create a magazine that was very quick at spotting trends, and hired Ms. Piaggi as a creative consultant.

In 2006 there was an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, dedicated to her large collection of clothes, including among others 2.865 dresses nad 265 pairs of shoes. Such was her influence and Knowledge in the fashion world, Manolo Blahnik dubbed her "the world's last great authority on frocks".

Her trademark: white-powdered face highlighted by a dollop of bright rouge on each cheek, eyes ringed in blue or black shadow, lips painted with an exaggerated cupid's bow and a hat (usually by Stephen Jones) on top of her pale blue hair. Anna Piaggi claimed that she had not left home without a hat since the early 1980s.

For her style, Ms. Piaggi was named to the International Best Dressed List numerous times and was inducted into its Hall of Fame in 2007.