Why Vogue Italia’s Francesca Ragazzi Wore Her Mother’s Wedding Dress for Her Own Big Day
For her wedding in Bologna on September 12, 2020, Francesca Ragazzi wore her mother’s dress: a vintage 1980s creation by Lorenzo Riva that she embellished with handmade fabric flowers. This year on Mother’s Day, she shares her memories of creating the dress for the first time.
Ever since Francesca Ragazzi, head of editorial content at Vogue Italia, began thinking about what she would wear for her wedding to Francesco Zucchini, she never had any doubts: “I always knew I would wear my mother s wedding dress, ever since I was a little girl,” she says.
Her mother, the former model Paola Villa, married her father, basketball player Maurizio Ragazzi, on June 11, 1988. “We fell in love instantly,” says Villa. “Ours was a great love from the start, and we were very lucky: Francesca came along shortly after. When we got married, she had been in my belly for five months, witnessing our love. I was working as a model then. The dress was custom-made by the designer Lorenzo Riva, for whom I was modeling. He was delighted to give it to me as a gift. When Francesca told me she was going to wear my dress, it was very emotional: We took it out of the closet, but there were stains on it. She, however, wanted it at all costs.”
Thus began the journey that transformed the 1980s creation into the wedding dress of Ragazzi’s dreams. “Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve had all the pictures of mom in that dress on my phone, and my biggest wish was to wear it on my big day,” says Ragazzi. “Of course, I wanted to give it my own personal touch by using styling makeup to cover the stains that had formed since it had been stored away. It had passed in more than 30 years since then.”
Lorenzo Riva’s vintage wedding dress as a couture meadow
The design of the Lorenzo Riva wedding dress still felt current, but it also bore some signs of aging: the silk in some places appeared to have faded to different colors. The size was also on the larger side, as Francesca’s mother was pregnant at the time. As a result, it needed a makeover. “I decided to add fabric flowers in a palette of pinks and browns,” Ragazzi explains.
The bride chose to turn to a seamstress to bring her vision to life, finding in Eleonora Costenaro exactly what she was looking for. “We started by adapting the bodice to Francesca’s measurements, then we did some tests by creating belts with silks in contrasting colors—green, burgundy, and even tone-on-tone—but then we shelved the idea,” says Costenaro. “We needed to cover the small signs of wear and tear and went ahead making new trials.”