Akademik

(1927-)

   Costume designer. Widely regarded as Italy's leading film costume designer, Tosi first made his mark by dressing Luchino Visconti's Bellissima (1951). He went on to design the costumes for all of Visconti's subsequent films, including all the elegant period costumes of Il gattopardo (The Leopard, 1963), for which he received his first nomination for an Academy Award. Much in demand, he was called to work with all the other major Italian directors including Vittorio De Sica, for whom he designed the costumes of Ieri, oggi e domani (Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, 1963) and Matrimonio all'Italiana (Marriage Italian Style, 1964), and with Mauro Bolognini, with whom he collaborated on a host of films from the early Il bell'Antonio (Bell'Antonio, I960) to La storia vera della signora delle camelie (The True Story of the Lady of the Camelias, 1981). An extremely imaginative and versatile artist, Tosi was also responsible for the makeup and hairstyles of Federico Fellini's Satyricon (Fellini Satyricon, 1969) as well as the overall production design of Toby Dammit, Fellini's contribution to the compilation film Tre passi nel delirio (Spirits of the Dead, 1968). In the 1980s he worked most often with Franco Zeffirelli, his designs for Zeffirelli's production of La traviata (1982) earning him his fifth Oscar nomination. After collaborating one last time with Zeffirelli on Storia di una capinera (Sparrow, 1994), Tosi officially retired from the film industry to continue teaching costume design at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia.

   Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema by Alberto Mira