GABRIELE MAYER (Gabriele Pacchia) – Costume Designer

(Roma, 1940 – )

Gabriele Pacchia is known in art as Mayer and was born in a family of theater tailors. When his father died, Gabriele, at the end of his studies at the Lyceum of Arts, began to work in the tailor laboratory with his mother and his sister Silvana. He took care of theater costumes, while his mother and sister tailored clothes for a selected clientele. In a short time he came in contact with important costume designers such as Giulio Coltellacci, Maria De Matteis and Pietro Gherardi. Together with the genial personality of Gherardi he made the costumes for the Federico Fellini film La dolce vita (1960), for a segment of 8 and ½ (1963), and for Giulietta degli Spiriti (Juliet of the Spirits) (1965). In particular, Gherardi made with Mayer’s collaboration the costumes for the Barilla spots of the years from 1966 to 1967 featuring Mina, who sang songs which remained in the history of modern music. The clothes for these spots were styled on Mina’s figure and designed to exalt her movements and gestures that made her different from all of the other singers of the time. Mayer collaborated with costume designers of the artistic caliber of Canonero, Colabucci, Diappi, Frattolillo, Marzot, Sabatelli.
Gabriele Mayer for over thirty years affirmed himself in the field of costumes for the theater, cinema and television in Italy and abroad and can count among his clientele the most important theaters of Europe, (La Scala of Milan, the Opera of Paris) and the RAI television and Mediaset, for which he made the clothes for successful shows from “Rugantino” to “Beati voi”, “In bocca al lupo” and “Stasera pago io”.

Giancarlo Gonizzi