«Lucia came out at that moment, closely fitted by her mother’s hands... she wore a lovely corselet of flowered brocade, with separate sleeves laced by pretty ribbons». It is a dress, the traditional costume of the Lombardy peasants in the 1600’s, that Alessandro Manzoni chooses to present his Lucia to the readers, and thus defining the essence of young, beautiful and modest during the entire story of the The Betrothed. Angelica Sedara in The Leopard dresses only in white and pale rose, supervised in choices of style as in language in order to climb the terribly steep social ladder that will lead her to become Princess of Falconeri and ambassador. And then the bikinis, «oh la la» pink, black polka-dots, checked and flowered that get a smile out of that child of Hell and Heaven, Lolita, the eye-catching waistcoats of Julien de Rubempré who returns to conquer Paris in Lost Illusions by Balzac declaring to his lady protector that he has «nothing to wear», perhaps the only man that has ever allowed himself to say something similar, but also the slipper (not glass) of Cinderella and Lisbeth Salander’s boots. Through the story of fashion and its details, the great writers not only tell us about characters and their stories, but they also reveal a great deal about themselves (often, more than they would like) and their particular era. Spinning off from novels, poetry and autobiographies of the great Western literary tradition of the last three centuries (with a few incursions into the cinema), La moda è un romanzo narrates the secrets of the clothing we wear every day, their evolution and how they contributed to making the most loved characters in literature vivid and unforgettable, from Anna Karenina to Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany, from Ellen Olenska in the Age of Innocence to Emma Bovary. An unusual anthology, a fascinating analysis that brings fashion buffs to encounter literature and literature buffs to encounter fashion.