Fashion and costumes in the work of Italian filmmaker Robert Vignola in silent Hollywood.

The article examines the role of fashion and costumes in the silent Hollywood films of Italian-born director Robert G. Vignola, highlighting how his work reflects the class composition and gendered dynamics of American film audiences in the 1910s and 1920s. Vignola, recognized for shaping female star personas and integrating fashion as a narrative and social signifier, bridged Italian cinematic influences and American middle-class tastes, particularly appealing to women spectators. His collaborations with stars like Marion Davies involved elaborate costume design that both embodied glamour and connected with everyday female audiences through fan magazines such as Photoplay, which promoted film fashion as accessible and aspirational. The article also discusses Vignola’s professional tensions with media mogul William Randolph Hearst over the direction of Davies’ career and the contrasting emphasis on spectacle versus character-driven storytelling. Overall, the study situates Vignola’s films within transnational cultural exchanges and early 20th-century shifts in female spectatorship, consumerism, and the construction of modern womanhood in American cinema.