subject: Sum Up The Ambience Of Her Early Years [print this page] Call it radical conservatism if you will - and in a world dominated by catwalk spiderman costumes theatrics and the flashing of celebrity flesh, a more strait-laced approach is indeed nothing short of anarchic. Whichever way you look at it, the rest of the world has now caught up with the designer's unique vision and the tangled web of contradictions upon which her empire has been built. MIUCCIA ZENTAI UNITARDgrew up in Milan and lives in the same apartment where she was born, although it has been duly extended to suit her rather grand, if never ostentatious, needs. She describes her childhood in characteristically blunt shorthand. Although her accent is heavy, she speaks English fluently when she warms to a subject, staccato when she'd really rather not be drawn. "No problems with my family. Not so much fun. Not happiness. Neutral. Two brothers. Three children." If she had to choose one word to sum up the ambience of her early years, that word would be "spider man costume serious. It was a serious, Catholic family. My mother liked clothes but she liked correctness more." The Zentai unitardfamily was well- off and had made its money, since 1913, supplying luxury goods from glass- wear to luggage. Miuccia was, by all accounts, less than anxious to take the helm of the company her grandfather, Mario, had founded and then passed down to her parents, even though that was clearly expected of her. Instead, she studied political science at the Statale University, graduating in 1970, and mime at the Piccolo Teatro. "It was an excuse not to talk," she has said. "I've always been shy." By then she had also, like many others of her generation, become a fully signed-up member of the Communist Party. "I was young in the Sixties, when Italian society was first becoming obsessed with consumerism, catsuits but my big dreams were of justice, equality and moral regeneration. I was a Communist but being left wing was fashionable then. I was no different from thousands of middle-class kids."
