The narration starts from the workshop of Catello. Like in a modern fairytale, some boxes full of used clothes depart from there to arrive in some of the most prestigious Italian cinematographic costume shops.
Among the Tirelli and Farani’s corridors and studios, the Academy Awards winners for best costume design Piero Tosi, Gabriella Pescucci and Colleen Atwood, with the special guest Claudia Cardinale, tell of their unique relationship with directors such as Luchino Visconti, Sergio Leone and Tim Burton, documenting the historical evolution of costume designing from the post-World War II period to the present day and how the great and innovative strength of the Italian school of film costume designers has also influenced overseas costume designers.
“The Prince of Rags” proposes to narrate on a parallel level also, the relationship that the main character, Catello, has with those costume designers who have made the art of film costumes famous throughout the world. Through the story of a typical day like, Catello talks about his beginnings marked by poverty, the social redemption occurred thanks to the lucky meeting with cinematographic costume designers and the way he chooses the most suitable dress for a character, just basing on the sensations that it generates to him just by touching it.
Above all, he talks to us about his dreams and his deepest aspiration: being considered one day, not just a “rag-man”, but a real costume designer.
We will discover how much a “rag-man can have in common with a great Academy Awards winner if to nourish him is the same passion for costumes.