Antonio Gramsci, who, in 1917 worked as a theatre reviewer, criticised her stating she represented a heightened form of sensuality, "a part of a primordial and prehistoric humanity" that had managed to cast a spell on the audience.

[citation needed] Novelist Lucio D'Ambra wrote about her in 1937: "The new goddess eclipsed with her aesthetic prestige all the others; young Italian women literally moulded themselves on this sinuous statue that, struck by love pangs, harmoniously twisted and turned like a sensual music.

It was easy to meet in the literary salons and cafes, at the theatre and in the streets many little Borellis who starved themselves ending up looking like sinuously serpentine shadows, thin, wrapped up and draped in the shortest fabric swatches they could find among the stocks of the silk shops.

[6][7] Vittorio Cini had a long relationship with the Italian Fascist party, joining in 1926, and had occupied influential positions within government and industry throughout the decades of Benito Mussolini's rule.

[9] Giorgio would also lobby successfully against the elder Cini's legal exclusion from political activities, arguing that his final break with Mussolini mitigated his long years of collaboration.