Badoglio

Once upon a time, Cesare Badoglio, who puts his age at “between 80 and 99,” was the spirit whisperer for some of the brightest talents in Italian fashion.

He was a constant psychic adviser to Enrico Coveri, the color-loving Italian designer, whose whirlwind success Mr. Badoglio claims he predicted — and even kindled — thanks to a vision of sequins that then became the Coveri signature.

“I’ve been speaking to dead people since I was a child,” Mr. Badoglio shrugged.

At a recent reading in his Florence studio, Mr. Badoglio threw tarot cards onto the desk and said: “Luck is the most important thing in this world.”

Mr. Badoglio, who wrote horoscopes for the Italian newspaper La Nazione and the gossip magazine Chi, also aided Federico Fellini, in whose service he beseeched cemetery-dwelling spirits to bless the set of “Satyricon.”