Nine new rooms have just opened at Palazzo Pitti’s Fashion Museum, taking visitors through the fashions of the 1900s. The rooms dedicated to 18th- and 19th-century fashion and the Medici garments remain unchanged after the reopening of the fully renovated gallery last July.
The first of the new exhibition spaces, dedicated to 1920s Charleston Fashion opens the additional selection. The extraordinary Triptych by Galileo Chini transforms the room into a stage set reminiscent of Puccini’s operas, featuring the gown worn by the artist’s wife at the premiere of Turandot at Teatro La Scala in Milan on April 25, 1926. Other garments crafted in fine silks and enriched with decorative motifs inspired by China, Japan and India remind us of how orientalism intertwined with the emancipatory and experimental spirit typical of the flappers, the young women of the time who defied tradition.
The ensuing two rooms centre on fashion between the wars in a dazzling lineup of garments spanning Art Deco, the avant-garde, rationalism and the cinematic glamour of the 1930s. In this context, Felice Casorati’s painting The Stranger serves as a counterpoint to designs by Elsa Schiaparelli and Madeleine Vionnet. The exhibition continues with a journey through postwar fashion, featuring a rare garment by a young Yves Saint Laurent, who was appointed creative director of the prestigious house of Dior after Christian Dior’s death in 1957, along with three dresses that belonged to Ingrid Bergman.
Next are three rooms concentrating on the 1960s and ‘70s, culminating in an exploration of the space age movement, with designs by André Courrèges, André Laug and Pierre Cardin. There is also space for Roberto Capucci, one of the boldest figures in Italian fashion. In an era dominated by the youth revolution, the miniskirt and the rise of prêt-à-porter, he remained faithful to an almost architectural and sculptural vision of clothing, which made him famous on the international scene.
The “explosive” finale features Enrico Coveri, who, starting in the 1980s, made sequins the symbol of his glittering, ironic and nonconformist style.
The outfits on display will change every year in order to show as many garments as possible in the museum’s deposits.
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