iPalazzo Pitti · Oltrarno
The 20th Century in 40 Dresses: New Arrangement of the Museum of Costume and Fashion
Reopened after a four-year renovation, the Museum of Costume and Fashion's new galleries trace haute couture from the 1920s Charleston era through the 1980s across nine rooms, with pieces by Schiaparelli, Yves Saint Laurent, Pierre Cardin, and Roberto Capucci shown alongside 20th-century paintings.
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The first room opens on the dress Galileo Chini's wife wore to the premiere of Puccini's Turandot at La Scala in 1926, shown with a triptych by Chini himself. Nine rooms follow, with 40 twentieth-century garments, many never shown before, set beside paintings of their time.
You walk through the Charleston years into two interwar rooms where Schiaparelli and Vionnet face Felice Casorati's Lo straniero. After the war come a rare early Yves Saint Laurent and three dresses that belonged to Ingrid Bergman. Three rooms of Space Age Courrèges, Laug and Cardin hang with Alberto Burri's whites and blacks, then Roberto Capucci gets a room to himself before Enrico Coveri's 1980s sequins close it.
The museum owns about 15,000 garments and swaps the 20th-century selection every year, so this set of 40 won't last. It's in the Palazzina della Meridiana and covered by the €16 Palazzo Pitti ticket (€19 booked ahead), Tuesday to Sunday, 8:15 to 18:30.
Look for
The Turandot dress and Chini's triptych
Look for the dress Chini's wife wore to the 1926 La Scala premiere, its silks decorated with motifs drawn from China, Japan and India, shown with her husband's painting.
Ingrid Bergman's wardrobe
Three dresses that belonged to the actress hang in the post-war room, one of them by the Roman house Gattinoni.
The Capucci room
A whole room for Roberto Capucci, whose dresses are built for volume, structure and colour, closer to sculpture than to tailoring.
Coveri's sequins
The route ends in the 1980s with Enrico Coveri's bright, sequin-covered pieces with provocative cuts.
Good for
- Nerding Out
- Rainy Days
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Image credits
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- The 20th Century in 40 Dresses: New Arrangement of the Museum of Costume and FashionCourtesy of Palazzo Pitti
- Vasari Corridor: Friday Evening OpeningCourtesy of Vasari Corridor
- Vasari Corridor: Friday Evening OpeningCourtesy of Uffizi Gallery
- Palazzo PittiDavid Vizzoni (Almaak), CC BY-SA 3.0
- Vasari CorridorFreepenguin, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Uffizi GalleryArek N. (Arkadiusz Nanowski), CC BY-SA 3.0
- Palazzo VecchioFrancesco Bini / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Palazzo StrozziMenkinAlRire / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0