Germana Marucelli (1903-83). A visionary fashion creator and the origin of the Made in Italy

The Museum of Costume and Fashion of Pitti Palace reopens with an exhibition dedicated to the Florentine Germana Marucelli (1905-83), a forerunner of the made in Italy and creator of visionary fashion, who in the 1950s contributed to found and spread Italian high fashion in the world by collaborating with Giovan Battista Giorgini in the world-renowned fashion-shows in the White Room of Pitti Palace.

"The dress is pictorial in its colour - said Marucelli - sculptural in its shape, architectural in its functionality, poetic because it creates a harmonious state. The dress must help woman find herself".

According to Marucelli, in fact, women must be able to find in fashion a means of expression and liberation: the Warrior-Priestess, the mystical woman in Tunic, the Kinetic woman in optical dress, the Chrysalis caught in continuous metamorphosis, are all examples of a femininity that does not adapt to fashion but rather "manages" it. In all of Marucelli's creations there is a strong link between fashion and all kinds of art, passions that inspired her throughout all her life. in thsi repsect, she was also an important patroness of the arts, and held a famous cultural circle attended by the leading lights of her time, among whom were Giuseppe Ungaretti (the poet who defined her "an uncommon interpreter of poetry"), Nobel Prizes like Eugenio Montale and Salvatore Quasimodo, the critic and painter Gillo Dorfles, artists like Lucio Fontana, Massimo Campigli, Francesco Messina, the designer Bruno Munari, the architects Ettore Sottsass and Gio Ponti, ethe philospher Dino Formaggio.

On display until 24 September, her creations from the 1940s to the 1980s are arranged in dialogue with jewels, sketches, photographs, works of art (especially by Paolo Scheggi, who also designed her atelier in 1964).