How did Milan Fashion Week come about? From the White Hall of Palazzo Pitti to the supermodels of the 1990s

With the edition opening this week, the Milan Fashion Week enters its 51st year of age. It’s not a round number, true, but certainly a remarkable one. The history of the fashion week is the very history of Italian fashion which, in turn, can give us a glimpse into the history of our country. Much like in the case of France, indeed, the history of Italian fashion as we know it begins in the post-war period and has as its backdrop Italy’s long transition from a rural country devastated by bombings to a global luxury leader. 

It’s a bumpy story in some ways. Since the true cradle of Italian fashion was Florence in the 1950s and only later did the gravitational center of fashion gradually shift toward Milan, culminating in the official founding of Milan Fashion Week in ’75. But how did this transition happen and, above all, who were its protagonists?

Florence and the origins of Italian fashion

After the Second World War Italy was on its knees: countless dead and wounded, cities devastated by bombings, economy destroyed. But one sector that had survived, in terms of traditions and know-how, was the textile and artisanal one. The culture of fabrics was deeply rooted throughout the country, from Southern laces to Tuscan casentino cloths, from Trentino hammered wool loden to Lombard silks. Sartorial traditions also abounded, especially in Rome, Florence, Naples and Milan, still seats of the old aristocracy.

It was here that the intuition of Giovanni Battista Giorgini, a Tuscan entrepreneur of aristocratic origins, arrived regarding the potential of Italian fashion on foreign markets. Giorgini cultivated relationships with American buyers and journalists and on February 12, 1951, he organized the first Italian High Fashion Show in his private residence, Villa Torrigiani in Florence. The event presented creations by ten Italian designers including the Fontana Sisters, Jole Veneziani, Alberto Fabiani, Emilio Pucci, Noberasco, Carosa, Emilio Schuberth, Simonetta, Marucelli and Gallotti and attracted high society, international press and important buyers.

The initiative was successful, but the real turning point came the following year. In July 1952, with the addition of new names, the shows moved to the prestigious Sala Bianca of Palazzo Pitti. The idea was to create an ideal link between Italy’s great artistic tradition and fashion. From that moment until 1982 the presentations were held twice a year, in January and July, preceding the dates of Parisian Haute Couture. Journalists from all over the world and buyers from major American department stores such as Saks and Bergdorf Goodman began ordering large quantities of Italian garments.

The union of creativity and industry

Florence thus became, in the 1950s and ’60s, the center of Italian fashion which also thanks to the divas and Cinecittà productions rewrote the country’s image in the postwar period. In those same years the textile sector restarted strongly thanks to the funds of the Marshall Plan, which allowed the modernization of factories with automatic looms, intermittent spinning frames and industrial dye works. But here comes the best part: unlike other countries, in Italy large centralized complexes did not emerge but instead the model of the small and medium-sized family business prevailed, often flanked by artisanal workshops.

During the so-called “economic miracle” an integrated but territorially fragmented textile supply chain consolidated, organized into industrial districts. This system made it possible to carry out all production phases on site, from spinning to finishing, without depending on imports, with a speed, quality and flexibility unique in the world: both small runs for high fashion and large volumes for the mass market could be produced.

This is how the districts that still today represent Made in Italy were born: silk in Como, wool in Biella, dyeing and recycling in Prato, leather goods and tanning in Scandicci, knitwear and footwear between Romagna and Veneto. These were “widespread factories”, made up of hundreds of small specialized companies in individual phases, coordinated by geographic proximity and a long shared tradition. 

A model that prepared the ground for the explosion of prêt-à-porter in the Seventies: the short supply chain allowed quick passage from design to production, very high-quality fabrics were available at competitive prices and the so-called “carnettisti” acted as a bridge between designers, tailors and producers. For American clients Italian fashion cost less than French, was more creative than American and offered exceptional quality. Made in Italy was born. But where would it be presented to the world?

Florence or Milan?

Just like its artisanal excellences, Italian fashion too was fragmented among different cities. In Venice, for example, shows of Italian and French designers had been held since the 1920s, Turin was home to the National Fashion Body since the 1930s, Rome was the heart of the country’s high fashion for the many ateliers linked to the princely houses of the city and Milan was already the industrial and business hub to which the textile sector of Northern Italy referred. Right in Milan, in ’58, the CNMI was founded which had the task of promoting Italian fashion through collective presentations.

Italian fashion began to shift from haute couture to mass prêt-à-porter. Many designers collaborated with individual manufacturing companies for signed lines and proposals for the general public. Among them were Pucci, Krizia, Biki, Missoni and Max Mara. To coordinate the presentation of these designers, in 1958 in Milan the CNMI began organizing biennial shows which however did not yet exist under a unified name and were closer to trade fairs. Also in Milan, which was also the editorial capital, Vogue arrived in 1960 and the city became synonymous with more commercial, scalable fashion thanks to the textile innovations of families like Missoni or Etro. Florence instead remained linked to Alta Moda and that is why in the years 1962 Valentino debuted there.

The tension between the two spiritual capitals of Italian fashion grew increasingly throughout the 1970s. The ready-to-wear model was spreading and many designers felt Florence was too stifling while Milan was much more oriented toward the more profitable mass market in terms of logistics, investments and innovation. The feminist revolution of ’71, then, further popularized accessible and practical garments for women, i.e. the fundamental audience for fashion. 

The two capitals grew in parallel until in 1975 the CNMI organized the first real "Fashion Week" in Milan, establishing it as an industry platform, with a precise ecosystem of catwalks and showrooms dedicated to international buyers interested in collections for the mass market. In the same year Giorgio Armani founded his brand in Milan and, three years later, Gianni Versace opened his store and showed at the Permanente. It was in this context that the fundamental figure of Walter Albini emerged.

Walter Albini and the birth of Italian prêt-à-porter

Born in Busto Arsizio in 1941, Albini began his career as an illustrator and photographer, but soon turned to fashion. In the 1960s the designer created lines for brands such as Krizia, Billy Ballo and Missoni focusing on ready-to-wear garments rather than made-to-measure and perfecting the format of the designer who collaborated with major textile producers, including in his work innovative prints and industrially treated fabrics to make fashion more accessible to the emerging middle class.

Already in these collections Albini experimented with unisex garments but it was in ’71 that he abandoned the Florence shows and presented at the Circolo del Giardino in Milan his first collection under his own name for the FW72 season. A symbolic and very powerful gesture. The collection brought together under a single brand pieces from five different lines which, harmonized, gave birth to the concept of “total look”: Albini designed knitwear for one producer, shirts for another, tailored pieces for yet another and so on. By presenting them all under his name in coherent looks designed for different moments of the day, Albini created the modern ready-to-wear fashion show as we know it.

This move marked the beginning of Milanese prêt-à-porter as fashion separate from haute couture and dedicated to the middle class. His choice of organizing thematic shows in specific locations also helped make them resemble performances full of meaning. The innovations continued: in ’75, he presented the first ready-to-wear collection for men, created a unisex line with what we would today call a co-ed cast and in ’76 with the Guerriglia Urbana collection he also brought the political tensions of the Years of Lead onto the catwalk. Thanks to him fashion had stopped being made of men’s suits and evening gowns.

Albini’s move accelerated the shift toward Milan in the 1970s. As Vogue recalls, already at the time of the Guerriglia Urbana collection, all the major designers had already moved to Milan except Valentino who had already gone to Paris. The economic impact began to be felt: Milan started attracting textile investments from Piedmont and Lombardy while fashion publishing spread, strengthening "Made in Italy" as a global brand. Moreover, the synergy between designers and producers that united creativity with technique was fundamental.

The years of Milan to Drink

The 1980s marked the peak of Milan Fashion Week, a decade of explosive expansion that elevated the city to world capital of prêt-à-porter fashion, even surpassing Paris in terms of commercial volume. Under the guidance of CNMI, the event consolidated with a unified calendar, with shows in iconic locations such as Castello Sforzesco and the Brera Academy, and received increasing attention from international media. Milan Fashion Week, at the time better known as “Milano Collezioni”, became a spectacle thanks to increasingly theatrical shows that still today express the hedonistic spirit of the decade.

This was the golden age of Gianni Versace and Giorgio Armani, of the spectacular shows by Franco Moschino, of Missoni and of Fendi by Karl Lagerfeld. But the 1980s were also the years of the debut of Dolce&Gabbana and Miuccia Prada. Toward the end of the decade, then, the appointment of Gianfranco Ferrè as creative director of Dior seemed the final consecration of the Milanese fashion scene.  Economically, the Italian fashion sector grew exponentially, with exports reaching billions, thanks to the synergy between design and industry as well as the opening of new international markets. 

In the 1990s the myth of the fashion week began to consolidate. From increasingly commercial, Milan entered the new decade charged with the intense vitality of Versace, Dolce&Gabbana and Roberto Cavalli only to transform, toward the middle of the decade, into a temple of minimalism: from the most intellectual of Prada and Jil Sander to the ultra-sexy of Tom Ford’s Gucci. Meanwhile, at Versace shows fashion mixed with pop culture, between supermodels singing Freedom! ’90 by George Michael on the catwalk and Tupac Shakur inaugurating the long love story between hip-hop and fashion. Over all this fervor of novelty watched the clear gaze of Franca Sozzani, who in the meantime was making Vogue Italia the world’s number one fashion magazine.

The decade ended prematurely with the tragic death of Gianni Versace, in 1997, which truly marked the end of an era. Right toward the end of the Millennium, the city and its fashion became more international. It was precisely in this period that the name changed from Milano Collezioni to Milan Fashion Week, although to this day the institutional name of the two events has remained Milano Moda in the two variants Women and Men. Increasingly international and populated by big designer names, on the dawn of the year 2000 the new name of the fashion week was now established. The decade closed with Milan as one of the crucibles of world luxury, ready to face the many challenges and many glories of the new millennium.