Milan Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2019 is now in full swing, and with a bit of early research I discovered that Italy’s very first ‘Fashion Week’ was held 68 years ago, and surprisingly not in Milan but in Florence.

The man responsible for the first fashion show of Italian designers and textiles was Giovanni Battista Giorgini. In 1951 he invited American buyers for US department stores and international fashion journalists to his villa in Florence for the show which was held on 12th February.

La Rinascente’s imposing facade

An innovative thinker, Giorgini understood the emerging post-war consumer trends; that the US would offer a larger market than Europe (a trend that Paris would be slow to realise.)

Valentino’s boutique in La Rinascente

The designer Valentino also influenced the global appeal of Italian fashion and helped to position Milan as Italy’s fashion capital. He understood the cosmopolitan lifestyle of US consumers would not fit with traditional haute couture so in 1967 he opened a boutique in Milan’s leading department store, La Rinascente, and filled it with high quality ready-to-wear.

To read more about Milan’s fashionable history, refer to Turning Fashion into Business: The Emergence of Milan as an International Fashion Hub by Elisabetta Merlo and Francesca Polese.

Coming up: Milan Fashion Week – what goes on outside the Show venues!