This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the collection inspired by the Palio and the contradas of Siena, presented by the famous stylist Emilio Pucci, to great acclaim, in the June 1957 fashion shows in Palazzo Pitti, with seventeen models dressed in silk blouses and pants featuring different prints and colors borrowed from the official colors of the contradas.
The Palio Collection was the first real collection to show a consistent plan, from the choice of fabric and print to its application in a wide variation of colors and models: evening gowns, cocktail dresses, and daywear, but especially blouses, shorts, bathing suits, and bath towels, modern and practical in spirit but with the flavor and quality of the past.
The show testifies to the value of this collection in the history of Pucci as a stylist, inserting it into the context of a story that, begun almost by chance in 1947, represented in the 1950s and 1960s one of the first and perhaps most emblematic examples of the birth and emergence of “Made in Italy” on the international scene.
Numerous materials have been chosen from the extensive Emilio Pucci archives (period photos, sketches, original drawings, color tests, fabrics, dresses, bathing suits, scarves, and documents) to illustrate this development and to show their relation to their original source of inspiration: the Palio, the contradas and their traditions, and Siena with its cultural, and above all stylistic and
visual, suggestions.
Curators of the exhibition are Alessandra Arezzi Boza and Margherita Anselmi Zondadari.
(Source: Brochure The Palio Collection)