Held at Palazzo Reale in Milan, the exhibition “L’arte del bijou Italiano” shows 300 exclusive pieces by internationally renowned designers and stylists.

The exhibition, organized on the occasion of the Womenswear Fashion Week as a stylish journey through time, traces the history of jewellery from the fifties to the twenty-first century.

Exhibition “L’arte del bijou italiano”. Courtesy of Palazzo Reale Milano. All rights reserved.

The creations conceived for big names such as Giorgio Armani, Hugo Correani, Gianfranco Ferre, Franco Moschino, Luciano Soprani, Valentino and Gianni Versace are showcased in a mix of limited editions and larger-scale industrial productions, to convey how Italian creativity skilfully combines formal beauty and manufacturing quality, technological innovation and highest quality artisan traditions. The exhibition path illustrates both a history of the evolution of style and technologies.

Rings. Exhibition “L’arte del bijou italiano”. Courtesy of Palazzo Reale Milano. All rights reserved.

Curated by Alba Cappellieri, professor of Jewellery and Accessory Design at the Politecnico of Milan, this exhibition is testimony to the dialogue between art and design, constantly enriched with new languages. An exciting story of trends that endorse the role of costume jewellery as one of the accessories that most testifies the evolution of taste and fashion.

The exhibition will run until the 2nd of March 2016. For more information please visit Palazzo Reale Current Exhibitions.

Find more amazing images of jewels on Europeana Fashion Portal!

The creations and ispirations of Missoni will be displayed at The Fashion and Textile Museum in London from the 6th May 2016!

“Le Forme della Moda” MISSONI, L’ARTE, IL COLORE, MA*GA Museum, Gallarate. All rights reserved.

The exhibition “MISSONI, ART, COLOUR”, previously held at MA*GA Museum in Gallarate – and featured last October in our Tumblr – will open in May at The Fashion and Textile Museum in London. It displays the work of Missoni, the great Italian fashion House, celebrating the creativity of its founders, Rosita and Ottavio Missoni, alongside more than 40 paintings that have inspired the Missonis. These artworks, by artists such as Gino Severini, Lucio Fontana and Sonia Delaunay, mainly come from MA*GA collection and will be shown together with a large selection of looks created since 1953 by Rosita Missoni and from 1997 by Angela Missoni as well as previously unseen textile studies, paintings and Arazzi Ottavio Missoni.

“Il Colore e la Materia”. MISSONI, L’ARTE, IL COLORE, MA*GA Museum, Gallarate. All rights reserved.

Curated by Luciano Caramel, Luca Missoni, Emma Zanella, “MISSONI, ART, COLOUR” is, in Luca Missoni’s words, “designed to showcase the creative process of knitting artwork into fashion forms.” MA*GA and Missoni also partner with The Woolmark Company in bringing the exhibition to London.

Visit The Fashion and Textile Museum to learn more about the exhibition and have a look at Europeana Fashion’s Tumblr to find more photo of the exhibition at MA*GA!

For the first time, Rijksmuseum displays a great part of its fashion collection in an exhibition which brings together the history of Dutch fashion.

Opened the 20th of February, the exhibition “Catwalk” is set six galleries of the Philips Wing of the Rijksmuseum. It is designed by the world-renowned photographer Erwin Olaf, whose works have been already featured in many fashion magazines and who has collaborated with many great names in art and architecture.

Photo: Erwin Olaf | Cocktail dress, Cristóbal Balenciaga (1951-1952). Rijksmuseum, all rights reserved.

Dedicated to Dutch fashion from 1625 to 1960, “Catwalk” sets the occasion for the Museum to show some of the amazing pieces from its 10.000 items collection, which includes men’s, women’s and children’s attire, and also let the Museum reflect on the ways fashion is diffused and its history is told. The role of the wearer is central as she or he makes choices that result in making her or him a follower or a trendsetter. These choices, which depend on various factors, convey a message that eventually influence the history of fashion. Same wise, the Museum made a final selection, deciding which pieces would have been shown in the exhibition.

Photo: Erwin Olaf | Full evening dress: dotted (ca. 1850-1856) and a full evening dress: striped (ca. 1850-1856). Rijksmuseum, all rights reserved.

Among these pieces are the widest dress in the Netherlands, the mantua worn by Helena Slicher (1737-1776) at her wedding with Aelbrecht baron van Slingelandt in 1759, a precious and fragile dress of blonde silk bobbin lace from the 19th century and a silk taffeta cocktail gown by Cristóbal Balenciaga.
In addition, the earliest Dutch costumes worn in the seventeenth century by the Frisian branch of the Nassau family and by the Stadtholder and King William III will be exhibited too. Owned by the History Department of the Museum, they include a unique pair of underpants belonging to Hendrik Casimir I, Count of Nassau Dietz (1612 – 1640).

The exhibition will be on show through the 16t May 2016. For more information, please visit Rijksmuseum. Check also Europeana Fashion’s event area to find more fashion and costume related events!

This month Europeana Fashion’s Tumblr explores the use of gold and silver in fashion history through a curation of selected items from Europeana Fashion’s collection!

Gold and silver are two colours and materials which are present in fashion and costume history since their very beginning and thus their use, values and meaning have evolved in time. Europeana Fashion’s curation focuses on the techniques designers and couturiers use to feature gold and silver in their creations from the 20th century to nowadays. These techniques are different and they reflect the various new references these colours got in mainstream culture. In contemporary fashion, in fact, they not only represent the splendour of the old ages, but they are also attributed more unconventional meaning. Gold, for instance, has become synonym with hip-hop culture, while silver has become a modern, sidereal colour.

Boots designed by Paco Rabanne, 1965 ca. Collection MUDE – Museu do Design e da Moda, all rights reserved.

The curation therefore features the creations of different designers and couturiers, from Mariano Fortuny and Paul Poiret, for whom gold bore the fascination of the Orient, to Pierre d’Alby, Courrèges and Paco Rabanne, who preferred silver for their space inspired suits and dresses, and the masters of the Eighties, who made these colours celebrative synonyms of excess.

Moreover, the curation includes the Nineties’ and the contemporary designers which eventually challenged gold and silver, bringing these colours cultural references to their extremes. Visit every day Europeana Fashion’s Tumblr to find a new picture and browse Europeana Fashion’s collection to find more gold and silver items!

The Grand Palais in Paris hosts the exhibition “Volez, Voguez, Voyagez – Louis Vuitton”. Inaugurated the 4th of December 2015, it will run until the 21st of February 2016.

Curated by Olivier Saillard, the Exhibition retraces Louis Vuitton’s great journey from 1854 to today, through depictions of the Maison’s founding members and those who create the Louis Vuitton of tomorrow.

“Volez, Voguez, Voyagez – Louis Vuitton”. Courtesy of Grand Palais. All rights reserved.

Talking about journeys, this event is also a time travel: the Grand Palais was built in 1900, in occasion of the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1900, which included a “Travel & Leather Goods” section overseen by Georges Vuitton in person. At that time, the Maison showcased the contemporary elegance of luggage and bags at an attention-grabbing booth in the form of a merry-go-round.

“Volez, Voguez, Voyagez – Louis Vuitton”. Courtesy of Grand Palais. All rights reserved.

The thematic journey conceived and designed by Robert Carsen, art director of the exhibit, is showcased in nine chapters, which start with an antique malle, the absolute symbol of Louis Vuitton. Objects and documents from Louis Vuitton’s Heritage has been included, as well as a selection of pieces lent by the Palais Galliera, Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris. The exhibition itinerary ends with a close up on Craftsmanship.

Browse amazing Louis Vuitton’s items on Europeana Fashion Portal!

Last week, Europeana Fashion’s portal has been updated with a lot of new great content!

The collection of digital records of Europeana Fashion has been enriched with new items from: Amsterdam Museum, Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin, Missoni, Belgium’s Modemuseum Hasselt, The Museum of Applied Art in Belgrade, Nordiska Museet in Stockholm and the Italian partners Pitti Imagine and International Talent Support (ITS).

Dress in silk satin designed by Jean-Philippe Worth, House of Worth. Courtesy of Modemuseum Hasselt

In addition, two new partners have just provided their extremely interesting collections! The large ethnical fashion collection of the Dutch National Museum for World Cultures and the costumes and drawings of the Theatre Collection of the University of Amsterdam (Special Collections).

Embroidered long dress worn by Andrea Domburg for the stage show "The tale of the wolf". Netherland, 1963. Courtesy of Theatercollectie Bijzondere Collecties UvA (stichting TiN)

This brings the European fashion heritage available to the impressive amount of more than 770.000 items, and more content is still to come!

Lucien Guy, Tennis dress. Fashion design for female costume. French c.1904. Courtesy of Victoria and Albert Museum. CC BY SA

Moreover, a new theme, “Sportswear”, is now featured in the theme section of the portal! It presents some of the most interesting sportswear pieces of the Europeana Fashion collection, consisting of both historical costumes and more recent designers’ creations.

Visit the portal to find all this and more!

For the first time ever, the Palais Galliera is displaying the fabulous wardrobe of Élisabeth, Countess Greffulhe, the cousin of French dandy and poet Robert de Montesquiou, who was born at the end of the Second Empire, who saw two Republics and two world wars.

In the years that followed her marriage to the Count Henry Greffulhe in 1878, she became one of the leaders of fashion in Parisian society. Several articles has been wrote to talk about her style and in 1891, from a pen portrait published in the Figaro, we learn that she was “beautiful and pretty, very elegant.”

Otto (Otto Wegener), Portrait of Élisabeth Greffulhe wearing an evening gown and coat lined with Mongolian lamb, circa 1886-1887 Albumen print © Otto/Galliera/Roger-Viollet

She was the most beautiful woman in Paris, as Proust wrote to Montesquiou : ‘There is no single part of her to be found in any other woman, or anywhere else for that matter. The entire mystery of her beauty is in the glow, above all in the enigma of her eyes. I have never seen a woman as beautiful as she. Then he immortalised her for posterity as the Duchess of Guermantes in the famous novel In Search of Lost Time. Also she had a beautiful mind. As founding president of the Société des Grandes Auditions Musicales, she turned charity work into public relations, producing and promoting operas and shows, which included Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde and Twilight of the Gods, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and Isadora Duncan.

Worth, evening gown known as “La Robe aux Lis”, circa 1896. Black velvet, ivory silk appliqués in the form of lilies embroidered with beads and metal sequins © L. Degrâces et Ph. Joffre/Galliera/Roger-Viollet

In addition to this, she was involved in politic and a she was passionate sponsor of science. But, first of all, Countess Greffulhe was the epitome of elegance. She used to wear glorious outfits, made by the most important couturiers. Her public appearances were highly theatrical, with a sense of their being rare, fleeting and incomparably fascinating, with outfits chosen to emphasise her slender figure.

Manteau du soir designed by Vitaldi Babani. 1915/1920. Courtesy of Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris. All rights reserved

The Palais Galliera displays fifty models bearing the labels of grands couturiers such as Worth, Fortuny, http://www.europeanafashion.eu/portal/browse.html?inpSearch=babani#searchTerm%3Dbabani, and Lanvin. Coats, indoor clothes, day dresses, evening dresses, and accessories are exposed close to portraits, photographs and films, as an invitation to go ‘in search of lost fashion’ and to become acquainted with this great figure of Paris Society.

Discover more about the exhibition on Europeana Fashion Event Area!