The place: via dei Serragli 144, Florence, Villa Torrigiani, at Giorgini’s home.

The date: 12th February 1951.

The invitation acted: “The purpose of the evening is to enhance our fashion. The ladies are strongly requested to wear clothes of pure Italian inspiration “.

Was born like this, thanks to the intuition of Giovanni Battista Giorgini, the first to understand the not only economic potential of Italian craftsmanship on international markets, especially in the United States. While Paris reaffirms the greatness of French haute couture, Giorgini realizes that many tailors want to free themselves from the Parisian taste, feeling able to offer competitive products for creativity and quality. His idea? Propose a set of Italian collections for spring-summer 1951 to the “buyers” of the department stores, who arrive in Europe for the Paris fashion shows.

In that industrious Florence, a mayor far from the fashionable flips like Giorgio La Pira, he understood and shared the ideas of that “visionary” and opened the casket of the Sala Bianca at Palazzo Pitti.

The eleven Bohemian chandeliers of the Sala Bianca on Tuesday, July 22nd 1952, illuminated Italian fashion by presenting it to the whole world, from that day until 1982.

This is how Pitti Moda was born … Now that women’s fashion has migrated to Milan, Florence hosts fashion in two editions: Pitti Uomo for men’s fashion and two more dedicated to Pitti Bimbo (for children).