MAISON FORTUNY

In the early 1900s the century began with cultural and avant-garde innovations that covered the entire old world from top to bottom, and among these there could not be missing a revolution of costume and dress. Among those innovators was Mariano Fortuny, who didn’t design fashions but created works of art to wear as wrote Marcel Proust in “The Prisoner.” A ridiculous idea where garments in contraposition to charm or to futuristic sterilised instruments became pure artistic expressions.

Born in Grenada in Spain in 1871, he moved to Paris, the interlectual centerpiece of the time. But his art found its real home in Venice where he based himself at the Pesaro palace in Saint Mark’s square, where today is found the Fortuny museum.

His creations describe a woman suspended between a Wagnerian tragedy and the reincarnation of the iconic personality of the Marquess Casati. Eleanora Duse and Isadora Duncan…