The essence of Italian style through fashion and costume in the 20th century in a handsome volume that captures the evolution of Italian fashion’s biggest brands.

The fashion archive of Enrico Quinto and Paolo Tinarelli has been painstakingly assembled over the last twenty years and traces the international evolution of costume from the mid-19th century to the present day. This quintessential volume on Italian style narrates the development of fashion through around three hundred dresses, chronologically ordered and selected from an international collection of over six thousand pieces, enriched by commentary by historians, journalists, and fashion designers, but also by photography, film, and personal testimony: a concrete resource for historians of costume, students, and those passionate about style.

The idea of departing from a purely chronological sequence springs from a desire to demonstrate the vitality and ongoing relevance of historical pieces through their juxtaposition with contemporary examples. Most of the displayed dresses were documented by photographers when they first appeared on famous actresses, models, and jet-set personalities of the time: from the Duchess of Windsor to Queen Paola of Belgium, from Princess Grace of Monaco to Ava Gardner, Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren, Audrey Hepburn, Veruschka, Marisa Berenson, and Grace Jones, among many others.