Botti Sisters

Haute couture dressmaker’s shop in Rome opened by Augusta, Carlotta, and Fernanda, the Botti sisters, in 1911 in Via Babuino. After 16 years, the workshop moved to Via Saverio Mercadante, and then from 1959 to 36 Corso Italia until its closure. They used to buy sketches and designs from Paris and then make them up, but some dresses were their own creations. Every six months, they would show at the Grand Hotel di Roma for clients throughout Italy. The history of the Botti sisters is linked to important dresses made for high profile clients such as Queen Elena and her ladies-in-waiting, and for other upper class customers. Their wedding dresses and designs for ceremonial occasions and special evenings, such as premières at the opera house in Rome, were famous. At the end of the 1940s, the house also sold fur coats and garments. The sisters were supplied from Paris. They would visit the haute couture French fashion shows, buy interesting garments, and then reproduce them to order for their clients. In Rome, they took part in the fashion shows at the Grand Hotel in Via Veneto. The society magazine, Le Carnet Mondain, documented their successes by publishing photographs of the most high profile weddings. The workshop — with 140 workers organized into two shifts — operated almost 24 hours a day. For years, Mario Vigolo was their designer. Immediately after World War II a good part of the bourgeoisie remained loyal customers. The wardrobe of Palma Bucarelli — the superintendent of the National Gallery of Modern Art — was donated to the Museum of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Decorative Arts: it included two dresses by the Botti Sisters made from sketches by Balenciaga and Elsa Schiaparelli.