Civiche Raccolte d’Arte Applicata

(Municipal Collections of Applied Art). Milan, Castello Sforzesco. The fabric and clothing department was created between 1904 and 1914. The first clothes were purchased, while the accessory Collection began with the discovery of shoes from the 1500s and 1600s in the foundation of the Castle during restoration work. The Collection includes clothes, embroidery, sacred vestments, and fabrics (more than 2,000, from Coptic textiles to the first examples of industrial weaving of the 1900s) of various kinds. The enthusiasm present at the opening of the museum sometimes led to attributions that are now considered incorrect, such as the group of Neoclassic clothes that were believed to belong to the wardrobe of Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi. Bombings of Milan during World War II destroyed a large part of the Collection. In 1972 the historian of costume Rosita Levi Pizetzky rekindled civic interest in the Collection. In fact, by donating her own private Collection, she sparked a series of other donations that were supported by the municipality with additional purchases, such as the Mora, Regazzoni, and Fortuny Collections and, in 1988, a vast repertory of Milanese fashions from the 1930s and 1940s. Of particular interest is the group of traditional clothes that came mostly from the Industrial Exposition of Milan in 1881. Alongside the somewhat tight space which contains the coat-check and the archives, there is the Bertarelli Print Collection, which has many items related to fashion.