Galante
Maurizio Galante (1963). Italian designer. Born in Latina, he studied at the Academy of Costume and Fashion in Rome. His master was Capucci, with whom he worked when he was young, developing a particular interest in volume and the play of surfaces. His first Collection came out in 1983. Starting in 1989 — the year in which he received, for the second time in a row, the Occhiolino d’oro award as best emerging young designer, and the Fil d’Argent at the International Festival of Linen in Montecarlo — Galante’s activity became more and more intense. In 1990, his griffe was presented at Milano Collezioni, and he signed an agreement with Takashiyama Co. Ltd. Tokyo for the exclusive distribution of his Collection in Asia. In 1991, he began to present his prêt-à-porter Collections in Paris. The Autumn-Winter 1992-93 Collection was called “one of the most poetic and beautiful ever seen in Paris” by the New York Times. He has participated in haute couture presentations since 1993. In 1997, he created a partnership with the Felissimo Corporation and established a new company, Maurizio Galante SA, in Paris, where he moved. After consulting on the creation of Filati Bertrand, which presented at Pitti Filati, he was appointed professor at the European Institute for Design in Rome and Milan, and at the Domus Academy. He then designed the accessories for the Nokia portable phone. As artistic director, he curated the exhibition Design 21 — Continuous Connection that was organized by Unesco in New York in 2001 and in Paris in 2002. In July 2002, the designer’s high fashion Collection offered sexy clothes with lots of see-throughs and low-necklines, a spectacular style for a woman covered in feathers, worked with fringes and frills, even on jeans and on jackets in denim and open-work lace. It is all a play of decorations and inlays, in jersey, in patchwork, and in crochet, on which 10,000 feathers are tied, even on a fur coat with interlaced feathers and ribbons, sometimes with gold or silver embroidery. In June 2003, at Palazzo Pitti in Florence, Galante celebrated his 20th anniversary in business, presenting his first men’s Collection in the Giardino della Meridiana (Garden of the Sundial) and donating three dresses, designed some years before, to the Galleria del Costume.