La Merveilleuse

Famous manufacturing house founded by Giuseppe Tortonese in 1912, after the big exhibition at Valentine’s Park, in which fashion pavilions exhibited the best products from Turin’s ateliers. The company quickly achieved success thanks to its famous blouses, which were popular throughout Italy. Annual production was 30,000 pieces, and the company was obliged to open a second store in Turin and a shop in Via Condotti in Rome. With its many ateliers and manufacturing companies, Turin was considered the capital of fashion. In the second post-war period, the company, always in the avant-garde, started a prêt-à-porter line characterized by its sobriety and practical elegance. But with the organization of the Italian fashion world under the leadership of Palazzo Pitti, taste was changing, leaving La Merveilleuse out of date. After a series of alternating fortunes, the company closed at the end of the 1960s.