Capucci is an Italian fashion brand named after its founder: the dreamer and eclectic designer Roberto Capucci.
He was born in Rome on the 2nd of December 1930. He attended the Academy of Fine Arts where he studied with the masters Marino Mazzacurati, Marcello Avenali, and Libero De Libero.
In 1950 he opened the first atelier in Via Sistina, and one year later he presented his creations decreeing his success and marking a turning point in the history of Italian fashion.
In 1951 Giovan Battista Giorgini, the Italian marquise and Purchasing Director of some important American warehouses, held a fashion show- the first- in his villa in Florence, hosting the main prestigious Italian brands, thereby promoting the Italian fashion abroad, also through other seasonal events held in Palazzo Pitti. This is the reason why he is considered as the father of the Made in Italy, as we know it today.
When Roberto was just 26, he was regarded as the best Italian fashion designer, and particularly valued by influential figures who brought epochal changes in the world of fashion, just as Christian Dior, one of the Haute Couture's fathers.
An experimenter, a lover of volumes and geometries under the influence of art and nature that brought him to spawn the "Nove Gonne" dress (1956), realized with nine skirts in taffeta inspired to the ripples on the water.
In 1958 he was honored with the "Boston Fashion Award" for his groundbreaking collection "Box Line" that marked a stylistic revolution in contrast with the trends of that period.
The research of shapes and volumes, of a new femininity, led him to success.
When in 1961 he was welcomed with enthusiasm by the French critics, he decided to open the second atelier in Paris in the famous Rue Cambon.
The Parisian years marked a further change in his creations that became more sophisticated: optical effects reminiscent of Pop Art and new unusual materials like plastic, plexiglass, metal and hi-tech fibers.
He came back to Italy in 1968 when he pushed beyond the limits of ordinary thanks to the use of structured and decorative elements, using a mix of prestigious and poor fabrics, such as raffia and straw.
In the same year, he realized the dresses for Silvana Mangano and Terence Stamp for shooting the movie "Teorema", which was directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, while in 1970 one of his collections altered all the fashion traditions: his models walked the runway wearing flat boots without make-up and hair styling.
In 1980 he separated himself from the institutionalized fashion system: Capucci decided not to show his creations according to the scheduled agenda of the National Chamber of Italian Fashion, and to establish himself when and where hold his fashion shows, all around the world, freeing himself from the diktat imposed by the world of fashion: that was "art into fashion".
In 1955 he was invited to present his creations at the International Exhibition of Visive Arts during La Biennale di Venezia, and more than fifty years later, in 2007, the Museum of the Roberto Capucci Foundation was inaugurated in Florence, in Villa Bardini.
The foundation was born just two years before with the aim of preserving the stylistic memory of one of the main designers of the XX century.
