From Medici Court to “Made in Italy”: Fashion, Power, and the Palazzo Pitti

In this lecture, Dr. Mark Joseph O’Connell explores fashion as a system of power, memory, and cultural authority through one extraordinary institution: the Museo della Moda e del Costume in Florence’s Palazzo Pitti. Founded in 1983 as Italy’s first state museum devoted to fashion, the Museo della Moda e del Costume occupies a unique position in global fashion museology. Unlike institutions such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Palais Galliera, or the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this collection is housed within a former dynastic palace rather than a neutral modern gallery. This setting profoundly shapes how fashion is interpreted, valued, and remembered. The lecture traces Florence’s deep historical relationship with textiles, from medieval wool and silk production to Renaissance court culture under the Medici family, where dress functioned as a civic language regulated by power, morality, and social hierarchy. Rather than treating fashion as a purely modern or commercial phenomenon, the museum constructs a longue durée narrative linking Renaissance court display to twentieth-century Italian fashion and the emergence of “Made in Italy” as framed by dr. Eugenia Paulicelli. At the emotional core of the lecture are the Medici burial garments: authentic clothing worn by Eleonora di Toledo, Cosimo I de’ Medici, and their son Don Garzia de’ Medici. Preserved in the Medici tombs, these fragile, repaired, and deeply personal garments collapse the distance between past and present, transforming fashion from abstract history into embodied experience. The lecture also examines the role of conservation science: fiber analysis, dye testing, and imaging technologies, in restoring historical specificity and emotional depth to these objects. From there, it moves into the twentieth century through exhibitions such as Fashion in the Spotlight, 1925–1955: The Origins of Made in Italy, incorporating archival film from the Luce Archives to show fashion as performance, spectacle, and media event. Throughout, Dr. O’Connell addresses a central curatorial tension: while the Palazzo Pitti’s architecture enriches historical garments, it can visually overwhelm modern and contemporary fashion. This tension reveals both the power and the limits of historically charged spaces in fashion exhibition design. Ultimately, this lecture argues that fashion museums are never neutral. By situating garments within a former dynastic residence, the Museo della Moda e del Costume reframes clothing as material culture capable of articulating power, memory, and national identity across centuries. Florence emerges not only as a site of fashion history, but as a methodological case for examining fashion museology itself. Visit this wonderful museum here: https://www.uffizi.it/en/pitti-palace…