The myth of the Italian Style took shape 70 years ago, in the 1950s, when Italy, recovering from war wounds, chose to attack the future. Soon the so-called "Italian miracle" would arrive, with its greatness and fragility, but that myth has never faded, gradually qualifying to establish itself as the plus of our country in the most diverse sectors.

This major exhibition, curated by Carla Cerutti, Enrico Minio Capucci and Raffaella Sgubin, assisted in their work by a large group of important specialists, reinterprets that historical moment in the light of two specific components: fashion and design, including in the latter also the tradition of applied arts, the strong point of Italian production, more artisanal in past eras. Alongside a third “factor”, cinema, which was a very powerful means of global amplification of that Italian Style. The exhibition “Italia Cinquanta. Fashion and design. Birth of a style” is promoted and organized by ERPAC FVG – Regional Body for Cultural Heritage of Friuli Venezia Giulia, through its Museum of Fashion and Applied Arts in Gorizia. It can be admired in the sumptuous Palazzo Attems Petzenstein, in the heart of Gorizia (future European Capital of Culture together with Nova Gorica in 2025) from 21 March to 27 August 2023.

The period of time examined is ideally the one between the elections of 18 April 1948 and the Rome Olympics of 1960, a period of economic and cultural rebirth, of great fecundity from both an industrial and an artistic and artisan point of view, a moment dawn of Italian design that would become famous as "Made in Italy".