The genius of Ferdinando Sarmi, stylist of Hollywood stars, on display at Palazzo Pitti

Born in Ravenna, graduated in law, Ferdinando Sarmi belonged to a family of Italian nobility. In 1951 he was involved by the Maison Fabiani in the historic fashion show organized by Giovanni Battista Giorgini in the Villa del Giardino Torrigiani in Florence: an event destined to mark the birth of the launch of Made in Italy abroad.

On that occasion Sarmi attracted the attention of Elizabeth Arden, the absolute protagonist of the American cosmetics industry, who wanted him in New York to direct the fashion line of the Arden brand. After the years spent alongside the entrepreneur, in 1958 he founded his own brand, “Sarmi New York”, quickly becoming one of the most famous names in American high fashion. The Florentine designer dressed some of the most prominent female personalities of the twentieth century, including Marlene Dietrich, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Lily Pons, Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, First Lady Pat Nixon and Marisa Berenson. Its sophisticated elegance also conquered the international press: from The New York Times Magazine to The New Yorker, up to American Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.

The exhibition retraces two decades of Sarmi’s career, from the early 1950s to the early 1970s, recounting the success of a designer capable of blending Italian sartorial elegance with the cosmopolitan glamor of American society. Curated by Vanessa Gavioli, head of the Museum of Fashion and Costume of Palazzo Pitti, and Eugenia Paulicelli, Professor Emerita at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, the exhibition is part of the research dedicated to Ferdinando Sarmi conducted by Paulicelli and culminating in the creation of the docufilm “Ferdinando Sarmi – Untold Stories of New York Fashion”, premiered on 18 June 2026 in the Fashion Museum and of the Costume of Palazzo Pitti.

The director of the Uffizi Galleries Simone Verde explains: “With this exhibition, Palazzo Pitti intends to restore to the public and to scholars the figure of Ferdinando Sarmi, a still little-researched protagonist of twentieth-century fashion and a significant interpreter of the international affirmation of Italian style after the Second World War. His professional path, from Florence to Fifth Avenue, testifies to the ability of Italian creativity to dialogue with the great centers of international fashion and culture, contributing to the definition of that image of elegance, quality craftsmanship and refinement that he would have accompanied the recognition of Made in Italy in the world. The clothes on display, placed in connection with the Sarmi Fund and with a selection of period accessories, allow us to reconstruct an important chapter in the history of taste between the fifties and sixties, offering new perspectives on the relationship between Italian fashion, American society and the visual culture of the twentieth century. This exhibition, by delving into the figure of Sarmi, allows us to better understand the refined sartorial origins of the boom in Italian fashion in the years of ready-to-wear”.

The curator of the Museum of Fashion and Costume Vanessa Gavioli underlines: “The idea of the exhibition was born from the synergy between Eugenia Paulicelli and our museum, started during the studies that the scholar was conducting at our museum archive. This collaboration made it possible to reunite the clothes preserved in New York with the Sarmi Fund, donated by the heirs to the Palazzo Pitti Museum. This is a unique opportunity, which allows us to rewrite a new page in history of the influence of Italian fashion on American fashion and of returning to sector studies a figure that has never been investigated until now”.