The thread exuded by the salivary glands of a grub, after an extraordinary creative process, becomes the most beautiful of fabrics. A fascinating journey through the rich archive of the Maison Salvatore Ferragamo.

The exhibition and catalogue describe the long creative process of printed silks, which achieve the perfect union between extraordinary creative insight and high industrial craftsmanship. In the 1970s, the Maison Salvatore Ferragamo, known worldwide for the creation of women’s shoes, thanks to the intuition of Fuliva, a daughter of the founder, began continuous production of silk accessories for women and men with personalized prints, starting with scarves and ties and in the following years expanding the creative offer to all possible variations of the printed fabric. The print was made in Como, by leading companies in the textile district.

The first section of the exhibition is devoted to the long production process, which extends from the first idea put on paper to the final printing on silk of a foulard in many colour variations. Over the decades, the most varied themes have followed one another on the fabrics of the Salvatore Ferragamo Maison, with endless references of inspiration, from oriental art to 20th-century paintings, ancient books on botany and the natural sciences. Season after season, these multiple sources have been redesigned and annotated by refined illustrators on sheets, then collected in volumes, totalling over a thousand, now available in the Ferragamo archive. It is this particular way of collecting and developing ideas that is the curatorial thread running through the exhibition, where the printed fabric, tie or foulard, is placed beside its source of inspiration, whether it is a book, a painting, a vase or a sculpture, all from museums and public collections, combined with preparatory drawings and colour tests.

In the eyes of the visitor, the exhibition Silk appears a great one Wunderkammer, creating the illusion of only apparent simplicity.