---
node: fashion_italy
type: fashion
slug: italy_fashion
title: "Fashion history of Italy"
lead: "Italian dress runs from the draped garments of the Etruscans and Rome, through the silks and tailoring of the Renaissance city-states that led European fashion, to modern Italy as a global fashion capital under the \"Made in Italy\" label."
published: 2026-07-28
updated: 2026-07-28
image_file: italy_fashion.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tizian_-_La_Bella.jpg"
image_author: "Titian"
image_license: "Public domain"
change: "Created as a fashion sub-page under the history section, with a period image (italy region)"
requester: internal
reason: "Per the owner's decision, fashion lives under each history era"
---

## Overview

In antiquity the toga and other draped garments, and from the Middle Ages the silk of Lucca and then Florence and Venice, made Italy a centre of textiles and dress.

## The story of dress

In the Renaissance, Italy's courts and its silks and velvets led European fashion. That lead passed to Spain and France in the early modern period, but after the Second World War Italy — centred on Milan, and armed with tailoring and leather craft — again became a driver of world fashion.