Dress is a fundamental part of all human civilizations and their material cultures. Through clothing, societies manifest power hierarchies, religious faiths, traditions and professions. On a personal level, they are a second skin that we use to communicate our identities, our ideas, our emotions. By studying dress, we can understand our most intimate interaction with textiles.

Since the 2000s, the Fondazione Antonio Ratti has established a dress collection with about 200 garments, selected for the artistic and technical relevance of their textiles. It includes Central Asians clothing made with the ikat technique, coming from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and a small nucleus of Japanese kimonos. It also includes garments made with the textiles preserved in other FAR collections – one of the criteria of our collection policy. Local heritage is also represented thanks to the generous donations of the Nava Family, Cerletti Family and the TGL fund.