Dress

Giorgio di Sant'Angelo

spring/summer 1991 · synthetic · Costume Institute

Giorgio di Sant’Angelo began his career in fashion with designs for plastic jewelry in the late 1960s. Early examples were featured in Vogue magazine under editor, Diana Vreeland and earned Sant’Angelo a Coty Award in 1968. His first clothing collections were inspired by traditional Romany and Native American dress and reflected the multicultural and do-it-yourself aesthetics of the hippie movement. The designs, which rejected the strictly tailored forms of the previous decade, featured natural silhouettes achieved through wrapping, layering, and tying fabric around the body. They earned the designer his second Coty Award in 1970. Sant’Angelo’s popularity waned along with the mode for eclecticism and fantasy in the early 1980s. He returned to favor in the late 80s with designs for wrapped, body conscious garments in brightly-colored silk stretch gauze. He won his second clothing award for his use of stretch fabrics from the Council of Fashion Designers of America in 1988, shortly before his death in 1989.

Artist

Giorgio di Sant'Angelo

Date

spring/summer 1991

Medium

synthetic

Culture

American

Department

Costume Institute

Credit line

Gift of Martin F. Price, 1998