Mariuccia Mandelli

Italian, 1933–2015

BiographyMariuccia Mandelli (shown here on the upper left) was born in Bergamo, Italy in 1933. From the eight of 8 she was making dresses for her dolls. She spent a lot of her childhood time in a friend's dressmaking shop. She had trained as a teacher, and had begun selling skirts and dresses in 1951. Krizia is named after Plato's discourse on the vanity of women. With a friend Flora Dolci, she rented two rooms in Milan which became her first design studio and workshop.

In 1954, helped by her husband Aldo Pinto, she formed a company Kriziamaglia, in Milan, Italy. Her clothes were quite successful. In 1957, she included a series of fruit print dresses. In 1964, she showed a striking black and white collection at the Pitti Palace in Florence. She branched out into knitwear designs in 1967 and later into complete ranges of ready-to-wear clothes.

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