1950s Fontana Couture Cocktail Dress

The Sorelle Fontana label was started by three sisters in 1943. The sisters dressed Rome’s Dolce Vita glitterati and ignited Italy’s postwar fashion industry. The Fontana design house produced gowns of all varieties with opulence being the first ingredient. In the 1950’s they gravitated towards the small waist and full skirted “New Look” silhouette popularized by Christian Dior and piled on crystals and voluminous tulle skirts in many of their most popular designs. In this height of their popularity, Fontana Couture had many celebrity clients including Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Ava Gardner. Sorelle Fontana was the atelier of choice of the stars. The legacy of the Sorelle Fontana is immense, especially for Italy, opening the doors for all the future fashion designers that made and still make the Italian style world famous. You can find the creations of the Sorelle Fontana in museums like the Guggenheim, Metropolitan in New York and The Louvre in Paris.