Circa 1920-1930
Italy - Venice
Delphos long dress in apricot-coloured pleated silk pongee by the famous Italian couturier Mariano Fortuny. Straight, tubular cut in four hand-sewn panels, extending to the floor. Short sleeves tightened by a sliding black cord with two-tone Murano glass beads, tying at the shoulders. No damage and missing Label. Good colour and condition.
Iconography: similar dress in Joaquim Sorella's painting Elena Sorella à la tunique jaune 1909.

Dimensions: Equivalent size 36-38 France. Height 142 cm, shoulders 39 cm, chest 87-90 cm, waist 68-74 cm, sleeves 30 cm, hips 92-100 cm.

Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo (1871 - 1949), of Spanish origin, designed opera sets before settling in Venice in 1889 at the Palazzo Orfei. In Paris in 1910, he patented a system of dyeing and printing on fabrics, followed by a type of undulating pleated garment for women, the Delphos dress, inspired by the Aurige of Delphi. In 1919, he opened a factory producing printed fabrics on the Giudecca in Venice, and soon enjoyed huge success as an interior decorator and fashion designer. At 67, rue Pierre Charon in Paris, he sold fabrics and garments with Renaissance, Byzantine, Coptic, Arab, Persian and Indian motifs, which in his mind corresponded to specific shapes: tunics, burnous, djellabas, caftans... Isadora Duncan wore her Delphos barefoot, followed by Sarah Bernhar.