Textile Companies at MITAM in Milan

According to the new interpretation of fashion as a product of industrial design that was established in Milan in the 1970s, the production of the materials from which garments are made – the fabric and even the yarn – became an integral part of the creative process. Innovations and experiments focused on textures and fabrics, under the external push of final demand, increasingly oriented towards product differentiation, supported by the structural transformation of the textile industry in those years.  

Those were in fact years in which Italian textile companies increasingly positioned themselves in higher market segments, less exposed to competition coming from emerging economies. The renewed role of fabrics and yarns was not the result of improvisation. The Mercato internazionale del tessile per l’abbigliamento e l’arredamento (MITAM) that took place in Milan between 1957 and 1975, provided clothing producers and fashion houses with the wherewithal to face the new challenges and trends of the market.