The document summarizes the history of Italian fashion designer Mila Schön from 1958 to the 2000s. It describes how she started her brand in Milan in 1958 with simple yet elegant designs that shunned opulence. Her linear and modern style grew in popularity throughout the 1960s and 70s. In the 1980s and 90s, the brand expanded internationally but she maintained creative control. By the 2000s, a new design director continued her legacy of clean, geometric designs emphasizing color and function over frivolity.

1. From Art to Fashion … a long history that starts in Milan in 1958.

2. “ It was with complexity that you designed the easiest simplicity” This is how Benedetta Barzini, th e first official model of MILA SCH ÖN, defines her Style.

3. Her fashion and style were a game of subtle contrasts: that is what defines her creations, her secret. Functionality of form and substance, which is a typical feature of the Fifties phenomenology, take roots in the ferment of artisanal and entrepreneurial activities of Milan. These are crucial years in which Mila Schön starts her activity within the Italian economical boom.

4. The productive fervor, together with the innate sobriety of the Milan society, so linked to work ethic, are the foundations on which Mila Schön builds her unique and elegant style, which shuns the opulence exhibited by the high society in Rome and does not look for the playful Parisian frivolity. The Milanese dressmaker debuts her line with a show in her atelier in via S. Pietro all’Orto, in front of her friends of the Milanese upper class; by word of mouth her talent and skill soon became renowned. Rigorous items of clothing, so linear and sober, handmade and pure, prove the will of achieving a profound cleanness and formal candour. Mila Schön creates, together with skilled hand-wovener artisans the famous “double”, a special fabric realized by pairing two different fabrics. This means neatness, flawless lines, with no difference between lining and exterior fabrics.

5. Her name became renowned in the international markets, starting from 1966 when Marcus invited Mila Schön to join him in Houston to receive the Color Oscar. In New York she became one of the favorite designers between the international jet set. The Sixties and Seventies with their revolutionary climate in customs and tastes and with their new esthetic references, are years that saw the proliferation of styles. In this context Mila defines in a deeper way her personal and unmistakable one. Her dresses were geometric, rigorous and they have quite a futuristic appeal. One of her dress was featured in the Cubism and Fashion exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of New York. Mila became a passionate art collector. She started visiting regularly all Milanese art galleries and this new interest deeply influenced her work.

6. Fontana’s works became one of Mila’s sources of inspiration, and one of the elements that constituted her style, together with concentric circles and chevron designs. Today, Mila’s heritage of styles, haute couture and inspiration relives in the collections designed by BIANCA GERVASIO, a young talented designer, who used to work with Mila Schön. Her goal is to take the brand into the future.

7. Color, elegance and outline are the features of the new Time Collection The new TIME COLLECTION is born from a deep study of the path Mila Sch ön went through in Fashion and Design. A collection of five EAU DE PARFUM 100 ml Spray that represent every step of Mila Schön experience in Fashion.

9. Right from the start of her career, Mila always had a very clear idea of what she wanted: in fact, her fashion has always been an expression of her personal taste. Her precise and clean style tended to simplify greatly, indeed to elimintae, as she said herself: “ I’ve always known what I like. There’s just one thing I notice instantly: when I enter a room or go somewhere, I don’t see what is beautiful. For me that’s normal. I note what I don’t like: I see the thing that jars. I immediately notice what isn’t right and this has helped me a lot in my work. Because this great selective capacity allows me to get to what want.”

10. The Sixties The show at Pitti in January 1965 was a decisive moment. Mila’s style, so linear and modern, was a genuine surprise, a touch of great innovation: hers was an active, pragmatic woman. It was of her, so little accustomed to flaunting her wealth with luxurious clothes and objects that Mila had thought when she had chosen many models for everyday wear. What she had in mindwas a collection with clear lines that at the same time had to be wearable. And this was where she had her brilliant idea: double-face fabric: a material that had two right sides and no wrong side. Indeed color, as well as line, had been key to success of that first show in 1965.

12. BASE White Musk Vanilla Sticks Cedarwood Blackberry TOP Magnolia Bergamot of Calabria Pear Mellon Nectarine Peach HEART Jasmine Tuberose Lily of the Valley Freesia Orchid

13. The Seventies The Seventies, netherless, were a decade of “revolution”: the optimism of the fifties, followed by the youthful will to live of the sixties, gave way to a growing atmosphere of criticism toward a system that created social differences. Various tendencies emerged in opposition to these rules, to this system: one of them was the hippie phenomenon. Mass production entered the scene: ready-to-wear was born. Mila founded hr own ready-to-wear company, called MS2. The second major development in 1973 was the signing of a contract for distribution in Japan. In the Seventies Mila entered the man fashion market too, through the creation of the a line dedicated to men – Mila Schon U.

15. TOP Bergamot of Calabria Tangerine White Pepper HEART Lily of the Valley Turkish Rose Jasmine Apricot BASE White Musk Patchouli Australian Sandalwood Vanilla

16. The Eighties The Eighties saw the triumph of Italian Fashion in the world, its dominance in terms of the quality of both its materials and its creativity. In those years the commercial growth of the label and the expansion of its distribution were rapid, and for this reason the business side sometimes gained the upper hand. July 1983 in Rome in the setting of the Nynphaeum at Villa Giulia, Mila celebrates her twentififth anniversary, staging a show that brings together all the elements that had made her style famous. Diamond motifs, intarsia, as well as her palette of colors that alternated gray, white and black with green and bright red, with her purple.

18. TOP Bergamot Tangerine Apple Peach Redcurrant HEART Turkish Rose Jasmine Abslute Pink Freesia Fresh Accord BASE White Musk Amber Indonesian Patchouli Cedarwood

19. The Nineties At the beginnijng of the Nineties Mila decided to leave Rome for Paris. The first show in Paris took place in 1992 and the second in 1993, which can be said truly to have marked a sort of farewell on Mila’s part to the catwalks. Between the two shows a fundamental event had taken place: the decision to cede control of the company to its Japanese partners. In fact Mila continued to oversee the creative side of the collections. Her charisma, her force, were such that neither the owners in Japan, where she still went almost every year, nor anyone else would have been able to keep her away from what was her great passion: her work.

21. TOP Sea Accord Bergamot of Calabria Tangerine Nutmeg HEART Mellon Sambac Jasmine White Peach Peony BASE White Musk Amber Lebanese Cedarwood

22. The 2000s Bianca Gervasio was nominated as design director. The new course of the brand made its debut in February 2008. And so, exactly 50 years after its beginning, the history of the brand starts again with a careful rediscovery of its origins, and the awareness that the formula invented by Mila Schön is so precise, clear, and perfect, to be totally timeless in its modernity. Linearity. Sobriety. Taste in the choice of colours. Geometry. Mila Schön’s future restarts from here.

24. TOP Fresh Accord Orange Flowers Sambac Jasmine HEART Grasse Rose Tonka Bean BASE Musk Madagascar Vanilla Precious Woods

28. The Range