Thayaht (Ernesto Michahelles)

(1893, Florence–1959, Marina di Pietrasanta, Italy)

Thayaht dressed in a Tuta, 1920
Photo: P. Salvini, Florence (exhibition copy)
© Prato Textile Museum

How to cut out the Tuta, 1920
Tempera and ink on paper (reproduction)
Galleria del Costume, Florence
Courtesy Associazione Thayaht e RAM, Florence 

The cut of the Tuta, model with straight lines by Thayaht. Published in the Florentine newspaper La Nazione, June 19, 1920 (reproduction)
Galleria del Costume, Florence
Courtesy Associazione Thayaht e RAM, Florence 

Thayaht dressed in a Bituta, 1921
Photo: P. Salvini, Florence (exhibition copy)
Courtesy Associazione Thayaht e RAM, Florence

Most of the works presented in the exhibition were created at the beginning of this century. Some, however, belong to earlier historical periods: the 1960s (Yoko Ono, Lygia Pape), the 1970s (Rimma and Valeriy Gerlovin, Katalin Ladik), the 1980s (Jimmy DeSana), and the 1990s (Beverly Semmes). In breach of traditional exhibition logic, our narrative performs a loop-the-loop, turning toward the historical avant-garde. After all, according to the theoretician Peter Bürger, “a contemporary artist can neither fully adopt nor fully abandon [their] discoveries.” In the context of The Fabric of Felicity, this material is interesting primarily because of its borderline character: proclaiming themselves to be the “vanguard” (that is, an advancе formation), artists play the role of partisans making sorties into alien territories such as fashion, everyday life, and industrial production. After World War I this process, which had been barely noticeable earlier, was almost simultaneously taken up by art innovators across Europe and found one of its most striking incarnations in Soviet Russia.

During the hot summer of 1919, in a postwar Italy racked by mass poverty and shortages, the artist and sculptor Ernesto Michahelles (who used the palindromic pseudonym Thayaht) collaborated with his brother Ruggiero Alfredo Michahelles (RAM) on the first-ever all-in-one overalls for men and women. Thayaht called his new garment the Tuta, and this neologism entered the Italian dictionary. By adding one more “t” to the word—perhaps the T-shape of the tuta itself?—it becomes the Italian tutta, meaning all, the whole, a unified thing. The designer wanted it to be suitable for every situation and, more importantly, affordable for all. The Tuta could be cut with minimal wastage of fabric and it was easy to sew. In the summer of 1920, the instructions for cutting and sewing the Tuta were published: not in a fashion magazine, but on the pages of the most widely read Florentine newspaper, La Nazione. In its logical use of a single piece of fabric and the fact that it clothed the entire body, the Tuta was the quintessence of rationalism and totality. In photographs Thayaht can be seen demonstrating the Tuta (and the Bituta, a two-part version he went on to develop in 1921) with emphatic elegance. The overall‘s simplicity and versatility were in opposition to the haute couture of the time, which relied on hand finishing and individual fitting. Nevertheless, the Tuta is now an important part of fashion history.