Roberto Capucci's legendary 'fabric sculptures', which have appeared in galleries around the world, are set for a permanent home in a new museum devoted entirely to the work of the Italian fashion maestro.
The museum will be located in Florence, which was where Capucci's work first came to international notice after appearing in a fashion show there in 1951.
Housed in the 17th-century complex of Villa Bardini, overlooking the Ponte Vecchio in the heart of Florence, the museum will showcase the vast archive collected by the Roberto Capucci Foundation over more than half a century.
In addition to 450 of the designer's fabulous creations, the museum will be home to some 300 colour illustrations, 22,000 of his sketches and 20 notebooks filled with Capucci's ideas.
It will also host around 50,000 photographs and press articles, telling the story of the designer who elevated fashion into art.
In fact, from the time of his earliest creations, Capucci's origami-like designs have been closer to elaborate works of sculpture than clothing.
He has dressed film stars, first ladies and royalty over the decades but the wearers have usually showcased his designs rather than the other way round.
Marilyn Monroe, Jacqueline Kennedy, Gloria Swanson and Italian scientist Rita Levi Montalcini have all worn his designs on important occasions, the latter when she collected her Nobel prize in medicine in 1986.
Capucci has cheerfully admitted that his works are not intended as everyday contributions to women's wardrobes.
"Frankly, I have never let myself be influenced by the idea of 'but when will I wear this, where will I go?'," he once remarked.
"There would be no history of fashion if people had thought like that in past centuries".
Capucci was considered something of a wunderkind in the fashion world, breaking onto the international scene at the age of just 21.
He had already opened an atelier on Rome's Via Sistina the previous year, in 1950, when his work was spotted by fashion entrepreneur Giovan Battista Giorgini, who invited him to display five designs at a Florence show.
The other designers in the show demanded Capucci's elaborate creations be withdrawn, fearing their own work would be upstaged.
But when the press found out, they called for a separate showing of Capucci's designs, which were greeted with instant acclaim.
Since then, Capucci's work has appeared in galleries in Munich, London, Vienna, New York and various Italian cities, and is currently drawing crowds in Moscow, as part of a culture festival at the Pushkin Museum.
The Capucci museum will be housed on the top floors of the Villa Bardini, which is set in beautiful grounds recently reopened to the public after extensive restoration work.
An inaugural date has not yet been fixed but organizers are hoping to open the museum some time in June.
