For the very first time in Milan, and as an exclusive preview for White Milano (September 25-28, 2025, in Tortona Fashion District), the exhibition “Roberto Miglietta: Iron Weaves and Memory” debuts. This project bridges art and fashion through the works of the Lecce-born artist and creative entrepreneur.

Miglietta’s research stems from the world of embroidery and his long-standing experience in Apulia’s textile industry, from which he inherited both the precision of gesture and the ability to transform matter into sign. The turning point came during the pandemic: in lockdown, Miglietta began experimenting with iron, olive wood salvaged from the Salento fields, and marble. This gave rise to works conceived as miniature architectures, vibrating in the tension between weight and lightness, between faces and feminine figures in which each piece dialogues with its own material: “I bend iron as a couturier drapes fabric,” the artist himself explains.

At White Milano, Miglietta presents a selection of emblematic works, including three tributes to Italian fashion masters who shaped his creative imagination. The work dedicated to Roberto Capucci (2024) reinterprets his poetics with a double iron panel painted in acrylic, from which roses sculpted in the same material emerge. Here, the hardness of iron dissolves into a central shadow crossing the composition, creating a dialogue between three-dimensionality and projection: woman and dress intertwine, illuminating one another and revealing how even the most solid matter can be transformed into presence and language. In Red Dress (2022), top model Agnese Zogla wears a gown by Gianni Calignano, reimagined by Miglietta through a radical material shift: silk becomes wood and cotton becomes iron. Equally forged in the strength of iron is the piece paying tribute to Gianfranco Ferré (2025).

Alongside these works, paintings such as Vase of Flowers (2023) and Portrait (2023) highlight the central role of light and shadow play, a poetic hallmark running throughout Miglietta’s oeuvre. His art remains deeply tied to his native Apulia: the use of roots and olive trees, ravaged by the Xylella bacterium that has decimated Salento’s olive groves, becomes both a poetic and symbolic gesture: bringing back to life what seemed destined to vanish. By transforming the remains of these centuries-old trees into works of art, Miglietta restores dignity to what was thought lost, in an ongoing dialogue between life and memory, matter and shadow. Each work embodies a union of materials, including wood, iron, and painterly gesture, that together recount stories of human essence, family, and territory.

With this first solo exhibition in Milan, Roberto Miglietta brings his unique language to an international stage that has always celebrated the intersections of fashion and art, opening new perspectives on the dialogue between artisanal tradition and contemporary research.

Roberto Miglietta: Iron Weaves and Memory
September 25 - 28, 2025
White Milano
Base Milano - Via Tortona 54 - 20144
9.30 am - 6.30 pm
Opening Cocktail: Saturday, September 27, 2025
6.30 pm - 9.00 pm
Base Milano - Via Bergognone 34 - 20144

Photo: Red Dress (2022)