Accueil A la Une A visit to Villa Monastero in Varenna

A visit to Villa Monastero in Varenna

Par

28 juin , 2025

Holidays on Lake Como? You can’t miss a visit to Villa Monastero in Varenna with its famous recently renovated botanical garden.

The Villa was a monastery founded at the end of the 12th century and over the centuries, thanks to a series of generous owners, it has been enriched with sumptuous furnishings and works of art. The exhibition “Ken Scott fashion and flowers” curated by Anna Ranzi, an art historian who, embracing the creative universe of the designer defined as “the gardener of fashion”, has linked it to the magnificent flowers grown there (900 essences).

Ken Scott, pseudonym of George Kenneth Scott, was an American fashion designer who was one of the protagonists of the birth of Pret à Porter in Italy. He began his artistic career as a painter, frequenting Sebastian Matta and Marc Chagall who remained friends for life, he was supported by Peggy Guggnheim who organized his first solo exhibition in 1944.

In 1946 he left the United States to settle in Europe, dividing his time between Paris and Ezè on the French Riviera, designing fabrics for the most famous French textile manufacturers. In 1954, Christian Dior used one of his sketches for the spring-summer haute couture collection that launched him into the world of emerging stars.

He conceives a revolutionary use of bright colors and bold (for the time) color combinations. At the beginning of the sixties Ken Scott creates clothes and accessories with his signature, making himself known as the designer of fantasy, color and modernity.

Ken Scott died in 1991, and in 2019 the Ken Scott brand was purchased by Mantero, a well-known fabric manufacturer and his client.
The exhibition features clothes, scarves, fabrics, sketches, objects and accessories that fit perfectly with the Villa Monastero Museum House as botany and fashion intertwine with the garden and the landscape.

Villa Monastero can be visited until October 10th with the following hours:
from June to the end of August every day both the House Museum and the Botanical Garden from 09.30 to 20.00

In September the House Museum and the Botanical Garden every day from 09.30 to 19.30
In October the House Museum from Tuesday to Sunday from 10.00 to 18.00 while the Garden is open every day from 10.00 to 18.00.

Texte et Photo by Piero Biasion – pierobiasion@me.com