Making its first international presentation at National Gallery Singapore, the exhibition uses fashion and design to trace Italy’s social evolution — with women’s changing roles at its heart.
What we wear says something about who we are. So does the way we live in our homes. That simple connection sits at the heart of ABITO, a new exhibition that looks beyond the glamour of Italian fashion and the enduring appeal of Italian design to explore something more personal: how a society changes, and how those changes are reflected in the clothes we wear, the objects we surround ourselves with and the spaces we inhabit.
Following its inauguration at Salone del Mobile.Milano earlier this year, ABITO will make its first international presentation in Singapore from 3 to 17 October 2026 at National Gallery Singapore. Promoted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, and curated by Ludovica Serafini and Roberto Palomba of Palomba Serafini Associati, the exhibition is presented by the Embassy of Italy in Singapore in collaboration with Vogue Singapore and Vogue Living.
Singapore is the starting point for ABITO’s international journey, bringing the exhibition’s distinctly Italian perspective into a city that has itself been shaped by design, innovation and cultural exchange. But at its core, ABITO is less about celebrating Italy as a static idea and more about examining how the country has continually reinvented itself.
The exhibition begins with an observation that feels particularly relevant to contemporary life: we inhabit our clothes much as we inhabit our homes. Fashion and design therefore become two sides of the same story.
The design objects selected for ABITO have one particularly striking quality, where every piece remains in production today. Some have survived more than a century since they were first conceived, demonstrating the extraordinary longevity of Italian design and its ability to remain relevant across generations. Fashion works differently. Clothes are tied to a particular moment, season and social context. They change quickly, and that very impermanence makes them valuable records of the times in which they were worn.
Placed side by side, the two disciplines create a portrait of Italy through the objects and garments that have accompanied its people through periods of social change. And at the centre of that portrait are women.
Through clothing, furniture, objects and interiors, ABITO traces the gradual expansion of women’s roles and freedoms in Italian society. The journey moves from more prescribed social and domestic roles towards greater freedom of movement and changing relationships with the home. It follows women’s increasing presence in professional and public life, and the shift from convention towards independence, creativity, leadership and personal choice.
In this context, a garment is never simply a garment. A chair, a room or a household object can similarly become a marker of the expectations and possibilities of its time. The exhibition asks visitors to consider how these everyday things can reveal changes that might otherwise be understood only through political or social history.
As Palomba Serafini puts it: “There is, inevitably, a great deal of love for our country in ABITO. But it is not nostalgic love. It is love for an Italy that continues to evolve. And beneath the beauty of the clothes and objects, there is another exhibition: a story about extraordinary women and the progressive expansion of their freedom — the freedom to move, to work, to create, to lead, to choose how to dress and ultimately how to inhabit their own lives.”
It is this idea that gives ABITO its wider relevance. While the exhibition is deeply rooted in Italian history and culture, the questions it raises are not confined to Italy: how do changing social expectations affect the way people dress? How does the home respond when domestic roles change? And what happens when people gain greater freedom to determine how they present themselves and how they live?
After its debut in Milan, Singapore provides ABITO with its first opportunity to engage an international audience. The choice of city reflects the increasingly close relationship between Italy and Singapore, particularly across design, innovation, culture and creativity. As a meeting point between East and West, Singapore also offers a natural setting for an exhibition concerned with the way different cultural influences and social changes shape how people live.
Dante Brandi, Ambassador of Italy to Singapore, says: “Singapore is the ideal place for ABITO to begin its international journey. Italy and Singapore share an understanding that design and creativity are not merely aesthetic pursuits: they are ways of imagining how societies can live, evolve and innovate. ABITO brings this idea to life through an extraordinary Italian story, while addressing themes — identity, changing social roles and the relationship between people and the spaces they inhabit — that are universal.
Bringing ABITO to Singapore allows us to share this distinctly Italian story with a global audience, while opening a wider conversation about how design records — and sometimes anticipates — social change. It is particularly meaningful that, after the Salone del Mobile in Milan, this conversation will keep going in Singapore.”
The Singapore presentation also broadens the exhibition beyond the traditional divisions between fashion, interiors, design and lifestyle. That is where the collaboration with Vogue Singapore and Vogue Living comes in. Rather than treating these fields as separate creative worlds, the partnership reflects the way they have long influenced one another within Italy’s creative culture — and how they increasingly overlap in contemporary life.
ABITO is intended to function as a cultural platform as much as a conventional exhibition. During its Singapore run, the programme will extend beyond the gallery displays through dedicated walkthroughs, conversations and other programming bringing together institutional, creative and industry voices. National Gallery Singapore will become a place not only to view the exhibition, but also to explore broader conversations around Italian creativity, design and contemporary culture.
Its timing also creates an unexpected opportunity to examine another facet of Italian ingenuity. With ABITO coinciding with Singapore’s international racing week, the programme will turn towards the intersection of design, technology, engineering and motorsport on 8 October with Formula Italia: Italian Genius Beyond the Track.
The special programme will focus on women shaping the future of motorsport, extending some of ABITO‘s central themes — freedom, ambition and transformation — into an arena far removed from the traditional worlds of fashion and interiors, but one that similarly demonstrates the reach of Italian creativity and innovation. Further details of the programme will be announced separately.
ABITO is interested in the spaces between things: between fashion and furniture, the personal and the social, tradition and reinvention. Its story of Italy is told not through a straightforward timeline, but through the things people wear and live with every day. In considering the exhibition, one realises that clothes and objects can seem ordinary when we encounter them in isolation. Seen together across generations, however, they become evidence of how much life can change, and how the freedom to decide what to wear, where to work, how to live and how to inhabit one’s own space can itself be a form of social history.
ABITO runs from 3 to 17 October 2026 at National Gallery Singapore.
