Spanish Fashion Designer, Lighting Engineer. He opened his couture house in 1906 and continued until 1946. He was the son of the painter Mariano Fortuny y Marsal. The achievements that Fortuny is most well known for were made in the field of fashion design. His wife Henriette Negrin was an experienced dressmaker who helped to construct many of his designs. From 1902 they lived in the Palazzo Pesaro Orfei in Venice, which Fortuny filled with the artwork of his father, art that his father collected, and other art and artefacts that inspired him. He called the palazzo his "think tank" where he had many rooms set up for experiments and inventions as well as rooms for inspiration. Fortuny drew from styles of the past for his fashion design as well, inspired by the light, airy clothing of Greek women that clung to the body and accentuated the natural curves and shape of a woman’s body. Fortuny rebelled against the style lines that were popular during his time period, and he and Henriette created the Delphos gown, a shift dress made of finely pleated silk weighed down by glass beads that held its shape and flowed on the body. The pleating that he used was all done by hand and no one has been able to recreate pleating that is as fine as his or has held its shape like his dresses have for many years. He also manufactured his own dyes and pigments for his fabrics using ancient methods. With these dyes he began printing on velvets and silks and dyed them using a press that he invented with wooden blocks onto which he engraved the pattern. His dresses are seen as fine works of art today and many survive, still pleated, in museums and personal collections. In Paris, Fortuny garments were retailed by Babani, who sold Delphos dresses and other garments to the actress Eleonora Duse. In 2012, the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute in New York City mounted an exhibition of his work. The Fortuny Museum is housed in the Venetian Gothic Palazzo Pesaro Orfei in Venice. It contains work by Fortuny in the fields of textile design, fashion design, painting, sculpture, photography and lighting, and also a number of paintings by his father Mariano Fortuny y Marsal.