Francesca Sanna Sulis's 306th Birthday

Today’s Doodle celebrates the 306th birthday of Donna Francesca Sanna Sulis. She was an Italian fashion designer who defied gender stereotypes in the 18th century by building a highly successful business. Known as the Mulberry Woman, she used mulberry silk to design exquisite dresses for notable women across Europe. 

Sulis was born on this day in 1716 in southern Sardinia, an island in the Mediterranean Sea. Growing up on her family’s farms, she learned how to manage a business. At age 19, she married her husband and they moved to his family’s estate on a mulberry tree farm that cultivated silkworms. Pretty soon, Sulis was overseeing the entire silk production chain — from ensuring the worms had enough mulberry leaves to eat, to extracting silk threads from cocoons. As Sulis took over the business, she invested in modern looms and transformed the estate into an advanced silk manufacturing site. 

Little did she know, her business would revolutionize the entire fashion industry. Before Sulis started designing dresses, society expected noble women to wear traditional gowns that were rigid and heavy. If women refused to wear such uncomfortable dresses, they risked being outcasts.

Refusing to let women suffer in painful dresses, Sulis challenged oppressive fashion trends by designing mulberry silk gowns that were both elegant and comfortable. Her designs became so popular that the princesses from the House of Savoy, Italy’s last royal family, and Catherine the Great became her customers.

When she wasn’t designing gowns for royalty, she dedicated her free time to empowering women in her community. She ran a vocational school that taught hundreds of women the lucrative arts of spinning, weaving, tailoring and even botany. Upon completing the courses, women received a free loom and financial independence.  Today, you can find Sulis’s historic dresses on display at the Donna Francesca Sanna Sulis Museum in Muravera and at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, where there is a portrait of Catherine the Great donned in one of Sulis’s gowns.

Happy birthday, Donna Francesca Sanna Sulis! 

Early drafts of the Doodle below