Mary Westerman Bulgarella received her BFA in Art History (1973) and MFA in Art Conservation (1976) and subsequently trained and specialized in the conservation, display and research of textile and costumes. Her professional work focuses not only on interventions and their documentation but also on the problems pertaining to the research of material and methods storage and display and she has published many essays on a variety of related subjects. She helped set up the Textile and Costume Conservation Laboratory at the Pitti Palace where she was employed for over 20 years. There from 1983 to 1993 she worked with a team of international experts on the conservation of the Medici burial clothes, on which she has written several articles and given numerous lectures. Mary has studied, taught, lectured at as well as collaborated with an array of museums and institutions in Italy and abroad. Currently Mary serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of Luxury: History, Culture, and Consumption, which is an interdisciplinary, academic journal devoted to luxury in its broad socio-cultural contexts, exploring and interrogating the terms historical and contemporary meanings. She is also presently a freelance conservation consultant and researcher as well as organizer of conferences on significant textile and costume themes and coordinator of the Costume Colloquium Advisory Committee.