For centuries, Italy has prized the art of fashion and furniture design like no other country in the world, with generations dedicated to traditional craftsmanship and continuity.
For centuries, Italy has prized the art of fashion and furniture design like no other country in the world, with generations dedicated to traditional craftsmanship and continuity.
The Family-Run Italian Design Houses That Became Cultural Dynasties
For centuries, Italy has prized the art of fashion and furniture design like no other country in the world, with generations dedicated to traditional craftsmanship and continuity.
We Are Family
Chapter 1:Heirs andAlumni
Previous
Next
The Family-Run Italian Design Houses That Became Cultural Dynasties
The Dynasties
For centuries, Italy has prized the art of fashion and furniture design — and like no other country in the world, its makers have served as cultural custodians, with generations dedicated to the craftsmanship, continuity and traditions of the family-run company.
ByNancy Hass
IN AMERICA, where industrialization long ago eclipsed craft, children are often taught that success means escaping the family trade for law, medicine or Wall Street. But to the Italian clans at the pinnacle of fashion and design, such thinking confounds: Why flee the family firm when you can create things of beauty? Although several of Italy’s venerable makers have been absorbed by luxury conglomerates in the past few decades, a remarkable array — including the major fashion housesGiorgio Armani,Prada,Salvatore Ferragamo,Canali,EtroandMissoni— have remained under family control; they have diversified, expanded and grown increasingly sophisticated with each successive generation. Many were begun in the wake of World War II, when a generation of new consumers and the advent of manufacturing technology allowed clothing, textiles and furniture-making to expand beyond small workshops. Now, as international brands, they thread the needle in ways both literal and figurative: How do you preserve a handmade ethos in the face of giant competitors and a tide of mass production? How do you maintain a familial atmosphere not merely among yourselves but with younger generations of employees who may not care about keeping alive the workbench tradition of their forebears?
The T List |
Sign up here
That the tradition of multigenerational artisanal enterprises has endured in Italy perhaps longer than in any other industrialized Western nation is not surprising. Because of its unique history of independent city-states, the country’s craft culture, especially in the north — where there have long been woolen mills, leather-tanning and woodworking — flourished for centuries in discrete regions. Even the fracas that ensued when Austria and Napoleon annexed huge chunks of northern Italy in the 18th and 19th centuries failed to destroy its system of highly localized family-oriented workshops, in which entire clans were involved in a single activity. Over the decades, Lake Como becameknown forfine silk; Vicenzaforgoldsmiths and jewelry. Brianza, 10 miles north of Milan, first became a hub of woodworking in the 1770s, when Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Este, who controlled the region, needed furniture for Villa Reale, the monumental palace he constructed in Monza, the area’s largest town. In the 20th century, entrepreneurs turned Brianza into the epicenter of modern Italian design by building on the region’s expertise in fine carpentry and upholstery. Today, the area remains home to dozens of furniture and design houses, includingMolteni & CandPoliform— often run by the children and grandchildren of their founders.
TO SUCH FAMILIES, the border between blood relation and community is fairly porous; unlike at American corporations that largely have forsaken the concept of thecompany town, there remains here an enduring sense of responsibility. For example,Brunello Cucinelli, who in 1978 began an eponymous knitwear business specializing in cashmere — his daughters, Camilla, 37, and Carolina, 29, now work with him — has made it a family project to resuscitate the medieval village of Solomeo, where the company is headquartered (his wife, Federica, was born and raised there; he grew up in a house without running water just 13 miles away). They have built a new theater, torn down industrial warehouses in the surrounding valley to create parks and turned a castle into a school to train artisans in the ancient crafts. Similarly, the fashion designerAlberta Ferrettiand her brother Massimo, who founded their company, Aeffe, in 1980 in their hometown, Cattolica, in Emilia-Romagna, where Alberta still runs her design studio, led a 10-year restoration of the nearby hamlet of Montegridolfo.
The lines between the personal and the professional in such clans are, as might be expected, as permeable as linen dipped in dye. Two of the four adult children of Gerolamo Etro, known as “Gimmo,” all of whom now work for the company their father started in 1968, live in the Milan duplex they grew up in, which has been split in half to accommodate them. In a single telephone call with her daughterMargherita, 37,Angela Missoni, 61 — the creative force behind the knitwear company started by her parents, Ottavio andRosita, in 1953 (her brother Vittorio was the C.E.O. until he was killed in a plane crash in 2013) — can toggle between discussing her grandchildren and analyzing plans to expand the brand’s lower-priced line, M Missoni, to which Margherita was appointed creative director in 2018. At Molteni & C, founded by Angelo and Giuseppina Molteni in 1934, where a third generation of cousins has joined the business, “whenever we are together, our conversation is about work,” says Andrea Molteni, 42, who is the head of product development atDada, the company’s kitchen brand. “It is very natural for us, very comfortable. We were raised like this, and this is how all of us have chosen to live.”
Nancy Hass is a writer at large for T Magazine. Simon Watson specializes in portrait, interiors and travel photography. Production: Lumen Lab. Hair: Gianmarco Grazi at Atomo Management. Makeup: Misaki Kato at Atomo Management. Set design: Enrico Pompili and Valentina Cameranesi.
At Giorgio Armani’s Weekend Retreat, Live Swans and Gilded ArchesNov. 19, 2018
Margherita Maccapani Missoni Takes on a New Challenge, by Looking BackSept. 25, 2019
Brunello Cucinelli, Renaissance ManSept. 6, 2019
Inside Angela Missoni’s Rainbow-Colored WorldAug. 14, 2018
Silvia Venturini Fendi’s Playful Sort of LuxuryFeb. 5, 2019
CorrectionApril 13, 2020
An earlier version of the picture caption with this article included several errors. It misspelled the given name of the Flexform export sales director. He is Giuliano Galimberti, not Guiliano. It misstated Alberta Ferretti’s title with Aeffe. She is the vice president and creative director, not the product director. It misstated Stefano Canali’s title with Canali. He is the president and chief executive officer, not the general manager. And it misstated the brand for which Andrea Molteni is the director of product development. It is Molteni & C Dada, not Molteni & C.

We Are Family
Chapter 1:Heirs andAlumni
The Artists
The Dynasties
The Directors
The Disciples
The Graduates
Chapter 2:Reunionsand Reconsiderations
The Neighbors
The Regulars
Hair (1967)
Sweeney Todd (2005 Revival)
Daughters of the Dust (1991)
Chapter 3:LegendsPioneers andSurvivors
The Renegades
The Activists
The Shadows
The Veterans
Chapter 4:The NewGuard
The Designers
The Beauties
The Scenemakers
Olivier Rousteing and Co.
Maria Cornejo and Co.
Telfar Clemens and Co.
Alessandro Michele and Co.
The Journalists