Will ‘Made in Italy’ be left behind in the race to innovate?

The coveted ‘Made in Italy’ label faces increasing scrutiny and existential challenges, from supply chain scrutiny and evolving EU regulations to climate change and threats to heritage craft. This article is part of a new series where we unpack what these pressures mean for the future, and sustainability, of luxury fashion. Read more here. Towards the beginning of my two-week trip around ‘Made in Italy’ supply chains, I stopped by the Gucci headquarters in Milan (where even the waiting room chairs and guest pass lanyards bear creative director Sabata De Sarno’s signature ‘Rosso Ancora’ shade of burgundy). I was there to see Kering’s Material Innovation Lab (MIL). Founded in 2013, MIL houses more than 5,000 samples of “certified sustainable materials” from over 500 manufacturers, and is currently running more than 35 pilot projects. Director Christian Tubito and his team scout, validate and industrialise innovations with trusted suppliers, before presenting them to Kering’s brand creative teams. It’s a complex role, bridging group strategy, brand creative and industrial partners. It also underlines one of Made in Italy’s most fundamental challenges: how to balance tradition and innovation. With increasingly strict regulations looming, supply chains across the world disrupted and competition from cheaper producing countries in the Global South heating up, Italian suppliers are under pressure to become compliant and more efficient, or risk losing business. Yet they must also preserve the unique skills and techniques for which Italy is known. Innovation, however, is complex. For example, many next-gen material startups have not developed their materials to be compatible with luxury supply chains or sensibilities, says Tubito. “Sometimes innovators have no idea about the world of fashion and textiles, or how to put their innovation into the commercial world and actually produce it outside of the lab or pilot phase.” Once an innovation becomes something creative directors can “fall in love with” and suppliers are on board to operationalise it, Tubito and his team have to find the right time to pitch it, which can be a challenge with fashion’s increasingly demanding calendar. “The window when a brand is open to receive input between collections is very limited. If you miss one window, you could easily wait a year for the next one,” says MIL’s ready-to-wear sustainable development manager Caterina Tonda. Even if the timing is right, a brand could cast innovations aside later down the line. Still, there is a growing recognition in Italy that brands and their suppliers must find a way to balance their traditional ways of working with new technology and materials, if they are to meet increasingly strict sustainability regulations and fast-approaching climate target deadlines, all while navigating the luxury slowdown and fighting off competition in a crowded market. Investment is much needed. “Today, working in textiles doesn’t just require good taste, hand feel and design. It also requires audits, chemical management and legal compliance,” says Eurojersey managing director Andrea Crespi. “The majority of companies in Italy are not [currently] able to support this.” Keeping traditions alive Every Italian supplier I met has a strong reverence for tradition, and a keen sense of duty to keep those traditions alive (even if young people don’t necessarily want to carry the baton). Several suppliers have niche operations that make little financial or practical sense beyond keeping skills in circulation. Roughly 0.1 per cent of the fabric Candiani Denim produces, for example, is made with natural indigo. This satisfies growing calls for natural dyes, but could never happen on an industrial scale. “Firstly, there is no way to make a dark shade of denim from natural indigo,” explains fourth-generation owner Alberto Candiani. “Secondly, it’s not always true that natural is more sustainable. In order to maximise the performance of natural indigo, you have to use chemicals we would prefer not to use. We have our own way to do it, which we want to keep going as a concept, but it is extremely expensive and complicated, and it wouldn’t work at an industrial scale. We just preserve the principle to make something special.” Elsewhere, in the finishing department at Biella-based Piacenza Group (the company behind cashmere producer Piacenza 1733), thistle flowers imported from Spain are loaded into metal slats by hand, and the slats are then used to brush precious noble fibres like cashmere or vicuña. This technique is also expensive and laborious, but has become one of Piacenza’s unique selling points. Keeping up with traditions can be expensive, says Luca Galigani, CEO of Facopel, the Pistoia-based hatmaker owned by Italian manufacturing group Gruppo Florence. He points to an old measuring tool for sizing hats, which looks like a pair of scissors connected to a compass. These traditional tools — in the proper materials, not the modern-day replicas — cost €300 a piece. Not all traditions need to continue, says Paola Corna, co-CEO of Bergamo-based accessories producer ACM Dettagli di Moda, pointing to Italy’s patriarchal stronghold. In two weeks travelling across Italy, I only met a handful of women in leadership positions: Paola and her sister Laura, Lanieri CEO Emanuela Pignataro, and Lanificio Cangioli 1859 co-CEO and creative director Sabina Cangioli. While much of the Global North has increasingly nuanced conversations about diversity, equity and inclusion, Italy is decades behind, still slowly waking up to the need for gender parity. Italy’s tendency towards family-owned businesses might be holding it back on this front, says Ercole Botto Poala, CEO of merino wool textile specialist Reda. “If the owner is very old, it can be hard to change their tendencies. They’re not always open to change, and you can’t just get rid of people in a family business.” Suppliers also point out that, while they can use heavy-duty machinery to automate time-consuming processes, some still require a human hand to monitor or finish tasks and achieve the high-quality output required for luxury goods. In the finishing department at Piacenza, for example, some fabrics are spun with air, soap and hot water to achieve a felted effect. Since animal fibres don’t always behave the same, and leaving the fabric too long can result in losing up to 50 metres, someone needs to monitor the process manually to ensure the timings are correct and the outcomes consistent. At ACM Dettagli di Moda, there is a machine that holds and dries recently painted leather accessories, but those with small or irregular shapes still have to be finished by hand. Making the wrong tiramisu For some Italian suppliers, innovation is baked in. Fabric producer Lanificio Cangioli 1859 has a guiding mantra of “making the wrong tiramisu”, as company president Vincenzo Cangioli explains over lunch one day. “Every family thinks their grandmother makes the best tiramisu,” he says. “If you go to a restaurant and they serve you a classic tiramisu, you will inevitably think your grandmother’s is better. But if they make something different, which just reminds you of a tiramisu, it’s not in competition. That’s why we make cotton on machines designed for wool: it’s not competing with people who have been making cotton for hundreds of years, and brands started to like that it was familiar but different.” The result is cotton with a wider array of finishes and handles. Across Italy, suppliers are investing in innovation to make traditional techniques relevant in the modern day. At Facopel, workers have developed the first iteration of 3D fashion design software CLO for hat-making. Their programme allows designers to see where pattern pieces will be positioned, and redesign the fabric accordingly to minimise waste between motifs. At the other end of the production line, an airport security scanner has been added to make sure clients can wear their hats while travelling. In Biella, Piacenza Group has invested in innovative machines that speed up labour-intensive processes. This is especially important in Italy, where labour costs are much higher than other producing countries. Until 25 years ago, it would take two workers four hours to manually prepare each loom, using a small fork to pass the yarn back and forth. Similarly, ACM Dettagli di Moda now uses a 3D printing machine to sample its metal or wood accessories in recycled materials before committing to a new mold, which can cost between €500 and €1,500 if made locally. The company has also invested in a leather-cutting machine, which minimises waste in the pattern-cutting process. And silk production specialist Ratti recently purchased a machine that prints onto jacquard fabrics, allowing the company to produce jacquards in a single yarn colour with added depth. This doesn’t necessarily save costs, but it does save time, explains Ratti’s head of innovation and marketing director Tim Neckebroeck. Not all innovations are welcome, however. Reda tried to convince brands to accept digital fabric samples to minimise waste and cost, but they were reluctant to do so, especially when competing suppliers are still offering abundant physical samples, says Botto Poala. “There is a cost to being first,” he says. Likewise, MIL’s Tubito says suppliers can be resistant to innovation, especially when workers have done their jobs for so long. One supplier told him: “I don’t need this innovation, because I know my machine perfectly. There are several controls and I already know what the defects are.” How to create a culture of innovation In his 1957 autobiography, Italian footwear designer Salvatore Ferragamo claimed to have filed over 350 patents for his various inventions — from wedge heels and new ways to connect wooden soles with alternative uppers, to instep reinforcements and interchangeable sheaths. However, somewhere in his brand’s almost 100-year history, this spirit of innovation got lost, and siloes started to emerge, separating designers from suppliers, merchandisers and other all-important cogs in the machine. Earlier this year, Ferragamo’s chief transformation and sustainability officer James Ferragamo — grandson of Salvatore — set out to change this. He enlisted the help of Vicenza-based consulting studio and creative agency Wråd to develop a “hackathon” event that would reconnect employees with the DNA of the brand, while marrying tradition with innovation. Over 60 employees from across the company gathered in Florence for the event. Split into teams, they were tasked with reinventing the brand’s iconic styles. Some kept the design and reimagined the supply chains; others rebuilt the product itself, maximising circularity and functionality. “It was really incredible to see people collaborating who had previously been unaware of each other,” says Ferragamo. “People who are not presenters had to present, people who are not creators had to create. They were able to understand the needs of different functions and come up with something really astonishing.” The company is now looking to bring these projects to market as soon as possible. Bringing dozens of people together for a one-off event is one thing, but embedding that spirit of innovation and collaboration in the supply chain is another challenge entirely — not least because Italy’s slow and laborious artisanal approach stands in stark contrast to the pace of the fashion industry. When it comes to creativity and craft, the pace of innovation is largely set by brands. Almost every supplier I visited had creative teams working in overdrive to meet the demand of different products: new colourways, new combinations, and increasingly, customisation. Chanel-owned fancy yarn supplier Vimar 1991 develops over 1,000 new designs each year, although many are never produced. Botto Poala estimates that Reda introduces 3,000 fabrics each season. Corna says ACM Dettagli di Moda has produced more than 64,000 different styles of buttons and 35,000 accessories in its 42-year history. How this process happens depends on the brand and the kind of relationship they have with their suppliers. According to Italian suppliers, a small group of luxury brands are extremely collaborative and hands-on, while others want to choose fabrics off the rack, and some simply send a random reference photo and wait for suppliers to fill in the blanks, cascading the pressure of their own fast-paced environments. Just outside of Como, Ratti is working with generative artificial intelligence to meet the demands of brands for innovation. This way, the company is able to create 15,000 new designs each year, says Neckebroeck; of these, around 5,000 are industrialised (meaning they are able to be produced at scale if brands order them) and then 4,000 are actually produced. Ratti has also put together an innovation board, Neckebroeck adds, where company “hot shots” come together every six to eight weeks to evaluate pilot projects and come up with disruptive solutions to company challenges. With the burden of incoming sustainability regulations draining suppliers’ time and resources, finding the money to invest in innovation can be difficult — even if those innovations would help suppliers comply with regulations and meet brands’ expectations more easily. Experts say suppliers should not bear the cost of this, but few brands are stepping up to help. Sometimes the challenge is not innovating, but helping brands’ clients imagine the innovations in practice, so they are willing to invest or pay more for them. Prato’s Beste Group developed a menswear brand called Monobi to do just that. The brand uses digital product passports, the finest raw materials and future-facing finishes Beste can offer, and road tests new technologies (including tubular recycled polyester insulation for puffer coats and super lightweight paper T-shirts inspired by Japanese washi fabric). “This way, our research and development team can come up with something for a sample, and we take on the role of industrialising it, so it’s easier for the client to request after,” says Beste’s marketing and communications manager Duccio Brachi. However brands respond, a growing number of Italian suppliers are convinced of the urgent need for innovation. “You could be the best football player in the world,” says Reda’s Botto Poala. “But if the future is volleyball, you won’t be able to play.” Correction: Only 60 of Ferragamo's 700 Florence-based employees took part in the hackathon event, not the full staff as previously stated (28/11/2024). Sign up to receive the Vogue Business newsletter for the latest luxury news and insights, plus exclusive membership discounts. Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.

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