Whatever flower you are,
when your time comes, you will bloom
because there is no better flower
than what opens up
to the fullness of what it is.
And when it happens to you,
you will find that you went dreaming
of being a flower that had to flourish.

(Walter Gioia)

Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.

(Coco Chanel)

Many people think that fashion is a futile subject, but there are also many who think that it is a very serious subject, which goes beyond appearances in which one would like to limit it. A topic that includes not only clothing but the taste of society, models of behavior. It is an important social phenomenon developer parallel to the development of the society.

For classical sociology, fashion represents on the one hand the imitation of an existing model that guarantees social cohesion. That is, we conform to a socially accepted model by emphasizing our belonging to the community, to be like the others. On the other hand, fashion represents the personal differentiation of individuals that satisfies our need to distinguish ourselves from others and to show a certain social and cultural status, as well as our own comfort.

There was a period, that of the lockdown, which weighed heavily on our psychology and sociality, which inevitably influenced fashion. Many brands have implemented their environmental sustainability, others have opted for the value of "comfort" because we all having to spend a lot of time at home. Since there are no more public events, our life has been resized to a dimension of essentiality. At the same time, the dimension of the dream has grown to stem fears, anxieties, fragility. And the Venice Film Festival with many fairytale looks was an example of the will to live and dream that came back into the open after a long period of shadows. Beautiful, among others, Elisa D'Ospina, spokesperson for a battle that rejects the unreal physical canons traditionally required to models, who wore a dress with a hand-embroidered lace bustier and a wide skirt made with 100 meters of black organza. A dress created by the stylist Simone Racioppo, born in 1977, who has always dedicated himself to the creation of haute couture clothes and accessories, keeping the level of Made in Italy high.

A challenge, that of Racioppo, which has seen him engaged in recent years also in collaborations with other stylists. In 2018 he established the Manifatture Lusso company together with Brunella Di Benedetto who for 25 years worked with important stylists such as Alexander Mc Queen, Giambattista Valli, Valentino, Vivienne Westwood. Thus, projects are created for third parties ranging from the sketches of models to the realization of the samples up to the realization of the finished products.

In a restarting fashion market, after the pandemic, this merger is, first of all, an important signal of the desire and international interest for Made in Italy productions.

But also, of the desire to get back into the game and start dreaming again, we add!

I say start dreaming again because this is what we need, especially in a sector like fashion which was the sector that most of all suffered the effects of the pandemic. According to Confartigianato data, in fact, the fall in revenues in this sector in 2020 is 21.2%, double the average of companies with lower sales for 17.9 billion euros, if we then consider the thirteen months from March 2020 to March 2021 the loss of turnover rises to 20.6 billion euros.

Household consumption for clothing and shoes fell by 19.7% while exports fell by 19.5%, double the intensity of the manufacturing average (10%). Confindustria Moda expects over the next 3 years a loss in turnover compared to 2019 of about 9 billion euros and the closure of about 6,500 companies (15%) with the loss of about 70 thousand jobs (17.8%). It is for these reasons that the growth of a company like that of Racioppo must make us all happy because it can become a stimulus for growth for many others and the Italians who are world leaders in this sector will certainly be up to it.