25 YEARS...A SIGNIFICANT MILESTONE!

This posts celebrates a very important event in my professional career, my "Silver Jubilee" at Gentili&Mosconi. October 1 marks exactly 25 years since my first work day at the firm in 1998. The shift from a company like Ratti, which at the time employed nearly a thousand people, to this small, family-run business was indeed a challenge. At Ratti, in the Style Department, I had been trained and had grown under the guidance of its founder, Antonio Ratti, deepening my study of design and printing. I had learned to read the fabric, understand its qualities and its potentials.

Thus, after 8 years at Ratti, what made me take the step of moving to Gentili&Mosconi, on the advice and encouragement of Bruno Gentili, uncle of Francesco, the company's owner along with his wife Patrizia Mosconi - two visionary, open and friendly young entrepreneurs - was some sort of intuition driven by a strong motivation, the desire for a further professional growth. Despite being a small entity back then, I was confident the company would give me the opportunity to advance my knowledge of fabrics, particularly of Jacquard weaving. Although my training had primarily been in clothing fabric, my first two years at Gentili&Mosconi focused on the development of accessories, the heart and heritage of the company, thus scarves, shawls and all related items.

The next challenge was to expand the range of products by introducing clothing fabric within the company, a completely new concept given the company's history. With the help of Francesco Gentili, who guided me in understanding Jacquard and its use, I took my first steps into a fascinating and complex world where I learned to distinguish between various fabrics, starting from the basics such as crêpe de chine, chiffon, drappe, or cady, and eventually understanding how to develop fabric on Jacquard looms. It was a long, challenging, complicated and sometimes tiring journey yet I felt supported not only by Francesco Gentili but also by the firm's various suppliers, weaving mill owners, incredibly skilled technicians like Giampiero Roncoroni, a true master in reading Jacquard and its complex weave structures, and many former colleagues like Filippo Rizzoli, the firm representative in Italy at the time and Claudio Chicco, the US one, just to name a few, who supported me on this learning path.

These were exciting years, where my experimentation with Jacquard reached very high levels, including significant projects like the creation of tapestries for interior decoration, consisting of an amazing number of weave structures. All this was also achieved through deep, constructive and trustworthy relationships with various clients, creative directors of prestigious fashion houses and brands, who, with their different visions were instrumental to the growth of the creative processes of the company's Style Department, thus contributing to enriching me and, through me, channeling this knowledge into the Gentili&Mosconi collection.

It was a multifaceted journey, from customer interaction to the creation of a clothing collection, from an idea to the realization of a fabric, through alternating phases of experimentation and refinement, continuous technical research, studying the limits of the loom while testing its capabilities at the highest possible levels.

A long and exciting journey, full of achievements. Even the various trips to India, with my sister Antonella, in search of suppliers, companies that specialized in traditional weaving and embroidery, were fundamental at the beginning of my journey at Gentili&Mosconi. These were years of interaction and engagement in different contexts, some that were already part of my personal history and my family's cultural heritage, thus further enriching my knowledge in the field of fabrics. Over time, deep friendships and mutual respect were established with several such suppliers in India.

These 25 years are a sum of many experiences, where much has been gained and unfortunately some has also been lost...primarily the sense of a slow time, given the acceleration that the fashion industry has undergone, driven by market demand, requiring the creation of collections in increasingly short periods of time, that often do not respect the technical times of production and craftsmanship.

These 25 years are indeed a grand achievement with a very positive balance in terms of personal and professional growth, with some disappointments and failures too but with the desire to always look optimistically to the future, with the desire to share this knowledge, and above all, with the awareness of having a great responsibility, that of passing it on to the new generations.

Thank you Gentili&Mosconi, thank you Francesco and Patrizia for these 25 years of life, transformation, and growth accomplished together!"