One of my favorite parts of college {I have learned} are the guest lectures and field trips. Yesterday, Brenda Cecchi came to lecture in my Fashion Marketing class about her knitwear label "
Patafisic."
Brenda and her business partner started Patafisic in 1995 in Florence, Italy as an interior design/fashion/architecture company. As many know, Italy has an incredible history with knitwear; some of the best textile fairs in the world stem from Prato and Florence, and most production remains inside Italy from start to finish.
{Up until the early 1990s, 90% of knitwear around the world was produced in Italy}
In 1994, before they named and really began their company, the Patafisic team developed a DIY sweater kit comprised of tubular knits, a pattern, pins, a crochet hook, and yarn. It won a huge prize in Italy which led to
Isetan buying the kit to sell in their stores around Japan.
The basis behind using tubular {and rectangular} knitwear to create clothing is to create as little waste as possible. Every pattern for the DIY kits, as well as the clothing they eventually manufactured used solely regtangular knitted tubes, sewn and folded together like origami. Think about how progressive such a concept was in the mid-90s! Patafisic was way ahead of their time.
In 2000, Patafisic began to show in Paris where the niche market for the avant-garde was at the time {and still pretty much is!}. While mass produced, each piece is unique: it is hand cut, hand sewn, and hand dyed, and the design team oversees every single part of production.
{After experimenting with the overseas market in the early 2000s, they decided to keep their production in Italy so that it could be more closely monitered and ensure much better quality}
Patafisic embraces a "slowly wear" concept -- they believe in clothing that will last a lifetime, not RTW, not "wear and throw away", and not "wear, throw away, buy again."
Brenda compared Patafisic's conceptual designs to
MMM, but I also immediately thought of
Harputs OWN because many of Patafisic's collections can be worn in a variety of ways.
Unfortunately, only two collections are shown on their site {you need a password to see the rest} and the mid-2000s were my favorites. Here are a few photos from their recent collections:
Fall/Winter 2008-2009
