Our "workshop" was founded in 1967 in Florence by Loretta, in a space left vacant after the flood that hit our city in 1966.
In reality, our story begins a bit earlier. Loretta, the eldest of four children, began to approach the art of embroidery, like many other girls of the time, at the age of 5 in her first year of school. After a few years of practice, at 9 years old, she started collaborating with a workshop a few kilometers away from her home in the afternoons after school. This activity or collaboration would become stable in the following years, that is, after the fifth grade.
At 14, a meeting "revolutionized" her life. In the workshop of Mrs. Carmela where she worked, there was another girl her age named Liliana who lived very close to her house. By spending time with her, she met her brothers, and in particular, a boy in the neighborhood who was gaining recognition for his painting skills, so much so that two years earlier, Ottone Rosai had taken him on as his first and only student. This boy's name was Dino Caponi. Four years later, they got married.
Thanks to him, she began to meet the group of artists and writers who frequented my grandfather's studio in Via degli Artisti. A group of people who marked their lives and the history of 20th-century Italian culture: besides Rosai, they befriended Bigongiari, Luzi, Carrà, Pratolini, Bilenchi, Landolfi, Gatto, Ungaretti, Quasimodo, Montale, and many others.
Loretta's shy but sunny temperament, silent but at the same time extremely curious, creative, and courageous, opened the door to new acquaintances that allowed her to spread her work even further. This was the case of a lady from a noble Florentine family met at one of Dino's exhibitions who, soon after, started taking her creations to Paris and selling them to the local high society ladies. At that time, it was mainly lingerie that the lady hid during the journey in the fur cuffs of her coats: a sort of "smuggling" of lace bras and panties.
Over time, setting aside (as much as possible) the earnings from her work and with the expansion of the acquaintances made through frequenting Dino's studio, she began to travel to Rome twice a year to present and sell (with the help of her sister) her creations to the wives or partners of her artist and writer friends.
It was 1967 and the opportunity arose for that tiny space left vacant after the flood. Courageously embarking on this new venture (as she would always do throughout her life), she decided to go against the prevailing fashion of the time in personal lingerie. She displayed in the small window facing the street a nightgown made of printed cotton with smocked embroidery on the collar and cuffs, a technique used mostly for children's dresses or shirts until then.
In addition to nightgowns with exquisite lace inlays, this model immediately attracted the attention of a very high-end clientele (to name a couple: Paola Ruffo di Calabria, who would later become Queen of Belgium, and actress Jane Fonda) who began to get to know her by spending whole mornings or afternoons chatting with her, sitting on the steps of the internal staircase in the workshop leading to the sewing machine for customizations.
Word of mouth led to an exponential increase in demand right from the start, so her daughter Lucia, after Loretta's sister left, began to join the workshop to learn the art, assist her, and support her with the numerous requests.
The demand and work continued to grow, so they decided to move their workshop a few doors down to a space more than double the previous size, where they created a sales area next to a dedicated workshop for the various phases of creating their pieces. This was in the mid-1970s.
A few years later, with the continuous growth in demand, Loretta and Lucia (who had been working alongside her mother for years) took over the premises and furnishings of a tailor shop founded in 1900, opposite the workshop, to create a children's store.
In 1992, a new step forward: the purchase of a large space in a noble 13th-century building overlooking Via delle Belle Donne and Via Tornabuoni, which had been used as a piano warehouse and parking lot for years. After two years of work and meticulous restoration of the frescoes, it became the workshop, or rather, the home of the Brand.
It was in that same year that Loretta passed the baton to her daughter Lucia, who, after years and years of experience in the workshop, took over the reins of the company. In herself, she combined and translated, according to her feelings, her father Dino's ability to skillfully combine colors (in this case, those of the embroidery threads) with her propensity to seek inspiration more from within or from the greats of the past than from outside, as well as her mother's entrepreneurial and stylistic skills, with a keen sensitivity for finding beauty through the creativity of embroidery and the balance of forms.
To this day, always under Lucia's creative guidance, the company has seen the introduction of a new generation with Guido Conti Caponi, who, with passion and enthusiasm, is leading the brand into a new challenge: to attract the younger generations by offering them a more contemporary collection without forgetting the highest quality of craftsmanship and materials, applied to the artistry of embroidery.
