A Picagetta designer Silvia Gianetti on something about a tea towel and working towards sustainability

A PICAGETTA will be exhibiting at HOMI FASHION&JEWELS EXHIBITION 11 - 14 March 2022
A dedication to sustainability, craftsmanship, design and manufacturing with the ultimate accuracy. HOMI FASHION&JEWELS EXHIBITION explores a cultural challenge, is sustainability an utopian fantasy or a possibility?

Interviewed by Arianna Chirico / ayra_ayra

How was A Picagetta born?
A Picagetta is a project that made tangible one of the most important memories for me, the one that holds the memory of my grandmother, who was a serial accumulator of starched tea towels. When my grandmother passed away, she gave me a rich kit, made of fabrics, tea towels, and tablecloths; but the idea of keeping this from her, so important to me, in a trunk made me terribly sad. Thus, reflecting on the use and importance it had had in my life up to then, I realized that we Italians, with a culture and a tradition that tie us more or less in the same way, are all linked to the imagination of a tea towel at home, whether it is connected to the kitchen, the countryside, a picnic, the piles of dishes to dry after busy family lunches or the tears cared for by grandmother's cuddles. I felt I had to transform this nostalgia that I had in my heart into something that had its own real value: thus, by reconciling my skills as a tailor with this intrinsic desire to give new life to the inherited canvases, A Picagetta was born. Instagram gave me the opportunity to make myself known to a wider audience, but above all to be contacted by a talent scout who offered me a corner at Coin shop. A small production officially started and what was initally just a project has been turned into a real brand. At that moment my friend Ilaria, who has become my partner and who helps me manage everything, also took part in this journey.

Was it easy to transform an object for domestic use, such as a dish towel, into a current, contemporary and usable design object?
A Picagetta was born so naturally and unconsciously that I associate its birth with a purely transcendental inspiration, attributable to my grandmother. It was easy to give life to my bags, because they hold all the passion I have to make them. From a technical point of view it was a bit more complicated, because they pragmatically symbolize my first approach to their creation through the tea towels, which I had previously only used to make trousers or shirts. Obviously the canvas becomes usable, because it is associated with types of bags with a contemporary design that respects annual trends.

I presume that your modus operandi is linked a little to the idea of buying less and better, using materials and fabrics for longer, giving them a second life and making them circular. At the same time I suppose it is difficult to find large quantities of vintage tablecloths and dish towels for a production that continues to grow. So how do you choose the fabrics for the bags?
The first creations were all made with fabrics and tea towels kept in the trunk, but subsequently the request could not be satisfied only with the inherited material and I made up for this lack by searching for fabrics and tea towels mostly through vintage markets. The choice of the secondhand allows these objects to come back into circulation and live a new life and also allowing me to create, maintaining the concept of my brand’s base: the memories. Choosing vintage fabrics makes my products unique, because they can only be replicated in small quantities and always different from each other. Looking at a broad spectrum production, the research includes sustainable fabrics, but less secondhand simply for a question of quantity. For example, for the latest collection, a Bergamo-based company was chosen that has been producing fabrics since 1880, choosing colors and dyes made in Italy.

Can your creations be considered totally sustainable?
Definitely yes. I am very keen to pursue a sustainable and ethically correct approach to the environment, which is the house we live in and which we should always protect. At the same time, I feel compelled to go after those more traditional and authentic options that can make my creations totally made in Italy. All the accessories, materials and fabrics chosen for the production are Italian items: each partnership is selected after a careful study and investigation of production techniques and respect for Made in Italy and the environment. This obviously does not help from an economic point of view, because higher basic prices are expected and consequently the final product is difficult to sell at a low cost. However, I am proud of our offering and of how it is possible to cooperate with other businesses and small Italian companies, keeping the economy steady and helping each other in what can be defined as territorial sustainability.

What do you think about the possibility of a collaboration between brands?
I honestly never thought about that. I know that when I conceived my brand, I always perceived it with a concept of its own, an identity and a defined and unique story, which I would hardly be willing to contaminate. Maybe in the future I could think about it. Surely the idea of cooperation and interconnection between different realities symbolizes greater belonging to a community, of which we are all an integral and fundamental part.

How important is flexibility and adaptability to the course of events in 2022?
It is certainly essential to be welcomed in a world that runs and has no room for banality and for those who are unable to adapt. Sustainability is a current trend, but it is also a way of acting and A Picagetta was born with a leitmotif that is linked to preserving the past, tradition, authenticity, without forgetting that without it we could not have a future. So choosing to produce in an an eco-sustainable way was a natural choice. Trends are important, but it is essential that they adapt to the brand identity in a diversified and meaningful way, without undermining originality. It is a totally made in Italy project, linked to tradition and nostalgia for a lifestyle  that we are recovering in order not to forget.

What are the main messages you want to promote?
The project was born during the lockdown, during a period that gave us the opportunity to reflect more on who we are as individuals and human beings, but also on the authenticity that we were somehow forgetting, made up of little things, such as home, family, loved ones. My creations speak precisely of this: tradition, Italian moments of sharing and aggregation, bucolic cuisine, checked tiles, relationships, feelings, which are the most important things in life for me. A Picagetta is a memory to carry, not only in the heart.

Is the name A Picagetta also a link with tradition
Yes. I would define it as a linguistic link with my region, Liguria, and with my city, Savona. The name A Picagetta comes from “apicaggia”, which in the Ligurian dialect is officially the cotton hook sewn on the tea towels, which is used to hang it in the kitchen. Over time, the common slang has adopted the term A Picagetta to indicate the canvas and from there the idea of adopting it as the name of the brand, maintaining a firm connection with the past, tradition and territorial belonging. In order not to confine the project just to Liguria, but by deploying it to national tradition, for the next collection we are thinking of a way to reconcile our regional dialects, so numerous and unique, with our creations, which in this case will be classy souvenirs. In fact, we are researching how the term tea towel takes on totally different expressions in each region and even province, arriving to find more than 100 ways to define it.

Where is possible to buy A Picagetta?
A Picagetta is sold online and exclusively in a store in the old town center of Savona, which is exactly below our creative studio.