About – Into Industries

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I was never into fashion during my earlier teenage years. Everything changed while I was in high school. Me and one of my closest friend Niccolo’ came up with the sudden idea of creating a brand of t-shirts, that we would have sold to our peers more as a joke than anything more serious. We didn’t have any prior experience, but we didn’t care; everything would eventually fix itself as long as we continued. I started drawing (terribly) ideas for some prints, and found out I actually liked imagining graphics for apparel products. At the same time I downloaded the Adobe package, and began to experiment in Illustrator, trying to create a logo for this project. I spent hours and hours making mistakes and horrible sketches, but I found the whole process so amusing that it came natural to me to just keep trying. I started watching countless tutorials on Youtube, my first “teacher”, and learned new skills each week. After some time I decided I wanted to take this thing seriously and asked my friend if he wanted to create a streetwear fashion brand. We were in no shape or form ready to take on such a difficult challenge, and the project fell apart and put aside.

Once I graduated from high school I followed the natural path based on my skills in maths and physics, and enrolled at the University of Florence, in particular the course of Mechanical Engineering. If it wasn’t clear from the immediate beginning, it came to the surface pretty soon that I didn’t enjoy it at all. I can say that I was always interested in scientific subjects, and also pretty successful at them, but I couldn’t find any interest in pursuing that type of knowledge anymore. So, with a very bold decision, I dropped out and, after a long talk with my parents, I enrolled in Polimoda, following what I thought was something that would have made me much happier. I spent 4 years following the undergraduate course of Fashion Design Management and, in the end, got my degree. It was very stressful, especially at the beginning, when I really felt I didn’t belong. See, my classmates had already some type of studies and experiences inside the world of fashion, while I was a dumb guy with a dream too big to be plausible. I had to work double the amount to catch up and seem worthy, and I really did my best to hide my shortcomings. After some hardships and drops in confidence, I started to get the hang of it, and enjoyed each single day of what was by far the happiest period of my life.

During my last year in Polimoda, I started to gain some much needed confidence, thanks to successful spells at some projects and praises from professors; but it turned out to be just a devious illusion. After I got my degree, I immediately started searching for a stage experience in order to continue my development path. I revamped my CV and portfolio, and started sending applications to many brands. In the meantime, a famous singer from Florence contacted me for some outerwear pieces, and we got to work all summer. I spent 2 months and a few thousands euros designing and crafting 3 jackets (with the help of my patternmaker friend) for this person for free, who in exchange had only to wear them and make some social content. Needless to say, the pact wasn’t honoured by one of the two parties. This person was most of the time under the influence of alcohol or drugs, and didn’t respect the work we did at all. He/She took only one single photo with one of the pieces in front of the cloudy mirror in his/her home bathroom and called it a day. I also found out that he/she was seen around Florence completely wasted on the floor (or close to it) wearing my designs. I understand they say “there’s no bad publicity”, but this maybe was. The whole series of event took a real toll on my mind and my confidence started stumbling. Oh, and no one responded to my applications.

After 3 months of waking up to the same generated emails by brands who didn’t have time to even look at my CV, a little spark of hope came through. I got a response from Casa di Moda Davide Muccinelli and we organised a meeting call shortly after. It went well and in January I moved close to Bologna to work there for 3 months. It was a wonderful experience, especially after all the struggles I encountered before, in which I got to know Davide and Calogero, the two designers of the fashion house. We bonded almost immediately and created wonderful memories together. But, as much as it pains me to say this, it wasn’t really helpful professionally speaking. I don’t want to seem ungrateful, because I really am thankful for the chance, but objectively the brand was miles afar from my skills to be really helpful in designing new pieces, and I was quickly relegated into being the graphic designer for the website and some event posters. So, my fashion sense stagnated a bit, and didn’t really learn much on that regard, which was my primary focus. Having said that, it was still important as it was my first experience far from home. In April I was already back home, having to restart the same eroding process of applications and refusals.

Another 3 months passed by of the same routine; I was feeling extremely down and uninspired. Until one day in July, when my uncle offered me a job in his company in the Netherlands. The job had nothing to do with what I studied for but, maybe in the heat of the moment, it seemed a far better alternative to being stuck at home with close to nothing to do. I flew out to Haarlem and started working for Ferrari Group, a company specialized in the logistics department of luxury brands of jewellery, with Tiffany being the main client. Despite all the doubts that a job so far from what I had imagined my future to be brought, I felt accomplished. I did my best and enjoyed the atmosphere we had at the workplace, while everyone was very happy with my contribution. I got to know some amazing people and became really independent, 1500km from home. I spent almost nine months there and I used that time to mentally recover from past hardships. During the last couple of months I started feeling a fire inside, one of revenge and necessity to show what I could do. It was too early and too easy to abandon the fashion path and, despite a very good career on the horizon, I decided that it was time to come back to my roots. I flew back to Italy, collected all my courage and embarked on the journey that will lead to the creation of my personal streetwear label, the gigantic dream that just few years ago seemed too big too achieve.

This part has still to be written, follow INTO INDUSTRIES if you want to be part of my story.