A while back Italian fashion brand Allegri (featured in this blog in a previous post) launched a contest entitled “Allegri April Showers” in partnership with the New York-based High School of Fashion Industries.
Students were called to design rain accessories and umbrellas that could complement Allegri's heritage and the brand’s Autumn 2009 collections and the winners had their boots and umbrellas produced in a limited collection. The students' creations were also showcased at Saks Fifth Avenue last November.
I recently had the chance to see the results of the contest and I must admit I was pleased to see how the students came up with rather interesting designs.
In the interview that follows Gianmaria Argentini, general manager of Dismi 92, the legal company that owns the Allegri brand, speaks about the contest and the new Allegri 2010-11 collection.
This was the first time Allegri was involved in such a project, what inspired it?
Gianmaria Argentini: The belief in combining the company’s industrial knowledge and expertise with new and fresh ideas by young fashion and design students. In a way we conceived it also as an "emotional" experience and a commercial opportunity that could have allowed us to do something new for our company. This was the starting point basically, but I must admit the results were beyond our expectations and once the project was over we felt we had a very high responsibility towards the students who had been involved, because the products they made looked extremely nice and we thought it would have been stimulating for them to see them in the shops.
What was your first reaction when you saw the results of the project?
Gianmaria Argentini: I felt we definitely had to find a way to manufacture those products as best as we could, because the students
involved in the project had worked hard. Each pair of rain boots is different from the other, each of them is unique, so we had to find a way to actually manufacture them, make them affordable and bring them onto the market.
Did you feel you found the right partner for such a venture in Saks Fifth Avenue?
Gianmaria Argentini: Definitely. After the project was completed I felt we had a sort of social responsibility towards the students and the Saks management shared this feeling. So when we asked them reward the students giving them the possibility to have their names written on the shop windows, they accepted straightaway.
Do you think you will keep on organising such projects or that you will invite some students to actively get involved in the company?
Gianmaria Argentini: We are open to explore this kind of opportunities and we will do a few tests and experiments with Polimoda in Florence because we have a factory based at just 30 km from the school, so, logistically speaking, it’s easier for us to work with them than with an international institution. But we will try and keep an eye open and pay a lot of attention to international projects since we want to understand which kind of experiences we can offer the students to make sure that, if they are invited to collaborate with us, they will be able to follow specific projects and programmes that may help them developing further their ideas and designs.
Gianmaria Argentini: I think it depends from the company: if the latter has got to offer a group of students from a specific institution a sensible project, well, then it should be attempted. But you always have to bear in mind that a luxury company and an institution such a university are very different entities and they may find it difficult to work together. Students may have to adjust to the company’s requirements while the company must always remember it is responsible for developing and eventually taking further the final results of a specific project.
For the Autumn/Winter 2010-11 season, Allegri launched "A-Tech", a line that focuses on research and innovation, developed its "010109" luxury capsule line and also added a collection of bags and accessories: how would you define Allegri’s marketing strategy at the moment?
Gianmaria Argentini: I would say it's a sort of "continuing" strategy because it's not based on entirely changing our collections every season. We want to make sure that our consumers know what our brand is about and what it does because we like to be consistent and coherent in our job. Our consumers want to wear perfectly fitting garments when they go to work, in their free time or for a special occasion, and, while we do offer them different options for all their needs, there is something that essentially doesn't change and that's our attention to quality, materials, design, silhouettes and fit.
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