Artisans of denim
When it comes to luxury and premium denim, Italy is a preferred manufacturing and laundry destination. Tilmann Wrobel takes us on a trip to Incom, through the beautiful landscapes of Pesaro, close to San Marino.
Italian denim, there are so many things to say… who hasn’t had passionate meetings about Italian denim? Aside from the high-quality fabric manufacturing, I have heard countless discussions about Italian taste in denim, Italian design and Italian characters.Italy is still the home of the world’s most prestigious denim-heads, you can find these skilful technicians living part-time in the denim mills in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Turkey as well as the US. These guys manage all types of jeans, including ‘accessible’ denim, they have an original denim flair. And some of these specialists keep the denim machines rocking in their homeland: the PGs, Elletis and Maurizios [Morosini, Tonello] among them.
I was on a denim mission for a luxury fashion brand from Paris to check the iconic manufacturing places – Cora, Ethica’s and Incom – and that’s when I met Paolo and Claudia from Agenda-Pesaro (Incom) for the first time. Paolo and his right-hand Claudia are the dream team for extremely well-sewn denim. Paolo is a member of the Fuligni family, which runs an important part of the textile business in the area. The family started a manufacturing unit called Incom and it is here that your premium jeans come alive.
Why do I say alive? Because it’s emotions that bring you and your product alive, and Incom’s slogan is “una realita che confeziona emozioni”: a reality that builds emotions. Nothing less, so you know! Emotions, we all know – emotions when the sizing does not conform, the batches of blue are mixed up, the hang-tag sizes do not correspond to the product sizes – but here you are in the hands of blue-blooded professionals and Claudia puts all her energy and passion into obtaining the perfect results.
The denim division of Incom (Industria Confezioni Moderne) was started by Guiseppe Fuligni in 1969. The group initially made goods for local markets, but Incom soon became a magnificent manufacturing unit for beautiful denim. Today, it is proud of its clients – numerous international luxury denim brands, such as YSL, Balenciaga and Roberto Cavalli – and its global relevance, while claiming to be the “artigiani del denim” or the artisans of denim. It also offers extensive research and design to its clients and aims to be a solution finder.
Technical touch
What struck me most during my visits was the personalities of the team. Very proud ladies cut and sew your product, many of them with many years’ experience, and they embrace any technical discussion with ease.
These types of discussions are the ones I enjoy. You might not know it, but I come from a haute couture background (Avenue Montaigne, Paris) and first learned how to design and make luxury red-carpet dresses. When you work on haute couture, you are always working with the premiere d’atelier (the head of the studio), where the dresses are constructed to your vision and specifications. These ladies (and sometimes men) know so much about patterns, grain direction and fabrics, that you have to be either very discreet and learn from them, or very technically advanced to gain their respect. Now, denim is not haute couture, but you do meet particularly skilful workers who know everything about their machines, the needles, the yarn, the yarn tension, chain stitches and more – and that’s when you know your product is in the right hands.
This is what you experience at Incom, where Claudia, the team and of course Paolo, provide that feeling that you are on the way to building something special, a beautiful denim with Italian soul and flair.
Understated sign on the route to Urbania.
All Photos: Tilmann Wrobel
