Italian Jacquard brings furnishing fabrics to clothing
Alida Valle in Turin creates capsule collections of coats and jackets starting with the research of fabrics and designs
by Paola Dezza
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3' min read
3' min read
A lifetime spent in furnishing fabrics and recently also in capsule collection clothing. An architect, born and raised in Chieri where the family business was based, Alida Valle is now an elegant 79-year-old lady who still has a desire to experiment and design fabrics.
"I have taken up a long tradition, if you think that centuries ago there was no distinction between furnishing and clothing fabrics, as in the time of Louis XIV," she says. "I graduated in architecture, but then I started working in my father's company, also to rejuvenate a product that no longer met the public's taste! Italian Jaquard is still active today in the production of furnishing fabrics for the most important furniture brands.
Chieri, at the time of Alida's birth and youth, was a textile and cotton-producing area with up to 165 companies. Even earlier, in the Middle Ages, moleskin was produced here and hemp, flax, 'guado', a pigment for dyeing fabrics indigo, was grown from Isatis, also the cloth for jeans, a production and manufacture that was later transferred to Genoa, from which jeans take their name. "As denim comes from de Nimes, another production area for the famous fabric," says Alida.
"The textile industry has characterised the history of the city of Chieri,' Alida continues. 'But today everything has changed and many companies have closed or moved away due to the crisis in the sector. In the pre-industrial period from the end of the 15th century to the middle of the 18th century, more than half of the population was active in 'beating, bleaching, dyeing, weaving', we read in some texts.
The offices of Italian Jacquard today are in Turin, on the Lungo Po. His father's company already worked with foreign countries, in particular the United States. "I chose architecture so as not to do my father's job, but I found myself carrying on his business when he had a serious health problem, and I was still very young,' she says. I had to study and learn a lot and I became passionate about it.
