Yesterday in Penne, Italy, Brioni inaugurated its School of Haute Couture Nazareno Fonticoli, named after the Italian master tailor and entrepreneur who founded Brioni with partner Gaetano Savini, and officially launched the Brioni Foundation.
The school opened its doors on September 23. The students have already completed the first three weeks of their training under the guidance of the brand’s master tailors and technical teachers. The two-year course has a duration of 1,300 hours for each year of training.
During the ceremony, the mayor, Gilberto Petrucci, conferred the honorary citizenship of Penne on the CEO of the Kering-owned fashion house, Mehdi Benabadji, as a sign of recognition of the importance of the school and as a symbolic gesture to commemorate the maison’s long-standing commitment to protecting and strengthening craftsmanship in Penne and the Abruzzo region, and more broadly in Italy.
Brioni’s CEO emphasised that the school’s first group of 16 students will receive scholarships covering 85 per cent of their tuition fees. In addition, if the trainees pass the intermediate exam at the end of the first year and the final exam at the end of the two-year course, they will receive a full refund of their fee.
“The school’s mission to educate the next generation of tailors complements Brioni’s portfolio of initiatives and reinforces the development and close relationship with the territory, where the maison has been developing its craftsmanship for over sixty years and its unparalleled sartorial excellence, which stems from this dedication to craftsmanship: the heart of Brioni’s identity,” the management emphasised in a statement.
“The work that Brioni has been carrying out with dedication for decades is an example of the ability to synthesise tradition, creativity and craftsmanship excellence that characterise Made in Italy. This is why we are happy that Brioni was awarded the Craft and artisanship prize at the CNMI Sustainable fashion awards 2024.”
“For fashion today, it is increasingly important to preserve and hand down the tradition of craftsmanship by encouraging and training young talents, and the announcement of the reopening of the Scuola di Alta Sartoria Nazareno Fonticoli is excellent news for the fashion community and for the many young people who will attend it,’ added Carlo Capasa, president of the Italian National Chamber of Fashion,” they said.
“Manufacturing is the beating heart of Italian-made excellence and is a heritage of skills to be protected and passed on to future generations. High-end companies will need 276,000 technical-professional profiles in the next five years (75,000 in fashion), but about 50 per cent of companies will have difficulty finding them,” Stefania Lazzaroni, director general of Altagamma, said.
She continued: “Brioni’s reopening of the Nazareno Fonticoli High Tailoring School represents a concrete example in support of the Italian tailoring art and a significant contribution to the resolution of this issue.”
This article was originally published on FashionUnited.IT, translated from Italian into English with the help of an AI-tool and edited by Veerle Versteeg.