Creative Story
Premise
Braghetterosse has been a registered ethical fashion brand from 2008 to 2018. For the overall outcome, I owe massive gratitude to the key contributors to this grassroot enterprise: leather technician and pattern-maker Mr. Ambrogio Malinverni who supported every project with undying enthusiasm.
Benedetta Maggioni who has provided us with her brilliant graphic work for a long stretch of the way.
Fashion designer and illustrator Marzia Devoto who was with BR from the beginning and has participated to several projects and drawn the whole Episode ‘0’ of our Epic Trilogy.
Maria Caggianelli who modelled for the 3 sisters Nina Pimpa and Mary as well as for the Ethiopian bags and a great many other projects.
From 2012 to 2017 BR was registered also in Japan by Ms Namiko Watanabe (Micky) who was sole licencee of Braghetterosse for Japan and all Asian countries.
She sent Mr Sato—a skilled leather goods technician—to Addis Ababa, to help our artisans make better quality bags for the Japanese market.
The previous websites were also a market platform for the accessories the brand produced through the ethical design projects that you can now view in the archive.
I wanted these products to continue to have exposure—beyond the fact that they are no longer available for purchase—because they were the result of unique ethical design projects.
In 2012 Braghetterosse was chosen to be showcased in special project launched by Vogue Italia editor Franca Sozzani and Yooks: ‘DISCOVERED IN AFRICA’.
Having worked for many years as accessory designer for several top brands in US and Italy, I had developed an interest for the productive process within the different factories and production facilities where I was lucky to work, in half of the world, but I resented that the main scope these products had was simply to produce income for the brand.
After some years of collaboration with UNIDO international cooperation projects, I came up with my own version of how a brand can design, produce and market things whose principal purpose is to promote inclusion and generate communication about ‘other’ groups of people and ‘other’ cultures, by adding a peculiar element to the products: the added value.
The spirit lives on and Braghetterosse is still available to design ethically sustainable projects for enterprises and associations.
BRAGHETTEROSSE brand name and symbol
BRAGHETTEROSSE (little‐red‐nickers) is both funny and a very serious proposition. It is funny because it is a child‐like name reminding of fairy tales (little red riding hood), because it is a “naughty” image and because it is quite surprising. Mother used to tell us that proper girls never show their underwear!
It is serious because it stands for a basic condition‐ being there with only your nickers! The bare minimum. Red for great energy! Great energy coming from the center of your body. The place where the top part of your body is connected to the bottom part of your body. The place where feelings are felt. The name came about from a distortion of “brigate rosse” (red brigades), pronounced by an ethiopian when comparing the violent Mengistu regime in Ethiopa with the years of terrorism in Italy in the 70’s, when many of the bombings were by this terrorist group which called itself red brigades.
We have chosen this name and this symbol to represent our ethical fashion brand to surprise and amuse the public and as a simbol of transformation. Brigaterosse turns to Braghetterosse and everything changes. For italians this is pretty easy to understand, not so for others but surely it does not matter because the symbol is so meaningful for so many people and in different ways, it allows everyone to make it theirs for their own personal reasons.
What is revolutionary about Braghetterosse is not bombs, violence and destruction but to tie in social, cutural meanings and social projects to fashion, to cure fashion from its empty‐headed self‐concerned aesthetic. To make fashion conscious of its great economical and communication power and to allign this huge power with people‐oriented goals, toward a more human humanity where all human beings are worthy of dignity, compassion and consideration in the human brotherhood chain.
Our comic heroines Nina, Pimpa and Mary wear little red shorts as their “action” uniforms. They are the spirit of the brand and their saga towards putting together a better world for the future, through many difficult adventures, is the driving force and the story line which expresses the meaning of the brand, in a fun and playful way of course, because the road ahead is really long and they are just starting on it. We give them the power of our dreams and imagination and we send them forward, we trust their strenght and courage of young women to lead us towards a better world.
Color meaning
Red, white, blue and purple have been chosen as the main brand colors, so when having to pick colors for products or graphics we have been referring to these for the meanings we attribute to them.
No need to say main color is red to mean women’s blood and passion, action, confidence and courage.
Red is accompanied by blue because it is the cool counterpart of red. It is spiritual and relating to sky, air, meditation, intuition, inspiration and peace.
Red blended with blue gives purple which is the color the brand strives for. For the time being purple is not achieved other than by siding red and blue together. Purple is the ideal color, referring to illumination, a state of grace where one is in equilibrium within all forces. It links the individual to the universal.
Black and white are used by BR because they represent the yin and yang, opposites which need to be together to make some sense out of anything, light and darkness etc. much as in the meanings of yin-yang but also the need to put black on white, to make things clear as in print or writing, so it is also referring to society and its rules.