[Fashion Index]
[About]
[Fashion Houses]
[Beach+Lingerie]
[Manufacturers]
[Calendars]
[Model Agencies]
[Photo+Video]
[Hair+Makekup]
[Exhibits]
[Supermodels]
[Public Relations]
[Textiles]
[Accessories]
[Organizations]
[Schools]
[Newsletters]
[Journalists]
[Publications]
[Press Clips]
[Contest]
[Shopping Guide]
Italian Fashion Newsletter - October 1997
October 5, 1997 - The earthquakes in Umbria and nearby Macerata just don't seem to stop, tremors registering 4 on the Mercale scale were felt again last night. For the homeless the cold weather and autumn rains are setting ink and with the earth continuing to shake people are having difficulty adjusting. This area is home to many of the family businesses that form the back bone of the success of "Made In Italy". Nocera Umbra, one of the hardest hit of the cities and towns in Umbria, is home to many small manufacturers, especially of shoes and leather goods. The editor of La Stampa, Carlo Rosselli, has graciously granted permission to translate this article which tells how one man is coping for my readers.
The Industrialist Among The Ruins
"This Is How I Kept On Selling Shoes"
by Flavia AmabileNocera Umbra - Until ten days ago on Sunday the blue eyes of Fabio Capponi's daughter Dalila, two and a half years old, woke him. Along with the smell of coffee, of wife, house, and family. Today Fabio wakes up to a different blue, that of one of 24 tents in a field of Isola, a suburb of Nocera Umbra, the heart of the strangest earthquake in the last 1,000 years. He hears the voice of his daughter at a distance, on the phone, in the evening. His apartment is hidden under three floors ofa building, the only one in town that collapsed. Family is a forbidden dream, his pregnant wife was in Arezzo with her parents during the earthquake. Fabrio prefers that she not return until she has the baby, that is, in six or seven months. Fabio had every reason to leave, and for a couple of hours he pretended that the shaking was a movie. Instead he faces the second Sunday of the earthquake, for him this is the Sunday of hope, the even of the return.
Fabio is a tall young man with his hair gathered in a pony tail, he could be one of the doormen in a disco in Rimini. But he's something completely different. He is 32 years old and runs a shoe factory with his brother to be admired: in the first months of this year he already grossed 868 million lire (about $ ). He is also president of a consortium of six companies that put together gross almost 7 billion lire (about $ ) a year. After the Friday September 6 earthquake Fabio and Gianni are left with a station wagon, a small truck, a cellular phone, and two parents to look after. Fabio's house is reduced to dust, Gianni's house is reduced to dust, their parent's house is reduced to dust, as well as the warehouse where the two brothers and five employees worked. It's hard to tell what happens to their work. The earthquake can demolish buildings and factories, but the clients are the real arbiters of the destiny of a company. In the shoe business this is the time of orders, like planting for a farmer. Stop now means renouncing the harvest of next year. So a race against time begins.
Fabio and Gianni have a deadline to meet: Monday October 6 they have a meeting with their clients from the north to plan the future and do accounts for the past. By that date the shoes, samples, prices must be ready and the whole business of shipping and the latest deliveries must be on time. Actually, the first clients are already on hand at 8am on the Sunday of hope. Two storekeepers from Ancona knock on Tent Number 16 where Fabio has lived for the past ten days with his parents. Fabio shows them to his new office: a plastic table recuperated from one of the family's homes. The three talk business: half an hour, then the clients leave with their car full of shoes. Satisfied, Fabio gets in his car. Until ten days ago at the most he would have gone to town for a stroll with his wife and daughter. In this Sunday of hope he doesn't stop fighting.
In a corner boxes and boxes of shoes and piled up, packaged and sealed. His employees, a group of youths guided by Andrea Carnevali, 23, pulled them out from the rubble and dusted them off, only stopping during the strongest tremors. They took time out to return to the tents, be sure everybody was still alive, and them back to recuperate and make shoes. Now they are all there, ready as promised. Yes, Fabio says to himself, the system is working, while on Sunday he claims at least one of his old habits, lunch with his family. His daughter and wife are far away but his parents are present and for the first time since the day of the first earthquake, his wife's parents. Rituals are rituals, and, earthquake or not, must be respected. The table that served as a desk is now placed in front of the tent and set. From there it's hard to pretend not to see the red and white tapes that prevent anybody from reaching the town and the house where Gianni and Fabio grew up and where their parents expected to pass a serene old age after a life of work. But for Fabio this is the Sunday of hope, not of melancholy. He was 18 when he and his brother started out with $500 and at 32 he's president of a consortium of almost 7 billion lire a year. It's enough for him to think of that fax in the warehouse, to the boxes ready for consignment, to be sure he can start again, to be able one day to wake up to the bue eyes of his daughter.
Flavia Amabile
Published with permission of "La Stampa," Turin, Copyright © La Stampa