Rovi Lucca is the Milanese label creating ‘elevated workwear for backyard lovers’

The backyard occupies a novel area inside the style trade, ubiquitous as an aesthetic alternative – oftentimes informing the situation of a present or presentation as a lot because it serves as design inspiration for a brand new assortment – and significantly prevalent as an enviornment for extra-curricular pursuits, maybe most notably celebrated by Christian Dior and Dries Van Noten. For probably the most half, Bradley Seymour and Fabrizio Taliani, co-founders of ‘elevated workwear for backyard lovers’ label Rovi Lucca, are celebration to the previous. ‘The reality,’ shares Seymour, unpacking their relationship with horticulture, ‘is that we got here to gardening actually late. We first acquired our palms soiled within the backyard in lockdown, as a type of remedy.’

Spending the majority of the pandemic at Taliani’s grandmother’s home in a valley above Lucca, the pair rapidly turned engrossed within the grounds surrounding them. ‘I like to work within the backyard, however what I particularly love is the class of the gardens within the villas of Lucca,’ suggests Taliani, who grew up close by. ‘There’s something particular in Tuscany, a mixture of completely different types. For instance, you’ll be able to see one thing from France, one thing from England.’ Occupied by the French between 1799 and 1814, the principality of Lucca was awarded to Elisa Bonaparte, Napoleon’s sister, in 1805 (in 1809 she would turn into Grand Duchess of Tuscany). ‘So there’s this stress,’ provides Seymour, ‘between a French affect with this earthy Tuscan realness.’

Rovi Lucca: ‘elevated workwear for backyard lovers’

Whereas Covid-19 enforced a tough pause on their respective disciplines – Taliani in menswear design and Seymour in inventive route – they credit score these fields with shaping what has subsequently performed out with Rovi Lucca. ‘We each got here out of huge careers,’ asserts Seymour, referencing his work with Marie Claire and Esquire, and Taliani’s tenures at Trussardi, Malo and Zegna. ‘Fabrizio actually is aware of his stuff, whereas I’ve labored in editorial nearly my complete profession, whereby I noticed each assortment, each development, sharpening my editor’s eye and translating it in a visible sense, and that is what I do for Rovi additionally. So we’re each coming from a style background, however from completely different instructions.

‘We’re form of creating this vocabulary with cloth, and with Fabrizio’s information and background, we’re capable of do it with pleasure,’ he continues. Based mostly out of Milan, some extent of satisfaction for the label is its relationships with producers throughout Italy, and the human expertise this imprints on the ultimate clothes. ‘We work with this producer who cuts every little thing by hand,’ says Seymour, ‘and possibly it is one thing imperceivable, however the garments have a special soul to them. It’s distinctive and particular, and uncommon outdoors of tailoring to have this strategy.’ Furthermore, a core place to begin for Taliani was filaticcio, a material particular to Lucca that options closely all through its collections. ‘It’s tremendous lovely as a result of it reminds you of the inside of a home in Tuscany,’ observes the designer, ‘this rustic cloth which initially was very heavy, used for interiors like cushions.’

On the Rovi Lucca Instagram web page a wealthy assortment of inexperienced references – work and images, loosely assembled collectively below the banner ‘meet me within the backyard’ – foregrounds the pair’s emphasis on analysis, however it’s a sequence of IRL gardens in Lucca which have performed probably the most important roles of their output thus far: Tenuta di Valgiano, Orto Botanico Comunale de Lucca, and Palazzo Pfanner. ‘There’s some lovely alchemy between science and creativity,’ considers Seymour, relaying their assembly with a botanist from Lucca’s botanical gardens. ‘It’s attention-grabbing to see Lucca by way of one other’s eyes,’ proposes his accomplice, ‘to know one other perspective, and I believe it is attention-grabbing to be making a type of group [with Rovi Lucca].’