For those in the know, Boglioli is an important yet relatively niche player in the richly populated league of Italian industrial sartorialism. A northern firm, from Brescia, it adapted the southern Italian yen for deconstruction for its finely produced tailoring to create its emblematic K-jacket: a piece that looks formal but wears casual.
That rather nuanced innovation, however, was easy to replicate, or at least to apparently replicate. Now Boglioli has been purchased by a Spanish fund called Phi Industrial, under whose stewardship it presented its first Pitti presentation today. Were there K-jackets? Of course. However, a handmade example in checked cotton cashmere and silk that came with heat-bonded buttonholes and a matching zippered waistcoat hinted at the direction Boglioli is heading. More radical, at least for a firm long committed to tailored sprezzatura, was a stand-dominating display of workwear jackets. Presented in a suite of garment-dyed shades from orange to navy, they were offered in multiple fabrications: cashmere herringbone, cotton, wool, a cotton-polyamide mix with those heat-bonded buttonholes, and more besides. Outerwear included a featherlight but built-tough leather-lined parka in a subtly blended russet and green herringbone. Within the cloistered context of Pitti, the adoption by Boglioli of workwear was a relatively radical and handsomely executed strategy to broaden its appeal.
