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Interview with Gioacchino Gentile, founder of the GENTILE brand

Inspiration that comes from the past and attention to sustainability to guarantee a future

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We met Gioacchino Gentile, the creator of the brand GENTILE. Through his story he transported us to another era, a journey between the 60s and 80s. A journey that comes from nostalgia and that comes to life through a series of one-of-a-kind creations completely handmade and 100% upcycled, born from vintage garments, scraps of fabric and deadstock materials.

 
 
 
 
 
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How GENTILE was born, is there a link with the concept of kindness?

I have always felt the need to tell my aesthetics. During the lockdown I developed the idea of ​​starting my own brand, a sort of diary, a collection of music, cinema and nostalgia. Thus was born GENTILE.

The name has a double meaning. Gentile is my surname, my family, my story, at the same time it contains an imaginary of grace and delicacy. In the name “GENTILE” lies the essence of my inner world, a world in which my Italianness, my roots and my daily life intersect.

 
 
 
 
 
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What is its concept and its mission?

Through GENTILE I tell a new Italian story.

The brand's mission is certainly the recovery: recovery of disused materials and the recovery of good taste "made in Italy".

Deadstock fabrics, remnants and vintage garments are reinterpreted giving life to unique and custom made pieces. I re-propose the 60s, 70s, 80s through the gaze of my generation.

The goal is to create no-season collections that can tell a story, as if you ideally enter a woman's wardrobe and read her most intimate part of it.

 
 
 
 
 
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GENTILE is a 100% sustainable brand, do you think it is essential to make a choice of this kind today?

I believe that the new generations must have greater attention to the environment and sustainable choices in everyday life.

In this the new generations of designers have a double responsibility, as people and as part of the fashion sector, aware of the impact of large productions.

I also think that the world we live in has lost the ethics of "recovery": when something gets old it is considered to be thrown away and the attention and at the same time the poetry of giving a new life to things have been lost.

 
 
 
 
 
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Why the inspiration comes from the 60s and 80s?

I grew up in a very nostalgic context: I spent my childhood at my grandparents' house watching old movies and family photos.

My grandmother Santa's favorite pastime is showing me photographs from when she was young, beautiful and always in step with fashion.

Through these memories and stories I created my own personal vision of those years, a world in which I combined the influences of my generation with the image that someone else gave me of the past.

The 60s, 70s, 80s are an inexhaustible source of ideas for me.

 

 
 
 
 
 
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ROMANTICA is the first collection, tell us about it.

ROMANTICA is the story of several women who choose to wear their romanticism in everyday life: women who dress to express themselves, to communicate their femininity without filters and without limits.

The collection tells a timeless love story: love for oneself, for life, for love itself. The first collection of GENTILE contains my very personal vision of romanticism. I have chosen to name each look. Each name is linked to a person who has shown me his way of loving. Starting with characters played by Monica Vitti to get to my mother, of these 12 looks, each one carries its own romantic story.

 
 
 
 
 
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Who is the GENTILE boy/girl?

GENTILE represents those whose heart is divided between the present and the past. Retrò soul in touch with the contemporary. Those who feel within themselves the need to express their femininity, far from the constraints that society imposes. GENTILE is anyone who experiences their romance as a means of rebellion.

 
 
 
 
 
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What question did we not ask you that you would like to be asked?

A little spoiler on the next GENTILE story.

Have you ever been in love in Milan?

 
 
 
 
 
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