Mantua, quality socks inspired by historical collections on sale at Palazzo d'Arco

A museum and a young local company together for a project with a dual purpose: to bring a quality Italian handmade textile product to the public, and to support the museum. It happens in Mantua, where Palazzo d’Arco and the company About Socks srl kicked off the L’Arte InCalza project yesterday: recently, some 19th-century socks were found in the museum’s vast collections, belonging to the very rich wardrobe of the d’Arco counts, who inhabited the building until the 1960s, when the last member of the family, Giovanna dei conti d’Arco Chieppio Ardizzoni, marchioness Guidi di Bagno, established the d’Arco Foundation and arranged for the mansion to open its doors to the public after her passing. About Socks has therefore created some socks, for men and women, inspired by the historic garments worn by the nobles.

The socks were designed by the very young designer Elia Crippa, born in 1997, who graduated in Fashion Design from the Milan Polytechnic, where he specialized in Knitwear Design, and who has been collaborating with About Socks since 2020, within the H! Marketing Designer Academy at the New Academy of Fine Arts in Milan. Crippa, who turned out to be the winner of an internal competition of the About Academy, or the group of emerging designers that the company is following in its professional growth, has translated the classic patterns of the Counts of Arco socks into a contemporary design, with the aim of giving a new freshness to those forgotten patterns, playing with colors and patterns, and of course without neglecting comfort and wearability. The socks, made locally from 100 percent Italian yarn, hand-harvested cotton grown without pesticides or chemical compounds so that it does not release harmful substances on the skin, come in four different types, all with honeycomb cuffs so as not to compress the leg during the day, and hand-performed linking, as well as stitching. They are now on sale at the Palazzo d’Arco bookshop, costing 15 euros a pair.

“The activity of a museum,” said Livio Giulio Volpi Ghirardini, president of the d’Arco Foundation, “is aimed not only at preserving a legacy, but is also aimed toward the future. And the future is this idea, which has been embraced: About Socks, also because of its age, builds the future. For many, the museum is a closed thing, perhaps with little air inside, with the idea of mold and dust. We are exactly the opposite: Palazzo d’Arco is open to the outside, it is open to initiatives, and its heritage is available to everyone.”

“Today we are sharing a beautiful project that came about thanks to a discovery made by Palazzo d’Arco: a collection of the Counts’ clothes, which included socks, now on display in a vitrine,” explains Stefano Alberini, founding partner of About Socks. “From this discovery came a series of ideas, comparisons, and thoughts that were put into common factor, shared with us, as an artisan sock company, and with various young designers, including Elia Crippa. We asked ourselves how to make beauty current (this was the basic question we started with, because there was really so much beauty in these collections) and how to bring it back to life, in the contemporary world. That started a competition through our Academy, a group of young emerging designers from all over Italy, to whom we submitted this question: how could we make these stockings current in respect of the artwork but also in respect of current fashion canons? This question was answered by many, and Elia was the designer who managed to stand out more than the others. On our side there was instead being rigorous in production and in the choice of yarns. The combination of the idea of the rediscovery of Palazzo d’Arco, Elia’s ideas, and the rigor in Italian handcrafted production created these four socks, products that are not normally available on the market, and that in my opinion are much more: they are works of art.”

“The socks made as part of this project,” Marco Frignani, engineer in charge of production for About Socks, “stand out, meanwhile, for the sustainability of the product, since the cotton comes from local organic crops, and for the attention to how these issues go together with modernity: in fact, the four models produced for Palazzo d’Arco are appreciated for the precision of the weaving, done on the latest generation of circular machines, for the fineness of the details, for the craftsmanship, for the attention paid to the raw material and, above all, for the creation of a sock inspired by tradition but updated to today’s standards, and therefore made with the best technologies related to the world of knitwear.”

“These socks,” emphasizes Elia Crippa, "were born from the Counts’ closet of accessories, but also from the Palace itself: I fell in love with the diversity of its rooms, its decorations, the works contained in this magical place. The most beautiful thing about this project is the fact that it is so rooted in the territory: we are used to buying clothes that come from who knows where, that maybe are designed in one continent, cut in another and sewn in yet another. The fact that we can know the individual faces of everyone behind this project is very valuable. In addition, the idea of the project is that anyone who visits Palazzo d’Arco can take home a piece of the soul of this museum: in particular, it stems from an event, Parlor Chats and Chocolate, which inspired me to create patterns that are meant to be conversation accessories, visual accents that, peeking out from under the hem of a skirt or pants, can suggest something about the wearer."

For more information or to purchase remotely, contact Palazzo d’Arco(www.museodarcomantova.it, phone 0376 322 242) or About Socks(www.aboutsocks.it, info@aboutsocks.it).

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Theocks of Palazzo d’Arco

Thestockings of Palazzo d’Arco

The historical stockings of Palazzo’Arco

Thestockings of Palazzo d’Arco

Mantua, quality socks inspired by historical collections on sale at Palazzo d'Arco

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