Behind the Italy Collection: Textile Profile on Casentino Wool

Stia, home to Casentino wool and the beginning of the river Arno that flows through Florence.

For us, the journey of the Italy Collection began with a jacket. While in Italy for several months in early 2018, our founder stepped into a little shop in Florence, lured in by the bright colors and funky texture of the jackets in the window. She bought a blood orange wool coat with a bright, satin-green lining and took home a little book about the company that produces these coats. It really wasn’t until after she started wearing the coat in Italy that she began to understand, via the myriad Italians paying compliments and sharing nostalgic memories of their own mothers or grandmothers wearing the coats, the deep roots and love for this textile in Tuscany.

Jess in her blood orange Casentino wool jacket in Turin, Italy.

After admiring her own coat for several months, Jess pondered the viability of the use of this fabric to make shoes. Would shoes made with this fuzzy wool fabric in bright orange and green be cool? Beautiful? A little too weird? After a little back and forth with herself, Jess conclusively decided that yes, this wool cloth would make for awesome shoes. Now to find it.

It took a couple months and the help of a fellow textile lover based in Florence to finally find its maker in the largely rural Casentino Valley, a picturesque mountain drive and descent about an hour and a half from Florence.

Fringed with verdant forests and dotted with castles, the Casentino Valley has been home to the production of Casentino wool – or Panno Casentino – since the Middle Ages.

There are only a couple remaining artisan producers of a historic wool cloth, still made in the Casentino Valley in Tuscany, and we worked with one of them to create this collection.

Our founder, Jess, with production manager, Paolo, and Davide.

Once used as blankets for animals and Franciscan friars’ cowls, the wool fabric became fashionable for use in coats in the 19th century, and maintains its made-in-Italy charm and elegance to this day.

As pictured here, Casentino wool is traditionally used to make coats.

Panno Casentino is known throughout the world for its orange and green colors as well as its iconic curls, which provide its characteristic strength and weather resistance.

Rolls of finished Casentino wool. Can you spot the traditional green and orange?