Playing with heritage, the interview with Lorenzo Boglione
From K-way to Kappa, passing through Jesus Jeans, Briko and Sebago, Lorenzo Boglione, vice president of Basic Net, tells how he wants to enhance each of the brands belonging to the company. Trying to keep their connection to the past.
Text by ALESSANDRO VIAPIANA
Lorenzo Boglione , born in 1987, is vice president of BasicNet , a company founded in 1994 when his father Marco took over from bankruptcy, with his Football Sport Merchandise, Maglificio Calzificio Torinese, a historic company founded in 1916 by Abramo Vitale in Turin, and, together to this, the Kappa , Robe di Kappa and Jesus Jeans brands. If asked what prompted him to want to work in the family business, Boglione replies that he has never had any doubts since he was a boy. «As a child I looked at my father's work and he seemed very cool to me. There are better moments and worse moments, all that glitters is not gold, but this job is full of stimuli, fun, and has had the merit of always putting me in close contact with all possible sports, which I love». Kappa and Robe di Kappa reached the height of their popularity between the 80s and 90s when they became famous worldwide for having dressed the athletes of the US Olympic national team including Carl Lewis, Florence Griffith-Joyner and Edwin Moses during the Olympics Los Angeles in 1984 and then again in 1988 in Seoul.
It sponsors dozens of sports, especially football teams, among all Juventus, Barcelona, Milan, Ajax and finally, starting from 1999, the Italian national team, when Kappa became the first sponsor to be present on the Azzurri's shirt. In the midst of the Cold War, Maglificio Calzificio Torinese let the Soviet Union discover jeans - beating Levi's and the other big names in the sector - with Jesus, who given the name and some slogans that were daring to say the least for the time (one of «who loves me, follow me» juxtaposed with a female bottom wrapped in jeans that appeared in a famous advertising campaign shot by Oliviero Toscani), attracted a lot of controversy, to the point that Pier Paolo Pasolini spoke about it in the pages of the Corriere della Sera.
In 1999 BasicNet was listed on the stock exchange and subsequently joined the first three brands K-Way (acquired in 2004), Superga (2007), Briko and Sebago, building a global business model based on a network of territorial licences. The best-selling garment worldwide? «Absolutely I would say the white Supergas» says Boglione , «but in reality we have one for each brand, such as the classic raincoat for K-Way (the one from the famous 1986 Barilla advertisement in which a little girl carries a wet kitten to safety, hiding it right under his K-Way) and the Sebago women's black moccasins». And how does it feel to work with brands that are part of the collective imagination of Italians? «It is a great responsibility, we feel we have to look after these brands. They belonged to someone else before, they are ours now, and maybe they will be someone else's in the future. The correct way to make them grow is to not break the thread that binds them to whoever created them, try not to distort their original design. If I think of shoes like the Superga, already innovative a hundred years ago with their vulcanised rubber sole, I wonder how to hand them down to the next generations without upsetting their heritage».
“We feel we have to protect
these brands. they belonged to someone else before, they are ours now, and maybe they will be someone else's in the future. The correct way to make them grow is to not break the thread that binds them with created kilos, try not to distort their original design».
Behind the K-Way fashion show held during the last fashion week in Milan there is precisely the desire to pay homage to the moment in which the first model came to light. It was 1965 when, sitting at a table in the famous Café de la Paix - on a rainy day, the entrepreneur Léon-Claude Duhamel thought of a waterproof nylon jacket, which can be folded into its front pocket like a pouch, bright red like the lipstick that Parisians wear. Fifty years later K-Way shows in Milan recreating the atmosphere of that day, tables and waiters included. The event «was neither a starting point nor an arrival point, but a moment to celebrate a brand whose story we hadn't fully told» . And to celebrate the one hundred and sixty years of the Café de la Paix , K-Way gave you an exclusive party during the Paris fashion week. But K-Way «is not a fashion show brand» , Boglione tells us, «it has shown and will show again, but only on special occasions, when it will have something to tell the public». There is no desire to call a creative director imminently, but to continue expanding the collaborations, such as those with Play - Comme des Garçons , Marc Jacobs , N°21 , Lacoste , DSquared2 . In the future, Lorenzo Boglione sees an ever greater opening to the world of sport, from skiing to sailing - K-Way will be the sponsor of the French team that will compete in the thirty-seventh America's Cup, with the Orient Express - passing through surfing, where K- Way has chosen the Italian athlete Leonardo Fioravanti as its ambassador, the first Italian to qualify for the World Surf League in 2017. K-Way's centre of gravity will head to Milan where BasicNet has created a multifunctional hub in via dell'Aprica 12, in which once upon a time there was a rubber factory whose chimney still stands, as it does in the Turin headquarters.
