The fabrics of "Mr. Nino".

It is difficult to add anything to what has been written about the life and disappearance of Mr. Nino Cerruti, much has been said about his activity as an enlightened entrepreneur, as a stylist, as a man of the international jet set. However, I would like to add a small contribution related to the factory man, of Saturday mornings spent on the "stretcher" of control of the "new types", right next to the rameuse. Yes, because Mr. Nino personally checked all the new projects after the "wet" and before the "dry", because it was there that the fabric was "understood" in its essence. We, young designers all around, and Mr. Nino with those big hands that analyzed fabrics and men, managing to see what both promised.

My owner at the turn of the eighties and nineties, Mr. Nino was at the height of his international success, directing from the offices of Place de la Madeleine the "Maison", Hitman, Flying Cross and Lanificio Cerruti 1881. Every now and then he came to the wool mill and, around that "stretcher" of fabrics, with the rolled sleeves of the Vichy shirt worn over a navy-blue shirt, he told us not to finish our fabrics too "for good" because times were changing, and we were going towards a world of finishes not too "licked" and crushed. Sometimes he naturally wore garments mended by the mending machines of the woolen mill; Those artfully executed works had the same flavor as "kintsugi", the Japanese art of repairing ceramics with gold to make it even more precious. And he told us about a world in the process of transformation, with that informal and elegant competence typical of those who are at ease both in Hollywood and in Via Cernaia in Biella.

He had a lot of faith in young people, much more than we had in ourselves, a group of twenty-somethings who designed the fabric collection under his direction. When we designed the "test types" of the new collection we tried to make them "gasoline", "sage" or "finance" colors. They were color palettes loved by Mr. Cerruti; we knew of the episode in which he paraded through Via Veneto numerous Lancia Flaminia Spider painted for the occasion in "teal" color with a splendid Anita Ekberg fresh from "Dolce Vita" dressed in the same color.

His way of inspiring us was very suggestive and fascinating. Even now, in dinners with colleagues of that time, we remember some of them; "make me a fabric like a television that doesn't receive", or allusions to your great love for cinematography, "use a palette of virulent colors like the Secrets of Twin Peaks".

And it is in the world of Hollywood that Mr. Nino left one of his greatest marks; His name appears in a hundred films, some of them unforgettable. In "American Gigolo" Hutton's trench coats are the counterpoint to the "atonal" suits worn by Richard Gere and designed by Giorgio Armani, his most illustrious "student".

Cerruti are the most unforgettable looks of Michael Douglas, super pinstriped in the interpretation of Gordon Gekko, the hawk of "Wall Street" and in the casual chic suits of "Basic Instinct". Cerruti is also the outfit of Sir Antony Hopkins in "The Silence of the Lambs" and Tom Hanks in the heartbreaking "Philadelphia". In Tokyo in 2016, the legendary Isetan warehouses made a formidable re-enactment developed on three floors of the Department store; various designers including Lardini, Tagliatore, Paul Smith, Giovanni Bianchi, Belvest and LBM1911 have revisited the style of the films and the historical archive of the wool mill obtaining an extraordinary effect of actualization as well as re-enactment.

All these fabrics were born on a "stretcher", next to a "rama", in a woolen mill with walls painted in camouflage colors legacy of wartime, in the large hands of a man in Vichy shirt sleeves.

Ps. The fabric "as if it were a television that does not receive" we made it by ordering two "jaspes" obtained at the spinning wheel from wicks of contrasting color and weaving black in weave. Thank you for all the teachings, Mr. Nino.