Prada and Ermenegildo Zegna have taken over a cashmere factory together

Filati Biagioli Modesto is a company in the province of Pistoia that for over a century has been specialized in the production of luxury knitwear such as silk, angora, camel and above all cashmere. Yesterday, it was announced that the Prada group and Ermenegildo Zegna took over the majority shares of the company, 40% each, with 15% still held by the Biagioli family and 5% assigned to the manager Renato Cotto. The latter will be the CEO, Gildo Zegna will become chairman and Patrizio Bertelli will join the board of directors. The operation, in Bertelli's words reported by MFF, testifies to the desire to "create a system in the Italian fashion industry" through synergistic control of its production chains. 

Patrizio Bertelli

Gildo Zegna

The strategy of controlling the supply chain through targeted acquisitions has long been part of the ethos of Ermenegildo Zegna but the fact that the operation took place with four hands, so to speak, with the Prada Group, which has already demonstrated its "synergic approach", again in Bertelli's words, some time ago when he made his factories available after the fire that destroyed one of Valentino's factories. Bertelli always spoke to WWD about a "significant change in the attitude of companies in Italy, which no longer see each other as competitors". As if to confirm the rumours that speak of a change in the atmosphere of Italian fashion management, which is preparing to defend its assets from external interference with, in a horizon still far away in time, the profile of one or more mega-groups of Italian luxury.