20 years ago, my husband Marco and I bought more fabric than we could afford. 🧵

We had no shop and no plan beyond the next season. What we had was a kitchen table that disappeared every evening under bolts of Italian wool, and a conviction we could not shake: that a woman does not stop wanting to feel beautiful at forty, or fifty, or seventy. She simply stops being offered anything made for the life she actually leads.

So we made clothes for her. Soft where softness matters. Cut for the body you have now, not the one you had at 25. 🤍

There are two surnames above our door because neither of us was willing to give up our own. Bellini is mine. Rossi is his. We argued about the order for a week and settled it over dinner. 🍝

8 years ago we brought all of it to London. We expected the city to feel foreign, and it did for about a month. Then the women who came through our door turned out to want exactly what our customers in Italy had always wanted: something well made, something comfortable, something that does not announce itself and gets noticed anyway.

Our daughter Sofia grew up in the middle of this. She learned to walk holding on to a rail of coats. She spent her school holidays sorting swatches by colour and had strong opinions about it long before anyone asked her for them. She works beside us now, and she argues with her father about hemlines in a way I find very familiar. ✨

Same passion, a new generation. It is written on a card above our worktable. On the days when the deliveries are late and nothing hangs the way it should, I look up at it.

20 years. Three of us, one workroom, and a great many women who trusted us with what they wear. Thank you for that. Truly. ❤️

Giulia Bellini
London