From the Future to the Past
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There are voices that become softer as time goes by, but still tell a story, nonetheless. We sought them at the Opera Pia Foundation in Senigallia, where we met people with many memories, experiences and words to pass on to the next generations.
The result of this encounter was From the Future to the Past, our new Fall/Winter 2027/28 range of samples, which we presented at Lineapelle in our last fair event of 2026, within the shared space we had together with the companies of the MinervaHub group.
The new theme was the final chapter of a journey that had begun six months before. With the PE27 collection, we had entrusted the children of our employees with a question about the future, as we allowed their desires, dreams and inspiration guide the project. At Lineapelle, we then included customers and visitors, as we encouraged them to write a message to their “future selves” and keep it in a small glass bottle.
Those words stayed with us for six months. Before this new edition of the fair, we returned them to their authors along with our invitation: retrieve today what you had chosen to entrust to the future.
With From the Future to the Past, our gaze changes direction. This time we spoke to those who have already been through many stages of life, and we asked them to travel back with their memory to when they were children and to give that child something: a dream, a warning, something they had learned over time.
Childhood and old age thus become the two ends of the same story: different stages from which to observe time and attempt to understand it.
Listening before drawing
To create this journey, we chose to work with Allegra Corbo, an artist who paints, does collages, performances and installations, and who already back in 2019 had developed an experimental project with the elderly people from a retirement home.
Together with her, we learned to not seek results right away. Before you start drawing, you need time, relationships and trust. One’s drawings come afterwards, as the result of days spent listening and letting memories re-emerge, memories that needed their own time to find their space.
At first, many guests of the foundation believed that they could no longer draw and that they had no stories to tell through a blank sheet of paper. As soon as they got started, however, all of that holding back completely went away. Colours, images, memories and unexpected details appeared; pastels, tempera and collages allowed them to create spontaneous, ironic, sometimes contrasting and always personal works.
This material led to the three perspectives underpinning the collection:
Vision A pending dream, what time was unable to erase and can still be entrusted to someone.
Warning What experience teaches us and what we could go back in time to teach to the child we once were.
Legacy Knowledge that is not necessarily passed on through books but rather through actions, relationships and growing close to those who have been cherishing them for a lifetime.
Three different ways of looking back to leave something to the person we were – and, inevitably, still are today
From the workshop to collection material: an intergenerational dialogue
Colleagues from the Sales Office, Patterns Office and Style Office participated in the workshops, taking turns and on a voluntary basis. Spending those days together with the guests of the foundation left a mark that goes beyond just work, as it also affected the way they looked at people and time going by.
The drawings made during the meetings then became a source of inspiration: marks, shapes, colours and words gathered and reworked by the Estrolab Style Office, which attended the workshops, to turn them into applications, panels, creative details and materials for the new range of samples.
The intergenerational dialogue that led to From the Future to the Past also belongs to the daily life of our company. Our departments have people who are at the start of their journey, professionals who continue experimenting and people who have developed their expertise over time, who can become a point of reference for those who will come later on. The project with the Opera Pia Foundation was a chance for us to observe this exchange from a different perspective, based on paying attention, being there and listening.
What we gathered at the foundation became part of the range of samples, but it did not just stay there: thanks to those who took part in the workshops, it continued to accompany us also outside the company.
Three messages to cherish
Vision, Warning and Legacy have also become a series of postcards that bring together some of the words and images that stemmed from the project.
They are not meant to explain the collection, but rather to preserve a part of it: thoughts that came from those who can look into the past from the distance of a lifetime and turn it into a dream, a piece of advice or a memory.
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank: the Opera Pia Foundation of Senigallia for welcoming us and making this exchange possible; Allegra Corbo, visual artist and performer from the Italian and European underground scene for conducting the workshops; the Estrolab Style Office for turning the guests’ works into collection material; and finally Chiara Pierucci from KEI KEI STUDIO for coming up with the entire journey, spanning from the workshops to the development of the creative process, and for offering her guidance throughout it.
