Como, capital of silk, and InFabbrica, a living, participatory textile archive

Aristocratic villas, evergreen manicured gardens, postcard-worthy views and romantic corners. Stone villages, tiny pebble or grassy beaches, hills and mountains descending towards a mirror of fresh water. This is the landscape that greets you when you arrive on the shores of Lake Como – or Lario – in Lombardy. Its capital, Como – Roman in origin but medieval in appearance – with the hills of Brianza behind it and the first mountain slopes rising at its side, immediately presents itself as gracefully elegant and welcoming.

A destination of the Grand Tour, Como, the lake and its shores have long welcomed and enchanted poets and artists, military leaders and politicians, actors and musicians. And if these enlightened minds were able to draw from the lakeside city all the inspiration it could offer, Como, and its surrounding area, in turn absorbed and embraced, with intelligence and foresight, the cultural and economic fervour coming from outside.

It was precisely in this period, in the second half of the nineteenth century, that the town established itself as Europe’s leader in the production and export of fine textiles. It is therefore essential to recount the long artisanal tradition of the Como area, whose roots go back to the 1400s, when Ludovico Sforza sought to increase the cultivation of mulberry trees for silkworm farming.

Thus began a long production chain that involved the local population and withstood both foreign competition and the two wars. How? By preserving its artisanal methods while adapting to modern times, transforming unique know-how into ideas and design of global distinction.

With the blossoming of Italian fashion came collaborations between the great designers of the time and the weavers and silk-makers of Como: from Versace to Moschino, from the Fontana Sisters to Krizia and Etro, from Christian Dior to Givenchy. In 1969, the United States, France and Germany absorbed more than 60% of the fabrics produced in Como for export.

Today, the Como area is the only region in the Western world where the production chain still includes every stage of silk manufacturing: spinning, weaving, dyeing, printing and finishing.

And it is no coincidence that Como entered the UNESCO Creative Cities network in 2021.

A virtuous example of this Como-based entrepreneurial sector is Colombo Industrie Tessili which, at its production site in Fino Mornasco, just a few kilometres from Como, has established InFabbrica, a historical archive and cultural hub.