The art of fashion is now more than ever indissolubly tied to society, culture and the economic trend. What is certain is that some fashion designers, more than others, have intertwined their research with the changes under way in the not only creative but daily universe.
Sword is one of those companies, an excellent witness of the times. Twenty years of business activities for Matteo and Giacomo Zanellati, a generation which has produced and distributed its clothing and accessory collections made up of prized leathers.
Born into the industry, Matteo and Giacomo took their first steps in the family business, in Ravenna, and were immediately steeped in creativity and fine craftsmanship.
Leather cuttings were their favourite toys and entire legions of toy soldiers dressed in the imaginative uniforms created by little Matteo and Giacomo.
As teenagers, their attention shifted to creations conceived for themselves: a familiarity and a nearness such as to soon convey them onto the design front where they were rewarded by the interest of important customers. As a team, Matteo and Giacomo started to play their game in fashion and, if leather is their livelihood, their business sense is their trump card.
Their philosophy translates into a continuous quest for natural materials and finishes as well as total comfort and clean and elegant design.
Refined touches distinguished by care for detail. Details that become accent pieces of a linear design construction focused on substance, without disdaining small provocations.
The colour range centres on elegant and neutral tones, to highlight the attitude of a consumer of metropolitan and cosmopolitan taste.
At the change of each season, Sword reinterprets style and re-designs it along its own lines, including by dipping into the private archive in which each single prototype made over the years is stored. A modern elegance, the upshot of a blend of opposites. Concrete on the one hand, because of made-in-Italy tailoring traditions, up to date on the other, because of the quest for materials and craftsmanship and constant striving for performance.
While the lines and volumes give preference to radical order, clean cuts, whispered thrifty elegance, details acquire precious values, functional nuances that break out into style and refined accuracy of materials. We find a clear preference for prized leathers, such as lambskin which, especially after washing, takes on a worn ductile and appealing look. The prized leathers are declined according to the sharpest trends, and shine out on the fashion scene. Traditional ideals take on a more modern look, making each garment a small masterpiece of tailoring skill and research, always with excellent value for money.
Suggestions from the classic world to create a high-definition wardrobe and trace the identity of the Sword customer, aware, informed, discerning and, as a cross-traveller of taste, free of strict fashion restraints.
Sword’s sales strength consists of major agents operating worldwide, which for many years have worked with leading upmarket brands.
60% of Sword products are distributed on the discerning Italian multi-brand market.
The remaining 40% goes to Europe, North America and Japan.
Sword is a project with its roots set in family tradition, but which once again is engaged in major confrontation with a careful, discerning and international market.
