The Story of Cerruti, Piacenza and Geoffrey B. Small

Since his passing in 2022 at the age of 91, the legacy of Nino Cerruti and the Cerruti family's historic Lanificio F.lli Cerruti 1881 mill has been preserved under the new ownership and direction of Fratelli Piacenza 1733—the world’s oldest still operating woolen mill now in its 14th generation of family ownership & management and the world’s most respected maker of fine wool fabrics. Mr. Cerruti was a giant in the metier, having pioneered the shift away from making fabrics for individual custom-tailors to industrialized ready to wear and forming the first vertically integrated designer-producer-fabric maker business model in 1957with the revolutionary Hitman label in Italy that designed and made its own line of clothing using Lanificio F.lli Cerruti 1881 fabrics, and then in 1967 becoming the first Italian menswear designer to show and install his collections in Paris--establishing the first Italian worldwide name in designer menswear almost overnight. During this time, he hired, taught and mentored one of the greatest designers of all time Giorgio Armani who designed the Hitman collection for 5 years before starting his own landmark story... and the Cerruti 1881 business model inspired and led the way for similar vertically integrated textile company models that went on to become worldwide empires including Ermenegildo Zegna, Marzotto, Luciano Barbera, Loro Piana, GFT and Giorgio Armani SpA. Having taken over the mill founded by his grandfather in 1881 at an early age due to his father's sudden death, Mr. Cerruti was hailed and recognized for his classic elegance, innovation and noble taste in design and fabric. In 2011, Geoffrey B. Small wrote about Nino Cerruti and his contributions to the industry and the art in his highly read forum thread on stylezeitgeist.com. The article caught the eye of Mr. Cerruti and his commercial people at the Lanificio F.lli Cerruti 1881 and after seeing GBS design works using Fratelli Piacenza 1733 fabrics in London at Hostem, they reached out to the designer in his Cavarzere aparmtent workrooms on the Via dei Martiri to consider also working with Cerruti fabrics. Although greatly honored and humbled by the offer, Mr. Small had to decline it as he felt his operation was far too small at that time to take on another high-end premium Biella family mill supplier and he had made a long-term strategic decision to focus exclusively on working with Piacenza. The years went by and Mr. Cerruti passed away in January 2022 with no internal or family successor-plan for the long term, and concerns about a takeover of the legendary mill operation by global corporate luxury holding financial interests began to grow. In 2023, Mr. Small was informed by Piacenza Commercial Director Ezio Pollini that the Piacenza family had great respect for the Cerruti family mill and its operations and as such had decided to acquire it in an effort to shield it from outside financial corporate luxury speculators and commit to the continuation and improvement in its fabric innovation and long-term quality and value. Soon, extraordinary new research and classic luxury cloths began to be proposed by the firm now under Piacenza management to the designer and GBS agreed for the first time in its 45 year history to create designs using fabrics from the historic Cerruti mill in Biella, and still be able to maintain his promise to work exclusively with Fratelli Piacenza 1733 and the Piacenza family for the finest wool, cashmere and vicunya fabrics in the world as he has done so since 2004.