The Caprotti Manufactory: fabrics were stories, the forerunners of marketing

For over a century, the Caprotti factory in Albiate was a place of work, identity and memory. Its logo – the goat – and the names of its fabrics evoked strength and prestige: Leone, Vittoria, Cleopatra. Others linked the product to Italy’s geographical identity, such as Calabria and Tevere. Still others, such as Jolanda and Marina, followed the fashion of the time, or current events, such as Tosca, linked to Puccini’s opera.

Is the Caprotti factory due to be demolished?

Dear Dr Caprotti, I was saddened to hear of the forthcoming demolition of the factory in Ponte, which your father set out to build and to which he devoted a significant part of his life. It is undoubtedly a place that, for many people, has meant much more than simply a ‘place of work’: it has been a professional and social hub, a place to meet and forge new bonds. It has certainly been a source of hope for a better future, both for oneself and for one’s family…

Giuseppe Caprotti and his studies: Paris and the significance of research

Do I want to spend long days surrounded by books and archive documents, on my own, seeing hardly anyone? Or do I want to work, engaging with the real world every day? The answer would come years later; I would have enjoyed teaching. But even the outcome of my experience ‘in the real world’, as Kundera writes, will not have been ‘a dream’: Esselunga was a great passion of mine; I enjoyed myself and, to use an Anglicism, I did ‘good things’.

The Caprotti family’s friends: Andrea Solbiati, the sportsman

Andrea Solbiati (1928–2014), heir to another Lombard textile dynasty, a great tennis player and a passionate football fan with a deep-rooted loyalty to AC Milan, was the man who introduced me to my childhood idols, starting with Gianni Rivera. In the late 1980s, together with Federico Castelbarco Albani, he founded the ‘Clubino’ football team, for which I played for more than 10 years. I still have the football books Andrea gave me, and they are particularly dear to me, just as he was – and still is.

My mother’s friends, Giorgina Venosta: Lina Sotis and Silvia Tofanelli

The first photograph comes from a series taken at Lina's second bachelorette party, in November 1993, on the eve of her marriage to Marco Romano, an event that Sotis herself also recalled with nostalgia in an interview for 'il Giornale' in April 2015: 'Yes, it was nice. Readings, music, beautiful. There was Natalia Aspesi, Inge Feltrinelli, Rosellina Archinto, Stella Pende, Gioia Marchi Falck , Mita De Benedetti, Antonella Camerana, Giorgina Venosta...'.

Esselunga- Rewe: the Penny Market joint venture

“… We decide to enter into an agreement with the te-desco giant Rewe to create a chain of discount stores to be called Penny Market, controlled with 50 per cent equal shares. A decision by the board of directors is required to start the venture. I vote in favour of our father’s proposal, while his historic lawyer Alfonso Pellegatta is against it…’ Le Ossa dei Caprotti, page 169

Luisa Quintavalle, ‘lady big name’

Grandma Luisa was a fascinating mixture of intelligence, culture, fashion and lightness. A translator from French and English for major national publishing houses, author of a volume of poetry, she also had a love of the 'good life'. She never missed an event, a meeting, a premiere at La Scala, and was always noticed, beautiful among the beautiful, so much so that she was portrayed more than once in the cartoons of the famous journalist and illustrator Bruna Mateldi Moretti, now 'recognised (...) as a key figure of our cultural twentieth century'.

Elba Island, Tenuta delle Ripalte, the lost paradise of childhood

Shortly before the Second World War, Umberto Quintavalle, vice-president of Magneti Marelli and my maternal great-grandfather, bought the marvellous Ripalte estate on the island of Elba and turned it into a place of delight, especially for hunting, but also for relatives and friends to stay. When great-grandfather Umberto died in 1959, the property passed to one of his daughters, my grandmother Luisa Quintavalle, who was married in her second marriage to Marquis Nicolò Theodoli. With her, summer periods at Ripalte are one of the most beautiful childhood memories.