My family has deep roots within the clothing industry. In the 19th century, Giuseppe Rivetti – son of Giovanni Battista, Italy’s first carding machine operator, inherited his father’s passion and in order to fund his own wool factory he secretly sold cows from the family farms to buy looms. By 1872 he had his own wool factory: “Giuseppe Rivetti e Figli”, which later merged with the Turin based GFT group (Gruppo Finanziario Tessile). There, my uncle Pinot had the unique idea of rubberizing wool fabrics to increase their performance. This fondness for research also drove my father, Silvio. In the immediate post-war period, he set off for the United States where he found the Palm Beach Incorporated company, who produced something that didn’t yet exist in Europe: clothing constructed on theoretical measurements; what we now know as sizes. My father was stunned, working for six months as a laborer, before returning and convincing his brothers to give up their shares in the wool factories in order to buy out GFT.