Milanese Momentum: How The Attico Turned Buzz Into Longevity

Italian luxury womenswear label The Attico achieved the kind of overnight success of which most brand founders daren’t dream.

In 2016, co-founders and creative directors Gilda Ambrosio and Giorgia Tordini first teased their self-funded label through an Instagram post with nothing but their logo. Within an hour of posting, the pair — already well known as street style stars and freelance designers — started receiving interest from major retailers.

As Ambrosio and Tordini told BoF, “There was nothing in this [first Instagram post], […] no products, just a blank page with the logo. After less than an hour, we received an email from Net-a-Porter that they wanted to come and see the collection. They didn’t even know what it was about.”

In its first season, the brand released a capsule of 38 pieces including silk kimono-inspired dresses and peignoir robes and landed more than 140 international stockists in its first year, including Net-a-Porter, Joyce Hong Kong and Opening Ceremony, achieving an average sell-through rate of around 80 percent.

“We didn’t expect the success, the recognition and the interest from the industry and even from our customers,” Tordini says. “We wanted to give a very specific, precise idea and concept. And from there, of course, there has been a very big evolution.”

Indeed, The Attico has undergone significant growth and evolved since launch, also funded by Archive — an investment vehicle controlled by Moncler chairman and chief executive Remo Ruffini’s holding company Ou(r) Group — which took a 49 percent stake in the business in 2018.

“There was an energy in their work that we found to be unique and special. We felt that Gilda and Giorgia managed to develop a modern, authentic, recognisable point of view,” says The Attico’s CEO, Stefano Marcovaldi, who joined the business from Archive in 2018 and continues to work closely with Pietro Ruffini, Remo’s son, on all strategic aspects of Archive’s invested assets.

In 2023, revenue surpassed €30 million, while the brand boasts over 270 stockists. But The Attico’s growth trajectory was not achieved without overcoming its share of challenges. Like most independent labels, it keenly felt the effects of a pandemic that crippled global touristic-expenditure driven markets like Italy, exacerbated supply chain chokeholds and unleashed an on-going cost of living crisis.

Having launched as a luxury eveningwear business, with its products designed with the ebullient “It girl” in mind — the likes of Rihanna, Margot Robbie and Dua Lipa have worn their designs — The Attico saw the need to reassess the brand’s offering in a time of leisurewear dominance during lockdowns and post-pandemic casualistation.

Consequently, the brand expanded its ready-to-wear to include footwear, handbags and jewellery and with the revival of the Y2K aesthetic in recent years, combined with an expectation for casual comfort with luxury appeal, a new hero product was born in the form of its $1,000 lightweight cargo pants, which quickly became a top seller at luxury retailer Browns.

Last September, The Attico staged its first-ever runway show for Spring/Summer 2024, on-schedule at Milan Fashion Week. This year, the brand’s first full-size handbag, La Passeggiata, was unveiled during their Milan Fashion Week show in September. A limited-edition design of the La Passeggiata was released in partnership with Shop With Google, announced at the BoF 500 gala during Paris Fashion Week this September.

Coalescing Creative and Commercial Visions

Co-founders Ambrosio and Tordini met through a mutual friend after moving to Milan to study Fashion Design at Istituto Marangoni Milano and Istituto Europeo di Design respectively. They both began their careers as freelance designers and consultants for brands, while also building a name for themselves as street style stars.

When the pair decided to launch a womenswear brand together, the underlying design language was an amalgamation of their distinct creative visions and personalities. “Two souls are combined and coexist in the brand: the tomboyish soul and the one that is more feminine and more elegant,” says Tordini.

But the co-founders wanted to take their vision a step further: “Our goal was to create a new aesthetic that was combining the two of us, but also something new, something different that would be like a third entity that was The Attico,” she says.

“The third G,” adds Ambrosio.

“The Attico encompasses a lot of women with a lot of personalities,” continues Tordini. “We like, in our collections, to speak about a lot of characters — to create different universes. So it’s always a different story that we want to tell each season.”

The strength of their combined creative vision and design language captured the interest and subsequent investment from Archive in 2018 — a fortuitously timed partnership that enabled the introduction of structure to the company. “Gilda and I both come from a creative background, not from a business background,” explains Tordini.

When Archive took a 49 percent stake in the business, introducing Marcovaldi as the CEO of the business, the brand built out an overarching strategy in terms of product distribution and communication as well as internalised key operational aspects into The Attico, which were previously “substantially managed by other parties: production licence, commercial agency, so on and so forth,” says Marcovaldi.

“From just having an office, which we didn’t have before, to creating a team and covering all the departments and brand needs — they helped us by creating the operations and the strategic development,” says Ambrosio.

“Every part of the brand growth — creating a supply chain, improving the product quality — we really made what started on such a small scale much bigger, and today we are about 50 employees. It’s a real company.”

Modernising the Hero Product

The Attico translates to “penthouse” in Italian, and their slogan “join us upstairs,” was designed to evoke a vision of opulent elegance and luxurious eveningwear.

“We started with a collection of mono-products — it was just robes and slip dresses at that time, a very small capsule collection of 38 pieces. We wanted to give a very specific, precise idea and concept,” says Ambrosio. In its debut Autumn/Winter 2016 season, Tordini and Ambrosio’s colourful silk-blend dresses, ranged between $1,070 and $3,450 in price.

“We would dress our women from 8pm to 8am,” says Tordini.

In the two and a half years following the Archive investment, the brand expanded its product offering into ready-to-wear “across all the different categories and functionalities, always with the aim of establishing a strong identity and recognisability in each of these categories, in terms of silhouetting and branding codes,” says Marcovaldi. Today, shoes, bags, accessories and beachwear account for 35 percent of the business.

However, with the arrival of Covid-19 and the lockdowns that ensued, prohibiting social outings and the need to dress for them on a global scale, fashion brands focused on eveningwear had to evolve — and at speed — in order to survive.

“It was our necessity and the market necessity that we would change that aspect and it became a 24-hours brand,” says Tordini. “Today, the universe of the woman has evolved — but it evolved with us and it grew with us.”

The Attico broadened its ready-to-wear offering by injecting luxury accents into everyday looks. Expanding into more products and styles also gave way to a new hero product as they rode the post-pandemic wave with a transitional eveningwear look, as covered by BoF’s correspondent Daniel-Yaw Miller in 2023: “Cargo Pants Are Back, But Not the Ones Your Dad Wore”.

Miller documents how oversized cargo pants resonated with a resurgence in post-pandemic party attire, and caused a spike in searches for The Attico in 2021, according to Google Trends. Celebrities like Kim Kardashian, ASAP Rocky, Emily Ratajkowski and Rosalía caused “buying frenzies” for The Attico’s cargo pants, and Tiffany Hsu, Mytheresa’s vice president of womenswear buying, told BoF that their cargo pants “sell out instantly as soon as we put them online.”

As The Attico continues to broaden into new products and categories, the approach is strategic and considered, with strong ties to the brand’s overarching visual codes and The Attico woman. For example, this year, the brand debuted its first day bag, La Passeggiata bag, at their Spring/Summer 2025 fashion show — a concept that was in the works for a year, as an evolution to its collection of evening bags and clutches.

Navigating a Tumultuous Wholesale Market

The wholesale market faces continued disruption in an oversaturated, highly competitive marketplace impacted by shifting consumer behaviour, all of which was magnified during the pandemic, as brands were driven online overnight in a frenzy for survival. Further hurdles were added by faltering supply chains, oversupply of product and an expectation for deep discounting.

The squeeze on wholesalers’ bottom line caused an economic ripple effect, often absorbed by the labels stocked with those retailers — when online fashion site Matchesfashion collapsed earlier this year, it did so owing more than £210 million to brands like Gucci and Anya Hindmarch. The “upheaval in the wholesale market” was cited as the reason behind the demise of independent brand The Vampire’s Wife — one of many independent labels forced to close in recent years.

Indeed, concern around the wholesale market plagued brands like The Attico, whose business rested on global stockists.

“We are an emerging brand, the vast majority of our revenue comes from wholesale,” says Marcovaldi. “From a more macro-channel point of view, my feeling is that the issues are a bit deeper, and […] the advent of all the mega marketplaces aggregators, while bringing money to the system in the short-term, accelerated this model of everything being accessible everywhere, and most often with a bit of discount.”

“Retail-driven megabrands are able to protect themselves, while smaller brands are more affected in terms of price integrity, overall brand health and also diluting the emotional experience for the final consumer, which I think is one of the root causes of driving this overall disaffection with the fashion and luxury industry at the moment.”

Despite this, Marcovaldi states: “I’m quite confident that the underlying demand is resilient and will eventually hold and normalise.”

The Attico leadership intends to manage its wholesale channel carefully, “both in terms of which partners to pick, which items and how much stock to allocate, but also I think developing a deeper and more articulated interconnection and engagement with those same partners.”

In terms of business acceleration, we are prioritising South Korea where we feel that there is a stronger and more immediate fit with the local consumer in terms of product and aesthetic.

In recent years, The Attico has nurtured relationships with their wholesale partners — and, by extension, the end-consumer — by hosting pop-ups around the world, from Antonia in Milan, The Webster in LA and Antonioli in Ibiza to Galeries Lafayette in Paris, Saks in New York, Harvey Nichols in Dubai and Space Mue in Seoul.

“We are more focused on positioning the brand — so pop-ups in Harrods, Selfridges, Bergdorf [Goodman] — all these types of relevant players that position us close to the megabrands, in high-end quality footfall locations. So it was more like a mixed commercial and marketing type of activation,” says Marcovaldi.

He adds: “My feeling is […] only wholesale players [that] would be able to offer a very specific way to find a consumer at a curational or experiential or service level will be able to survive and thrive.”

Indeed, last month, The Attico co-hosted a private dinner with MyTheresa’s CEO and VICs in Milan — an exclusive event strategy the luxury e-tailer and its wholesale brands leverage to woo MyTheresa’s highest spenders.

That said, Marcovaldi still suggests that the brand has “overinvested in terms of retail pop-ups and activations with our key wholesale partners.” As a result, in the short-term, the brand is not planning a broad retail expansion but intends to “push a bit more into DTC, especially online” and expand in APAC, where they have a “more scattered presence” — 85 percent of The Attico’s current business, including retailers, is in Europe and America.

“APAC is host to different markets with different types of consumers and needs,” says Marcovaldi. “When it comes to building the collection, for example, you need to be very specific and tailored in terms of functionality and silhouetting.”

“In terms of business acceleration, we are prioritising South Korea where we feel that there is a stronger and more immediate fit with the local consumer in terms of product and aesthetic,” he adds, explaining that he believes The Attico, as a “fashion-forward type of brand” will find it easier to enter the market there.

Humanising the Marketing Strategy

Since launch, The Attico co-founders have acknowledged their “It girl” status as street style favourites on the fashion week circuit was beneficial to the brand’s initial success — something Tordini has never shied away from.

“[Social media] helped us launch, but it’s a marketing tool like anything else, and can only go so far,” Tordini previously told BoF. “It gets you to a point where people are interested but you then need to keep up credibility.”

Indeed, the pair continue to explore new ways in which they can reach new audiences, whether through new platforms like TikTok — “we could be better. It’s a completely different language” — or of-the-moment emerging apps like Houseparty during the pandemic, which fit neatly into the evolution of the brand as it grew from being a solely eveningwear label.

Houseparty even led to a street casting through the app for their “Life at Large” project, encouraging community and connection among their consumers during lockdown — at a time of extreme uncertainty and, for many, sadness and solitude.

“It’s important for us to create strong content, strong visuals that are effective and send a strong message. Then I think it’s important to be honest and sometimes just communicate a message that really reflects how Gilda and I are feeling at that moment. It’s important that it’s a language that gets you close to people somehow, so we are trying to go in that direction,” says Tordini.

I think it’s important to be honest and sometimes just communicate a message that really reflects how Gilda and I are feeling at that moment.

The duo have also leaned into their own personal experience and vulnerability, such as in their most recent runway show, entitled ‘The Sound of Breaking Glass’, with models emerging from a hall populated with suspended murano glass chandeliers, designed to reflect the pain and fragility of a break-up.

“Before that, I think both of us would have never thought to go that personal — it can be something that you don’t want to tell anyone because it’s personal, but it was much easier [than we thought]. It was another experimentation in how you can create art and how much creativity can come from something that’s happened to you,” says Ambrosio.

Setting Their Own Schedule

It was only the September before, for Spring/Summer 2024, that The Attico staged its first-ever runway show, featuring on-schedule at Milan Fashion Week. The brand’s own coverage of the event stated: “The Attico women finally come alive, in their plurality and manifold personalities.”

Opens in new window

Models paraded the collection through a residential street in the Arco della Pace neighbourhood, with a star-studded front row reclining on leather sofas lining the street. Attendees included Gucci’s creative director Sabato De Sarno, footwear designer Amina Muaddi and “The White Lotus” star Sabrina Impacciatore.

Showcasing the label’s celebrated combination of feminine yet tomboy — the sheer and sexy with the oversized and structural — its new foray into bags and accessories were a celebrated focal point, which they plan to emulate this season with the newly-launched La Passeggiata bag.

“It features the same asymmetrical silhouetting of our key families in the bags like the 8:30[pm], the Midnight, the Sunrise, and all the same kind of detailing — like the handles, the pullers and the triangle features. This is the way we try to approach category development: developing very specific codes and recognisability,” says Marcovaldi.

The Attico leveraged its see-now-buy-now strategy solely for this product during the runway show, creating hype and focus on the product. “We had our first delivery of the “La Passeggiata” bag after the show and it went really well,” says Tordini.

While for many the see-now-buy-now strategy has proven somewhat ineffective, The Attico has maintained it as an approach, seeing continued engagement since introducing the format with its Spring/Summer 2021 collection. Unusually, their designs have sufficient hype and consumer connection to prompt customers to pay out on sight.

The brand also remains strategically targeted in its accessories rollout and its events schedule more generally. “The current strategy foresees one show per year, during September fashion week, while working on different types of activations throughout the calendar,” says Marcovaldi. “The fashion shows are, let’s say, meaningful tools for communication and marketing purposes, both at brand level and product level.”

This is the way we try to approach category development: developing very specific codes and recognisability.

“This also provides Gilda and Giorgia with a bit more freedom in terms of exploring and experimenting with different creative formats and concepts,” he adds.

Alongside its show schedule — and events like the recent VIC MyTheresa dinner — the brand has hosted events around Milan, including a creative upcycling workshop with students at the Museo del Novecento in partnership with Nike and launched a capsule collection with restaurant Sant Ambroeus when it re-opened.

It has also had tie-ups with other fashion brands, big and small: in 2019, The Attico and Re/Done, known for its pre-loved denim, launched a sustainable capsule collection of upcycled vintage products; in 2020, the brand collaborated with Nike on an exclusive Air Jordan 1 Mid “Milan” and for the second time last May on a personalised Nike Cortez, available only for the community attending the event in Naples.

In fact, The Attico’s Spring/Summer 2025 presentation featured further Nike-branded products, which some believe hints at another Nike collaboration to come.

“There are some traditional aspects and ways of working in the industry which we don’t necessarily [feel the] need to oblige,” says Marcovaldi. “What we really want is to develop and craft strategies that can allow us to continuously strengthen the brand language and maximise the engagement and energy with the final consumer.”

Indeed, the brand has built out its narrative and offering at a steady but consistent pace — whether through its gradual introduction of new categories or selective approach to shows and events. Its leadership is focused less on the commercial potential of its projects, and more concerned on protecting and strengthening the creative vision that led to The Attico’s instant success eight years ago.

“Internally, we rarely talk about financial aspirations and it’s not because we don’t care about the topline — we’re really attentive to budgets and all that — but we want everyone inside the brand to be laser-focused on our collective purpose, which is to create a legacy for this brand, making it generationally relevant,” says Marcovaldi.

While Tordini has previously voiced aspirations to evolve The Attico into a lifestyle brand, eventually introducing interiors to its clothing and accessories lines, any evolution in product and categories will likely emerge through organic opportunities and authentic partnerships.

“Relevance is key. Brand strength is key,” he adds. “We are very proud of the team we have as well as of the first years of the brand. But we are also aware that what we have done as of today is still quite limited and very far from our ambition: to reach that we’ll need to keep pushing and do better.”

Discover the exclusive La Passeggiata bag created by The Attico as part of this partnership with Shop With Google.

This is a sponsored feature paid for by Shop With Google as part of a BoF partnership.