On the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the sartorial fashion brand Canali, NABA students were invited to engage with an iconic story of elegance, style, and craftsmanship, while also looking toward the future and innovation. The partnership between the renowned Italian menswear company and the Academy resulted in two distinct artistic contributions conceived and created by NABA students, a rich blend of interdisciplinary creativity and talent, spanning fashion, art, and technological innovation.
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NABA for Canali: the Italian Lifestyle through a 90-year history
Since 1934, when Giovanni and Giacomo Canali founded the company producing men’s tailored garments in Triuggio, Brianza, the Italian brand has navigated and shaped the transformations of the fashion world, combining elegance, craftsmanship, research, and high-quality materials with innovation. Over time, it has increasingly embodied the concept of Italian lifestyle, excellence, and luxury.
Students from NABA’s Fashion Design and Visual Arts areas reinterpreted the new capsule collection created by Canali for its 90th anniversary and developed a comprehensive artistic project, presented at the Sala delle Cariatidi in Milan’s Palazzo Reale, which included sculptural works and digital creations celebrating the brand's history and identity, its heritage, and its forward-looking vision.
NABA’s installations inspired by the new capsule collection for Canali’s anniversary
The first part of the artistic project developed by NABA for Canali, with the valuable participation of Stefano Canali, CEO of the company, and guided by NABA lecturers Marco Bongiorni, Gloria Maria Cappelletti, Ettore Favini, and Martin Romeo, took shape in a series of sculptural installations inspired by the brand’s values and the themes of living conveyed by the anniversary capsule collection. The collection features a complete wardrobe in shades of grey and green, retracing the brand’s heritage and innovating it in light of the most contemporary research, with the iconic raincoats and tailored men’s suits that have made Canali’s lifestyle famous worldwide.
Home, architecture, landscape, shadow, temporality, curtain, language, play: these are some of the keywords from which the young NABA artists began, along with the fabrics of the new capsule collection, to deepen their individual research. The students then explored the history and characteristics of traditional homes of nomadic cultures, reinterpreting this cultural heritage through Canali’s story and identity and using the fabrics from the capsule collection dedicated to the 90th anniversary to create a series of modular sculptures and installations that could be dismantled and reassembled.
Digital art and Artificial Intelligence meet Canali’s heritage
The second artistic contribution took the path of technological innovations with the production of “Canali Horizons: A Journey from Heritage to Tomorrow”, a digital artwork created by NABA students using Artificial Intelligence: a video narrative that celebrates Canali’s journey through time. Starting with an aerial view of Brianza and progressing through abstract representations of Canali’s past, present, and future, the video encapsulates the brand's evolution. The narrative moves from monochromatic depictions of Canali’s origins to vibrant descriptions of its contemporary diversity, culminating in a visionary glimpse of a future where urban and natural environments harmoniously intertwine.
It is this fresh and original forward-looking perspective that led Canali, on its 90th anniversary, to choose NABA and the young creativity of its students. Both projects, developed by different student groups, unfold a living archive of the company’s visual memory, intertwining the past, present, and future of the Italian brand. With hybrid approaches, blending fashion, art, and new technologies, sculpture, and digital mediums, the final outputs highlight the unique talents and interpretative skills of NABA students. They also embody and celebrate Canali’s ongoing commitment to embracing new technologies and perspectives, firmly rooted in its heritage of craftsmanship, style, and Made in Italy, while looking decisively toward the future.
