Elle Made in Italy #18 – Cristina Parodi and Daniela Palazzi: “Starting again from Bergamo with elegance.” – Elle Italy

The founders and designers of CRIDA and their vision of the fashion to come #startfromhere

Cristina and Daniela love to dance. Preferably in the summer, on the beach, barefoot. They are both passionate about yoga, but while Cristina goes walking or jogging every morning on the hills of Bergamo, Daniela never misses an art exhibition. Cristina loves wine and is excellent at making cocktails. Daniela is practically teetotal but is very skilled with her hands—she draws, colors, cuts, and sews. Cristina, on the other hand, is hopeless with manual tasks but loves reading, storytelling, and singing. Cristina and Daniela have been friends for twenty years, live in Bergamo, have seven children between them, and have always shared a great passion for fashion. With the “complete” surname Parodi, the former is also a busy yet radiant TV journalist, while the latter, Daniela Palazzi, is more rooted in her city and interior design. Right before the last fashion shows, they realized their dream: launching a brand, Crida, which would be a synthesis of their names and the telegraphic quintessence of their personalities: 10 dresses + 2 outerwear pieces, with a perfect fit on both despite a couple of sizes difference. Then came the pandemic, the lockdown, and the storm of Covid, which cruelly raged through their city. Now that the grip has slightly loosened, they are ready to take stock. And it is Cristina, the most at ease with “handling” interviews, who immediately takes the floor.

Well, let’s just say it wasn’t exactly a smooth start…

Indeed, we couldn’t have thought of a less suitable moment to debut on the market. But we are from Bergamo—people who never give up, as we say here—and despite the difficulties, we don’t want to abandon this dream we’ve cultivated for a long time. we debuted in January and February with many orders and great enthusiasm, but from the beginning of March, everything stopped; we had many cancellations, so now the season is an uphill battle. However, we believe that the crisis, which inevitably affects the entire sector, will lead to a change in fashion and a slowing down of the exaggerated pace it had reached. Giorgio Armani was the first to say it: the system must slow down and become more human again, while Saint Laurent announced it would only show when the Maison is creatively ready for a collection. We at Crida, in our own small way, have thought of timeless dresses that focus on quality since the beginning: so we believe we chose, long before the pandemic, a style and values that are more contemporary today than ever.

How did your “crazy idea” come about?

Our company is a small start-up, born last autumn but long thought about and dreamed of by two friends, Daniela and myself. We are both from Bergamo, we’ve known each other for many years, and we share the same passion for fashion. We often find ourselves dressed identically without having agreed on it. We both love dresses, and for several years we’ve been making them for ourselves. Daniela draws very well and has an incredible eye for colors and fabrics, while I’ve always enjoyed wearing her creations and giving her advice on fit and style. Last summer, we decided to propose a capsule of 10 dresses in silk and cotton, and thus the Crida adventure began, immediately receiving excellent feedback from industry insiders. For now, we don’t have employees: we do everything ourselves, together with another friend who handles administration, relying on Italian manufacturing workshops in our area.

Your strong point?

We only make dresses, and we want to be recognized for exactly this product, which we love dearly. Our goal is to bring women back to wearing dresses from morning to night, feeling both comfortable and elegant. Our pieces are versatile—perfect with sneakers or an elegant sandal—not tight-fitting but fluid, without zippers, and with refined details in the sleeves and collars. We prefer solid colors or small patterns of stripes and polka dots over busy prints. The Crida woman is never flashy, but if she enters a room, she is certainly noticed for her refinement and style.

Will values be an increasingly integral part of the product?

Ours is a project born from the heart and the passion of two women who, at 50, decided it’s never too late to realize a dream. We believe in “Made in Italy” as the highest expression of style and creativity. Our dresses are made exclusively with Italian silks and cottons, which are natural and environmentally sustainable. We don’t want to offer a “clever” or trendy product that’s good for one season, but pieces that represent timeless elegance, to be kept in the wardrobe for a long time because they never tire. They are dresses beautiful to touch and wear, the result of extensive research into materials and style, because for us fashion is content, emotion, and Italian identity. Not just trend.

Elle launched a hashtag #STARTFROMHERE, which seems tailor-made for you. So: where will you start again from?

We want to start again from Bergamo, the city most affected in the world by this pandemic—the one that had to pay the highest price in fatigue, pain, and human lives. After two months of silence and funeral bells, after seeing it on its knees—it, usually so alive, productive, and hardworking—after losing an entire generation of elderly people swept away by the virus without the caress of a family member nearby, we can only start again from here, proud to represent a population that doesn’t back down from fatigue, commitment, and sweat. We at Crida have rolled up our sleeves too; we are creating a new collection, and despite the economic difficulties, we have decided to donate 10 percent of the proceeds from online sales to the Cesvi project, which helps the lonely elderly and the most vulnerable people. #westartagainfrombergamo.

by Federica Fiori. Source: https://bit.ly/2U6SB4T