Page 81 - Mediterraneo e dintorni - nr 29

PAtriziA PAPAndreA
Weaving art, history and culture

She designed for Renato Balestra’s
brand and felt quite satisfied, but
she felt the contradiction of having
to interpret other people’s projects
and not those she was feeding inside
herself with enormous passion. So she
decided to look at other opportunities,
closer to her way of perceiving fashion
and even closer to her native land,
Calabria, which has always been her
privileged source of inspiration and
precious cultural heritage. And so, after
her professional experiences in Rome,
Milan and Brescia, she returns to her
Caulonia. She is Patrizia Papandrea,
a dreamer, a craftswoman, an
entrepreneur capable of bringing out
of the splendour of the history of her
land - from Magna Graecia onwards -
the inspirations for her textile products.
Territorial marketing, one might even
say, since her creations are often a way
to rediscover and divulge the historical,
artistic and landscape heritage present
in this area of Italy. And there is really
a lot to be inspired in Calabria. It is
enough to walk in the countryside
to find oneself in front of immense
expanses of broom reminiscent of the
patient work of women, almost like
an archaic religious rite, of collecting,
typing, defibration, spinning and
weaving to make the trousseau of future
brides and other textile products that,
today, Papandrea retrieves to make
fashion accessories such as backpacks,
bags, jewelry or shoes. Or just visit some
characteristic villages such as Caulonia
(the ancient Castelvetere), where even
today women still weave at the loom,
to rediscover the sericulture that she
has been practicing in small quantities
for about four years, in her laboratory
of experimentation from which come
out “jewels” in silk. Patrizia Papandrea’s
creations are an added value for the
territory, since they are made mainly
with the intention of promoting the
beauty of Mediterranean places. To
give further value to her “return” there
is, moreover, a project called “Let’s
dress history and culture”: historians,
archaeologists, doctors, writers,
journalists, have put themselves at stake
in a photographic book as wearers of
scarves in pure silk and cashmere, for
their respective collections focused on
pìnakes (votive tablets) of Locri Epizefiri,
on the Hellenistic mosaics of Kaulonìa,
on the Greek language of Calabria,
on the Occitan language and also the

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