Eredi Chiarini

The Eredi Chiarini story starts in 1894, when a woman named Genni opened a fabric shop in Florence, the seed of what became a menswear institution three generations later. Her daughter Norma and son-in-law Otello later ran the business, keeping it a modest fabric and haberdashery trade, including through the 1940s. The shift came with the third generation: grandsons Marco and Andrea Chiarini opened the first Eredi Chiarini menswear boutique in Piazza Beccaria in 1970, a move that proved more successful than expected. In May 1982 the family opened a boutique in Florence's historic center on Via Porta Rossa. Two years later, in 1984, they brought Ralph Lauren to Italy for the first time, opening the country's first Polo Ralph Lauren store on Via Tornabuoni in Florence, a licensing partnership that placed Eredi Chiarini at the center of how American sportswear tailoring first reached the Italian market. A fourth generation, Carlotta Chiarini, joined the business in 2009. The company still trades from Via Porta Rossa 33/R (it returned there in 2015, at the Torre dei Saggi), running as a family-owned menswear and womenswear retailer carrying in-house and licensed collections, more than 130 years after Genni's original fabric counter.