FOPE

FOPE began in 1929, when Umberto Cazzola opened an artisan goldsmith's workshop in Vicenza, a city with a long-standing jewelry-making tradition. His son Odino later expanded the workshop into a larger factory and invented an expanding watch strap design. The next generation, Umberto and Ines Cazzola, developed the innovations most associated with the brand today: the Novecento mesh, a soft woven gold chain made by hooking components together without soldering, and the patented Flex'it technology, which builds elasticity into gold jewelry using microscopic 18-karat gold springs inserted into the construction. The FOPE name itself is an acronym adopted in the 1950s, standing for Fabbrica Oreficeria Preziosi Esportazione — roughly, 'precious goldsmithing export factory.' The company has since passed to a fourth generation, under Giulia Cazzola, and became a publicly listed company. The workshop remains based in Vicenza, where the Flex'it and Novecento techniques are still produced using the family's original methods.