What Roy Roger's is known for
Italy's first jeans brand, launched by Francesco Bacci's Manifatture 7 Bell in Campi Bisenzio near Florence, after Bacci struck a denim supply deal with North Carolina's Cone Mills in the early 1950s.
Roy Roger's is widely credited as Italy's first domestic blue-jeans brand. It grew out of Manifatture 7 Bell, a garment workshop that Francesco Bacci and his wife Giuliana had already built in Campi Bisenzio, near Florence, making handcrafted cotton and gabardine trousers. Sources give the founding year as either 1949 or 1952. Bacci travelled to the United States and secured a supply agreement with Cone Mills Corporation, then the leading American denim manufacturer, bringing authentic denim production to Italy for the first time. Roy Roger's also produced the first Italian women's jeans collection in the 1950s, and by the 1960s the factory was turning out up to 20,000 pairs a day.
How ORBIS reads this city
Best for — Denim, American-inspired
Italy
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