Sealup

Sealup was founded in Milan in 1935 by husband and wife Piero and Germana Chiesa, who opened their raincoat workshop on Via Bronzetti with what the company describes as an early conviction that quality would matter in the developing ready-to-wear apparel market. The brand name is a deliberate coinage: 'Sealup' merges the English word 'sea' with 'lup', Milanese dialect for wolf, tying the waterproof product to a single invented concept of the sea.

Production expanded from the 1950s onward, and in 1959 the company moved its headquarters to a new plant on Via Gallarate designed by architect Renato Bazzoni. That building was furnished with Olivetti-designed furnishings and, notably, housed one of the first mechanographic centers — an early ancestor of computing technology — ever applied to a clothing manufacturer in Italy.

Ownership and craftsmanship have stayed within the Chiesa family across three generations, with raincoats remaining the house's defining product: rubberized cotton and wool coats positioned as a marker of Italian tailoring, worn over the decades by public figures including First Ladies. The Via Bronzetti origins and the 1935 date are still central to how the brand presents itself today.