Gabriella Artioli - Designer's profile

Gabriella Artioli seen by FABIOLA PALMERI, journalist, in "My inseparable Akita Chan" ("NippoNews" 1st October 2012).

[...] In a midsummer peaceful morning, a friend sharing the same passion as me for Japanese culture, rang me up to tell me about her mother's new activity: a little fashion company manufacturing refined and unique silk scarves, entirely made in Italy.

A few days after our conversation, I interviewed Gabriella Artioli, a beautiful lady, refined designer, with a particular love for scarves and dogs.

"I love scarves; they’re useful and can solve several situations. For example they protect from a sudden stream of air, from too cold air-conditioning, or they can be used as shelters from sun and rain. At the seaside, scarves can become sarongs; they’re so useful in train or at the cinema to cover the seat in a thin and delicate way; and for many other reasons. They are accessories that will never go out of fashion – Gabriella reassures.
I decided to personally create scarves for two fundamental reasons: first of all, every time I look for one, I never find any of large size, of light silk but also of excellent quality and, above all, despite the huge variety of colours and images that exists on the market, there is a total lack of scarves with pictures of dog, while I love them so much."

Here’s how the idea of this enterprise was born, that is to produce a little but delightful canine encyclopaedia made of silk voile scarves printed in Como’s silk factories, with the impalpable weight of 50 grams, with high-definition and real-size pictures of the dogs chosen by Gabriella Artioli and with the backgrounds realised by the Japanese artist Hiroaki Asahara.

"I dedicated my first creation to my dog Beaugeste, a white Borzoi (Russian wolfhound) that I brought home from a kennel, where he was stucked after a quarrel and that lived with me for seven years."

While telling me this story, Gabriella opened some dark-red little silk bags that shine like gem stones, from which she pulled out one after the other, some veils measuring one metre and sixty by one metre and twenty, real works of art.

The Beaugeste scarf was gorgeous, with black and white background, framed by writings in seven different languages that represent the name of the precise dog breed.

She also showed me the creation with six different types of Basset Hounds, all together on a blue and red background; the one with six Jack Russel, white Terriers with brown pretty little faces; and the sweet little doggie Gordeya, shyly curled up on an autumn leaves colour background.

At last Gabriella Artioli shows me my dream scarf: on a light blue, grey and brick-red background, in all his aristocratic elegance, a wonderful ginger Akita of seventy centimetres at least, was staring at me in a reassuring way.

He was there: standing on his strong, muscular but agile legs. It was definitely a male and had small dark eyes, that communicated attention and docility at the same time.

A very few instants were enough to make me decide that that Akita would have be mine, and even if made of silk, this Hachicko will never abandon me, but he will always wrap me up, protecting me in the course of time.