MV History
Montanaro Vintage is a container of quality vintage, ancient workmanship, eclectic selection and fine garments, selected slowly over time.
Montanaro Vintage wants to do its part in the necessary defeat of fast fashion, which has nothing cool about it.
True luxury is indulging in a unique sartorial piece that has a story to tell, a historical value or an unknown life that is beautiful to invent or imagine.
Montanaro Vintage investigates the roots of handmade clothing and accessories in Italy, of French "savoir-faire", in their evolution, from the trousseaus slowly sewn by the women of the country to the first industrial garments from specialized laboratories.
Montanaro Vintage is committed to offering authentic garments, with a story behind them, chosen for their history or for a detail, workmanship or particularly fine fabric.
Montanaro Vintage does not have a single style, it leaves the doors open to wonder, fantasy, the game of dressing up and dressing up, without too many rules.
Fashion is changeable, quality is eternal.
A quality garment does not need to follow any fashion, it will adapt to every season.
Nice to meet you, I'm Paola!
Born and raised in the Piacenza countryside, I literally took my first steps in the home-atelier of my aunt Celestina, who was not only a village seamstress, but also a point of reference for the bourgeois clientele of the entire province.
I remember my first approach to fashion: caressing the multiple textures of Italian fabrics, rolled into little boats with raw-cut tails that invite the hand to touch.
Leafing through "Hola" and sample catalogs of fine fabrics every day, I learn to distinguish quality, physical characteristics, weights and finishes, inlays and weaves, quilting and layering.
The compositions were precious and natural, the textures were complex and the materials interconnected, a now unknown world, that of "Ready-to-Ear High Fashion".
This term isn't even used anymore.
The world of fabrics is the starting point of every choice.
At home there has always been the custom of inheriting mountains of beautiful used clothes from the daughters of mum's friends.
It was a completely normal and highly anticipated event during the season changes.
Over the years, while learning to sew, I also collect boats and stocks from historic shops that unfortunately have had to lower their shutters.
After linguistic high school I studied at the Secoli Institute to become a women's clothing pattern maker.
After 12 years as a pattern maker, first for industrial Made in Italy and then for fast fashion, I have developed within myself the awareness of wanting to improve the world in which we live, even if with small gestures.
Rediscovering my roots becomes an urgency for me, a revolutionary act in a world that moves forward at the speed of light
I needed to take a step back, to uncover the beauty of a dusty past, to build a conscious, good, slow, timeless future.
I remember how much I liked wrapping myself in those fabrics, opening the antique trunks in the attic, how much I enjoyed inheriting the used clothes of the daughters of my mother's friends, how much I liked trying on my grandmother's jackets (made by my aunt, with the same care he used for paying customers. same love. same perfectionism.)
Having moved to Riccione for work, I began to exhibit at the Sunday markets around Romagna, I talked to people, I felt that people, despite being addicted to ready fashion and fast fashion, wanted someone to guide them towards quality and aware.
After all, vintage is awareness, but it is also fun, curiosity, uniqueness.
Today Montanaro Vintage is a small company that has a great desire to grow to contribute to a new concept of authenticity, quality and beauty.
