L'Italo-Americano

IMPRESA ITALIA MADE IN ITALY TOP BRANDS BUSINESS & ECONOMY THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 12 L'Italo-Americano W h e n t h e I t a l i a n a t h l e t e s w a l k e d i n t o t h e stadium at the opening cere- mony of the Milano–Cortina Winter Games, many viewers probably noticed something before they even identified a particular face or sport: their black uniforms, outlined with the tricolor, and their cool winter beanies. Dark and rec- ognizably contemporary, you could wear this kind of cloth- ing while traveling on a win- ter morning, without looking out of place away from the slopes. Unmistakenly Italian, and not only because of the tricolore details, those clean lines and understated confi- dence belong to a real myth of f a s h i o n : t h e o u t f i t s w e r e s i g n e d E A 7 E m p o r i o Armani, a reminder that, for Italy, the Olympic divisa has long been associated with Re Giorgio. E A 7 i t s e l f w a s b o r n i n 2004, when Giorgio Armani decided to create a line with a "strongly sporty connota- tion," and even its name car- ries a small manifesto: the number 7 is meant to evoke values such as dedication and teamwork, the things that sport asks of the body long before it returns the favor with a medal. What really mattered, though, was the timing, because EA7 arrived at a moment when technical clothing was no longer con- fined to training sessions: athletes traveled constantly, appeared in public, and lived in-between spaces like air- ports, buses, mixed zones, hotel lobbies, where the line between performance and representation blurred. The Olympic connection did not appear overnight, t h o u g h , w h i c h g i v e s t h e Milano-Cortina uniforms a longer context. CONI's own communications frame the p a r t n e r s h i p a s a m u l t i - Games relationship, refer- encing EA7 as official uni- forms for Italian teams going back to London 2012 and Sochi 2014, and continuing across later Olympic cycles. By May 2025, when Armani presented the Milano-Corti- na kits at the Armani/Privé Club in Milan, the event was d e s c r i b e d a s y e t a n o t h e r chapter in a collaboration that had become familiar to both athletes and the public. This type of continuity is i m p o r t a n t b e c a u s e t h e Olympic uniform is not the suit of armor athletes wear while competing; it is what they wear when they are visi- ble as a delegation, when a skier and a curler and a speed skater suddenly share the same frame. EA7 leaned into that role by treating Team Italia's wardrobe as a coher- e n t s y s t e m – o u t e r w e a r , knitwear, pieces meant for cold and travel – rather than a single look. The official licensed Team Italy collection is presented by Armani itself a s a d e d i c a t e d l i n e f o r Milano-Cortina, which tells you something about how central the partnership has become: it is not just a one- off uniform, but a retail col- lection built around the idea of national representation. O u t s i d e t h e O l y m p i c s , EA7's footprint is easier to s e e b e c a u s e i t i s w r i t t e n directly into club identities. In basketball, for example, "EA7 Emporio Armani" is the t i t l e s p o n s o r o f O l i m p i a Milano, while in football, the relationship with Napoli has been described by both the club and Armani as an ongo- ing collaboration, with EA7 confirmed as technical spon- sor; the partnership has also extended to off-field formal- w e a r t h r o u g h E m p o r i o Armani. Even in Olympic- p a t h d i s c i p l i n e s , E A 7 appeared as a technical spon- sor: CONI and the Italian V o l l e y b a l l F e d e r a t i o n announced in 2017 that EA7 was to dress the Italian beach volleyball athletes through the Olympic cycle leading to Tokyo 2020. What makes the story feel particularly "Made in Italy," p e r h a p s , i s h o w E A 7 a l s o b u i l d s i t s p u b l i c i d e n t i t y around athletes who function as bridges between sport and everyday life, the people who make technical clothing legi- ble to non-specialists because f a n s a l r e a d y f o l l o w t h e i r careers. Armani's own EA7 "athletes" page lists names f r o m t h e c u r r e n t I t a l i a n sports scene, including tennis p l a y e r s L u c i a n o D a r d e r i , Lucia Bronzetti, and Matteo Arnaldi. In winter sports, outlets covering the brand's O l y m p i c w o r k n o t e d t h a t O l y m p i c c h a m p i o n S o f i a Goggia became an ambas- sador for EA7 in 2023, which connects the Milan-Cortina narrative to a face strongly associated with Italy's mod- ern skiing identity. I t ' s e a s y t o p i c t u r e a n c i e n t R o m e a s a w o r l d o f m a r b l e , t o g a s , a n d p u b l i c baths, but everyday life had its practical infra- structure too, and laundry was one of them. Romans didn't rely only on household washing: in towns and cities, they had professional laun- dries called fullonicae, run by fullones (fullers), where people could take garments to be cleaned, brightened, a n d f i n i s h e d f o r a f e e . I n o t h e r w o r d s , R o m e h a d a dedicated "lavanderia" trade with its own spaces, tools, and routines. Pompeii gives the clear- e s t s n a p s h o t o f h o w t h i s worked, because several ful- lonicae survived there in rec- ognizable form. One of the most famous is the so-called Fullonica of Stephanus, a b u s y , e f f i c i e n t w o r k s h o p , thanks to which we learned a lot about laundry practices in those times. At the start of the process were large basins where cloth was worked by foot – per- haps unglamorous, but cer- t a i n l y a n e f f e c t i v e w a y t o drive cleaning agents deep into the fibers. From there, textiles moved through rins- ing areas supplied by water, and then into later stages that were as important as washing itself: drying, brush- ing, and "finishing" the fabric s o i t l o o k e d p r e s e n t a b l e again. Fullers would use alkaline substances to lift grime and grease, and ancient sources describe the use of ammo- n i a - r i c h l i q u i d s – o f t e n derived from urine – to help whiten and degrease wool. It may sound shocking now, but in a pre-industrial world that didn't know complex cleaning agents and had no a c c e s s t o c h e m i c a l l y enhanced products, people would use what had been tried, tested, and proven to work. W h a t ' s p e r h a p s m o s t striking is how similar to today's laundries Rome's ful- lonicae are: they were an organized service industry, with specialized labor and a customer base large enough to support multiple business- es in the same town, just like t o d a y . I n a s o c i e t y w h e r e appearance carried social weight, because clean, bright clothing signaled respectabil- ity, outsourcing laundry was a quintessential part of social and communal life. A simple invention, the fullonica, but o n e t h a t r e m i n d s u s h o w Roman "inventions" weren't always grand machines or monuments: sometimes they were simply a smart idea, just like turning a basic need into a public service. At work in an ancient Roman fullonica (Image created with DALL-E 2) Rome's fullonicae: the world's first laundry service A r m a n i E A 7 : f o r a l l t h e p e o p l e l o v i n g fashion and sports EA7 stores are present all over the world (Photo: Anastasia Burlakova/Dreamstime)

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