Italian company WP Lavori in Corso will receive this year’s Pitti Immagine Uomo Award. They will be awarded within the opening ceremony of the show tomorrow morning at Palazzo Vecchio, in Piazza della Signoria.
WP was founded in Bologna back in 1982, thanks to the intuition of Giuseppe and his daughter Cristina Calori (today’s WP president), after the latter came back from a US trip with WP’s current creative director Andrea Canè and brought home many brands and products unknown to most Italian consumers.
Born as a small family company, WP helped discover and launch many innovative and high-research ideas to the Italian market, mostly outdoor, sportswear apparel and accessories brands from the US and UK. Over the years, they introduced brands like Barbour (still distributed by them today) but also Vans, Nautica, Hang Ten and Rockport when no one had heard about them in Italy yet. In 1987, the team took part in Pitti Uomo for the first time under the artistic direction of Luca Caccioni. They also started producing the first Vespa apparel and accessory collection as a licensing agreement in the ‘90s.
WP launched many other initiatives through the years, including the launch of WP Store, the first Italian concept store offering a diverse range of as apparel, objetcs, books, newspapers, art, music and comics publications from all over the world.
Furthermore, WP has established a distribution and licensing division for international brands and acquired the majority of the iconic US brand Woolrich in 2016. WP also owns the license for the worldwide management of iconic British brand Baracuta.
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