Armenia-born Stefano Serapian first arrived in Venice in the 1920s, before settling in the Lombard capital of Milan, where in 1928 he would found his eponymous label – Serapian Milano – comprising an array of fine leather goods for the city’s burgeoning bourgeois classes. He worked alongside his wife Gina Flori, and by 1945 the pair had a bespoke atelier in the city centre, their boldly coloured designs and intricate ‘mosaico’ technique – ‘somewhere between Byzantine mosaics and Japanese origami’ – having attracted the Italian jet-set who spread Serapian’s renown around the world.
Now, almost a century after its founding, Serapian continues to place made-in-Italy craftsmanship at the centre of its business – continuing not just its signature ‘mosaico’, but an array of other techniques and fabrics, from butter-soft cachemire leather and coated canvas to a recent sustainable ‘leather’ made from Italian grapes.
