Piumino Quilt jacket

Where did they come from? These jackets you see on the streets everywhere in Italy. Everybody suddenly seems to wear them, even the elderly, though the jackets seem designed for young people. And even those who want to be taken seriously have traded their severe gabardino’s for the shiny, frivolous modern jacket. And the colours are back! Ever since I live in Italy I hardly ever saw a joyfully coloured jacket or coat. All Italians wear black, it seemed. Or grey, or dark brown. But the playful design of the ’piumino’ as it is called seems to invite the use of a wider range of colours as well. Finally!

Quilt piumino jacket

The name does not suggest the elegance that the jacket in reality has. A piumino is a down-filled jacket whereas in fact it looks more like the trapunto with its stitched structure. When we were starting our bed and breakfast it took us ages to find reasonably priced bed linnen. We discovered then that an Italian bedroom cannot be without a trapunto, the large dow filled stitched quilt-like cover for the bed. And the trapunto has transformed into a jacket? Would the fashion and design prone Italian cover himself in a blanket and go out on the street that way? To become the laughing stock of everybody? No, certainly not. The giacca piumino is an elegant, playful jacket, a joy for the eye of the beholder. I just have to get adjusted to these gray, serious men wearing them. Will they last?