Italy is the only country in the world where culture was born first and then the nation, the only country in the world where beauty was born first and then art. TheUnique was conceived to celebrate everything that makes our country special, and I dare to say it, beyond geographical and linguistic boundaries. While the designation of Made in Italy encompasses the excellence produced in our country, in my personal definition, it cannot exclude the Italian thought, ideas and philosophy that serve as a model or inspiration in every part of the world.
Because there is nothing in the world that is beautiful that does not have even the slightest reference to Italy. And if it does not have it, it means it is ugly. There is no escaping it. Our strength lies precisely in its universality. The beautiful-Italian equation is a kind concession I feel to make to all those who may have had some difficulty with Italian literature. Let us go in order and explain: Italian literature is the main subject in the school experience of all Italian citizens. Since elementary school, language is learned through literature. Italian is the first subject on the report card.
This means that our identity is our literary identity. The true glory of Italy lies in its culture. Having said that, we should exclude a priori those who, for example, do not know Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Ariosto, Tasso. But times have changed and we need to revise the canon that defines Italian identity to open it to other concepts, other realities. Can one be Italian without knowing the XXVI canto of Inferno? Yes, and TheUnique is here to prove it, because those endecasyllables can also materialize in other forms, fashion, food, industry, design, innovation with the same result achieved by Alighieri: pure poetry.
Whoever makes a nice pair of shoes, Italian of course, after all, in his own way, is a literary person with enough titles to end up in the Treccani. The perception of an Italian identity, then, that goes beyond literature and politics. There is more: if political identity is disunited, cultural identity, in the broad concept of the term, is recognizable in unity. Who among us does not recognize himself or herself in a plate of spaghetti pomodoro e basilico or a fiery red Ferrari? Being Italian today means belonging to a cultural community in which, as we said, beauty is the main distinguishing feature. In short, our country’s fame is due to the charm and seduction we arouse in every part of the world. And this is not written in any book, not codified in any manual. In this, too, TheUnique is an exception.
