Boglioli

Boglioli was founded in 1974 as a family-run Italian business. Mario Boglioli established the company with his brother Stefano, working out of Gambara in the province of Brescia.

The operation had deeper roots. A Boglioli men’s tailoring business first opened in Gambara around 1900. By the 1960s, the family ran a highly regarded third-party manufacturing factory, producing on behalf of other houses.

The 1974 setup marked the beginning of a transition away from OEM supply toward a label under their own name. The proposition was a softer Italian jacket, and the label came to be defined by what one retailer called its unconstructed look. That look became its signature.

Menswear is the brand’s entire vocabulary, and the jacket sits at the center of it. In 1987, Boglioli presented its first collection under its own name at Pitti Uomo. Younger brother Pierluigi Boglioli joined the family business in the early 1990s, and through the decade he developed the garment-dyeing and deconstruction techniques that would define the house.

The signature jacket was a deconstructed cashmere piece with a vintage feel. Its washed-out colors came through garment-dyeing, a process in which the dye is added to the piece only after it has been stitched.

That piece was officially unveiled to the market in 2000 as the K-Jacket. It drew on the soft-shoulder Neapolitan tradition associated with houses like Kiton and Cesare Attolini, while pushing further toward casual wear through color and finish. Offered in many different materials, the K-Jacket established itself as the brand’s signature piece and became synonymous with Italian tailoring.

The business shifted hands in stages. Wise Equity acquired a majority stake in 2007. In March 2013, Wise bought out the remaining 20.3% from the Boglioli family, taking full control. Through the 2010s, the label expanded from tailoring into broader fashion and branding, hiring Gucci’s former head of tailoring to operate the shift.

Financial struggles followed, and in 2017 PHI Industrial Acquisitions bought a 97% stake from Wise Equity. PHI is now the sole owner. Francesco Russo, previously Managing Director of La Perla, serves as CEO and President. The label trades from a Milan showroom and sells largely abroad. Its customer wants a jacket with sartorial construction but the hand of a cardigan, placing Boglioli alongside Lardini, Caruso, and Eleventy in the contemporary Italian tailoring market.