Into the brand: Label Under Construction

Created in 2003, Label Under Construction is a brand that, although relatively young, has its roots coming from a more than 50 year old tradition. The founders, Luca Laurini and Francesca Ragni, can count on their father Adriano’s long experience, as owner of a knitwear factory for more than half a century where he worked for the most prestigious brands in the world. However Label Under Construction, was born from the desire to start a new route completely different that is a strongly oriented to the extreme research on manufacturing procedures and materials.

During the years the designer Luca Laurini succeeded in creating his own personal style and language, a system that comes from tradition but strengthens its boundaries to create avant-garde procedures and innovative solutions. His language is translated with signs and symbols that appear in his clothing items reinforcing their structure,  which is discrete and slim. Still his rigorous, clean and rational lines provide an unexpected authority which gives to the items an elegance that is almost suspended in time. With the detached logic of technical development at the highest level they have often integrated the research and the manipulation of the matter, which becomes the test-bed for a constant  experimental trial. Procedures as silk-screen printing, felting and carding, just to name a few, are deeply reinterpreted. Also in this case, Luca Laurini follows the results less predictable and more innovative; for this reason often the anomalies and errors of these processes are considered as a resource and an unique effect to repeat even if with many difficulties. So it’s triggered an overturning of aesthetic canons: each Label Under Construction item represents almost the negative film of the usual, accepted and desired fashion standards. Yarn and natural fabrics are the medium of this research. Yarn has to be manipulated from the beginning of its production so experimentation is possible in many ways, instead fabrics have already a well-defined characterization. Thanks to vintage fabrics, Luca Laurini is able to make a forgotten past live again. The stories buried in those fibers come back to life; the rips and the lacerations caused by the flow of time become experience and unique features. Once again the past and the present, the tradition and the innovation blend together in making those exclusive and unrepeatable clothing items.