Société Anonyme, a Rule Book for The Independent Fashion Store
Marking the 25th anniversary of the concept store’s house brand, owner Massimiliano Giannelli and his daughter Ginevra recall each stage of one of the first independent fashion retailers in Florence.
Florence's buzzy Sant'Ambrogio district — which is filled with restaurants, cafés and a hangout neighborhood for cool local youth — is also home to Société Anonyme, an independent store in Florence that has become a spot for fashion enthusiasts to find inspiration and discover niche brands.
Currently located in a 3,229-square-foot space on Via Giovan Battista Niccolini after relocating from a neighboring street in
2006, the boutique was established in 1992 by Massimiliano Giannelli and his wife Catia Nencini as a fabric shop, allowing the couple to gain knowledge of textiles, building on Giannelli's fabric studies at the Polimoda fashion school, a background that would help them launch a house brand in 1999.
“We started immediately with this name. I have always been passionate about art, and one of the art movements that drove me crazy the most was Dadaism. Actually, this name refers to a gallery founded by Marcel Duchamp, Katherine Dreier and Peggy Guggenheim in the 1920s. My wife and I read a biography dedicated to Guggenheim and the name of this gallery appeared,” Giannelli explained.
Société Anonyme became a full-fledged clothing store in 1999, offering from the start a mix of up-and-coming, niche and under-the-radar brands, in addition to the namesake house label, the latter of which marks its 25th anniversary this year. Their curation, Giannelli said, attracted customers who “understood our product well.” The store carries brands such as Comme des Garçons, Dries Van Noten, Stüssy and ERL, to name a few.
Ginevra Giannelli, the daughter of the owners who's in charge of the brand's communication strategy, said: “It's always been very important for us that the multibrand store and our label would go hand in hand; neither of them has ever been left behind. There is a common thread that ties both of these worlds together since 1999.”
The Société Anonyme house label, designed by the two owners, takes cues from the Dada movement and other cultural moments, such as the Japanese artistry of wide cuts and California's skater culture.
Primarily crafted from deadstock fabrics and manufactured locally, the brand offers menswear, womenswear and unisex collections released twice a year in tandem with Pitti Uomo. Giannelli has been a member of the Pitti Uomo technical committee since 2017.
Prices for the contemporary brand range from 50 euros for a top to 700 euros for a coat. Originally sold exclusively at the Florence boutique, the brand's collections have been available at marketplaces such as Space Mue in Seoul and Wok Store in Milan since 2022.
The store owners had already tested such marketplaces early on, including Farfetch, for the multibrand business. It helped them expand their horizons internationally, always sticking to their quest for labels that telegraph “a message, a philosophy, a concept, [brands that has] something to tell,” as Giannelli put it.
“The access to such an important and international platform [Farfetch] also changed our purchasing methods, because we could be more daring and include brands suitable not only for the local market but for the international one,” Giannelli explained.
The identity of the house brand and of the store have never flagged, not even in the past year, which Giannelli bills as a “annus horribilis” for retailers. “The absence of rules, the frequent discounts and markdowns, tend to devalue the product, the essence of fashion,” he said.
Ginevra added that “staying true to oneself and speaking to one's own dogmas, is what matter in a period of uncertainty” and it is what the community responds to.
Customer loyalty is enhanced through events and in-store activations, such as one held last December in which Freitag's Italian marketing director met the brand's followers. “The events represent a moment of exchange and entertainment which ensure that the brands' values can be telegraphed in a different way,” compared to just shopping their products, Ginevra said.
As an independent store trying to boost its niche, Société Anonyme has an online store and a blog and online magazine where it builds storytelling around projects and events.