Once a working-class area of railing houses, the Ticinese district, one of the oldest and most characteristic in the city, was the neighbourhood of punks and poets, of radical leftists and literary revolutionaries, of subcultures, music, drug dealing (Piazza Vetra) and, in the 1990s, hip hop culture. The neighbourhood of the bar Rattazzo, opened in 1961 and informal headquarter of the Milanese 1968 protests, of Cox18, squatted since 1976, and of the Gattullo pastry shop, where once famous Italian musicians such as Jannacci, Giorgio Gaber and Sergio Endrigo used to meet. A neighborhood now largely re-evaluated and partly gentrified, Ticinese still retains a dual soul; in amongst the gourmet burgers and sushi bars there are still places like Frizzi e Lazzi and Lina Orsolina, hardly refined but still imbued with the spirit of old Milan, and amongst the shop windows dedicated to American streetwear there are still the old haberdasheries and junk dealers.
The first Cavalli e Nastri used to be located in Corso di Porta Ticinese, the old road that connected Milan and Pavia named after the Ticino river. Today it has moved a little further away, to number 12 Via Giangiacomo Mora, a smaller and more reserved street that still preserves the spirit of the neighborhood. A large and cozy space, a bit boutique and a bit boudoir, where together with the high-end vintage that characterizes the brand you can find antiques, lace, petticoats from the twenties, Edwardian shirts, silk kimonos, couture dresses and handmade sweaters in fine yarns. The one in via Mora 12 is the Cavalli e Nastri of research, of niches, where styling becomes fashion and where, between the Nineties irreverence of Jean Paul Gaultier and the cerebral minimalism of Issey Miyake, there is room for unique pieces coming from travels, form private collections and from the infallible good taste of Claudia Jesi and her niece Benedetta.
