The second episode of Archivi d’Affetto is dedicated to the relationship between our city with fashion and costume through another special and unique story: a tribute to the extraordinary professional story of Alda Farinella. Daughter of Adriana Corino, absolute ace of tailored shirts for men and women, Alda learnt the trade and quickly discovered the secrets of her mother’s art. She abandoned her studies in Economics; she didn’t draw or sew; her talent was made of sensitivity and absolute good taste towards the finest fabrics, attention to detail and the amused ability to satisfy the vanities of customers. Alda was a merchant.

When we talk about design, we usually focus on the authors (designers) or companies. On the process or rather the product. Rarely we talk about the other subjects involved in the different product chains. Focusing our attention on Jana is not only the story of a truly special human and professional story. It is a precise choice, that of talking about design from a different point of view, unexpected, often forgotten and left in the background.

Alda opened her shops under the name of Jana, the affectionate diminutive with which her friends called her mother. She joined her mother in 1965 in the atelier located in the gallery that connects Via Pomba to Corso Vittorio Emanuele II. Later in Corso Giulio Cesare, in front of Teatro Adua, then in Piazza Solferino on the ground floor of Filippo Turati’s birthplace, a space in which she collaborated with Gianni Combi. For a short time, she moved her business to Via Amendola and in the 1980s she opened the space under the arcades of Piazza Vittorio Veneto on the corner of Caffè Elena, where, in the autumn of 1993, a selection of clothes by Belgian designer Martin Margiela was presented in absolute preview. Finally, the last, the largest, in Via Maria Vittoria 45. It was a one-of-a-kind space, more like an art gallery than a clothing store where the art of presenting her very select collection of clothes, accessories, and objects to love took shape. A space with an essential atmosphere; nothing like it had ever been seen before.

Alda Farinella was born in Turin on 27 September 1942, the daughter of Adriana Corino, a shirt maker, and Emilio Farinella, a Public Security employee. In December 1964, she enrolled in the Faculty of Economics of Turin, studies that she abandoned to devote herself to selling in her mother’s atelier located inside the gallery that linked Via Pomba to Corso Vittorio Emanuele II.  

Several store openings followed with the name of Jana, an affectionate diminutive with which her friends called her mother, first in Corso Giulio Cesare, in front of Teatro Adua, then in Piazza Solferino on the ground floor of Filippo Turati’s birthplace, for a short period in Via Amendola, until, starting in the 1980s, in the space under the arcades of Piazza Vittorio Veneto on the corner of Caffè Elena, where, in the autumn of 1993, a selection of clothes by Belgian designer Martin Margiela was presented in absolute preview. Finally, the last, the largest, in Via Maria Vittoria 45. It was a one-of-a-kind space, more like an art gallery than a clothing store where the art of presenting her very select collection of clothes, accessories, and loved ones took shape. First in the city and beyond, she proposed garments with austere, minimal lines that betray the symmetries and shapes of conventional fashion. In her shops she proposed dresses from the lines designed by Rei Kawakubo, founder of Comme des Garçons, a fashion house in which Junya Watanabe, Tao Kurihara and Adrian Joffe formed. In Alda’s space the people of Turin fell in love with the clothes of Yohji Yamamoto and Vivienne Westwood (an authentic muse for Alda). In the early 2000s, Jana first proposed the creations of European designers such as Paul Harnden, Elena Dawson, and Carol Christian Poell. Alda Farinella died in Turin on 4 February 2024.