Cappellificio La Familiare

Established in 1905, when 10 workers quit the Rossi firm, a company founded in Montevarchi in 1798 that was a pioneer in the working of felt hats, and set up a hat factory which in 1910 took the corporate name of La Familiare. Nino Donati was appointed president (in the 1920s he started his own hat factory), while production management was entrusted to Angelo Masini, an experienced artisan. The production of the new company soon supplanted the Czechoslovak, Austrian, and French companies which had dominated the market for women’s millinery. The company’s fame increased thanks to the collaboration of milliner Giulio Ponsecchi, known in the world of fashion under the pseudonym Gigi of Florence. After World War II, Ponsecchi designed both La Familiare’s felt hats, which since 1952 always opened the fashion presentations at the Sala Bianca of Palazzo Pitti, and Nino Donati’s straw hats.