The Blogazine

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Wooliweiss + Casarialto at Verger

We met designer Catherine Urban, créatrice behind the complimentary Casarialto and Wooliweiss lines, at her temporary shop inside Verger this weekend. The French-born, Institute Français de la Mode alumnus, who worked for more than a decade at Louis Vuitton and Chanel, has a well-honed penchant for detail and a conviction that finer things shouldn’t be relegated to occasional use. It is precisely this aversion to prohibitiveness that has driven the creation of a truly welcoming, everyday luxury brand. Urban partially credits her success to the the unique Italian business ecosystem, which defies economics to remain a patchwork of small, focused and nimble companies. This along with its unrivaled manufacturing savoir-faire, enables responsive, detail-driven boutique businesses to emerge, and allows companies like Urban’s to personalize, quickly adapt and maintain superfluous quality.

The at once cosy and luxurious Wooliweiss was born of a delightful children’s line (doesn’t the name even the name sound warm and inviting?) but has grown to include womenswear, as well as cashmere “Cashpets” and a squeezable and engaging “Hug Me” line, which cleverly encourages the re-imagination of forgotten cushions. The dovetailing Casarialto line, on the other hand, includes deceptively svelte Murano-made glassware, linens, cushions and sumptuous merino blankets. With a word-of-mouth impetus, a real familiarity with her clients and a well-deserved reputation for quality, Urban’s clientele has steadily, organically grown to stretch from end to end of the globe. And with a fountain of fresh ideas on tap, a continuing evolution of product, a new line of kitchen accessories in the works, and the possibility one-offs and personalisation, we see good things in store!