Meanwhile, in the nearby town of Castellana Grotte, Tibi has been dreaming up a capsule with Il Caroseno, a family-run group that runs a restaurant and recently opened up a guesthouse on its property, inspired by life in the region, which is priced between $415 and $695.
“What we actually ended up doing was driven by a lot of questions as to where this actually fits into not just our brand and what we create, but what [the people of Castellana Grotte] do every day as well,” says Gabriel Smilovic, the brand’s manager of strategic partnerships and new media projects. “It needed to make sense. It needed to be real and true.”
Il Caroseno has people working in the kitchen of the restaurant, picking cherries, milking cows, and crafting marble. To accurately reflect the reality of an Italian summer on a property like this one, the pieces had to be versatile. “We would’ve never done a sleeveless top or even a short sleeve top—it was so critical that the pieces be able to be wrapped around the body or draped across a dress or the sleeves pushed all the way up,” Amy Smilovic, Tibi’s founder and creative director, explains. “When you look at pictures of Italians running around in the summer, that’s what I imagine. They’ve manipulated their clothing in such a special, unique way.”
The resulting offering, launched in July, is made up of two button-down shirts, two boxer shorts, and a denim jumpsuit. “When you look at the pictures of Casa Caroseno, you certainly crave things that are very fresh and crisp,” says Amy. “The house is all of these beautiful, rich, sandy browns and creamy colors. We started out first with a palette that was really mimicking the countryside, but it didn’t feel like enough of a juxtaposition.” Instead, the brand brought in sky blues for the button-down and boxer short sets, plus some stripes for added dimension. Then, there’s a denim jumpsuit, inspired by the family’s nonna, who picks cherries in a similar uniform.
Tibi shot the lookbook on location at Il Caroseno, using the people who work there as their models. The brand’s customer responds to that rhythm of authenticity, which has become core to how it communicates. “We work hard now to explain how it is that we felt when we were there and to let people share that same experience with us,” Amy says. “It might sound so strange, but it was beautiful to be able to land in a country with no other objective than to know that you were working with someone really good and that if you just let the process unfold, it’ll take you someplace interesting. When people buy Tibi, that’s a lot of what they’re buying into.”
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