In these days, lots of memories and thoughts about Adriano Goldschmied are crowding the web and these pages, too. Though, I collected a special comment from Fabio Adami Dalla Val, show director, Denim Premiere Vision. I am happy to share it with you.
“Unlike many, I was not born wearing denim.
I was born, instead, among pattern papers, but among tailor’s chalk that left white dust on my fingers, scissors marking the rhythm of the days, and fabrics folded with the care of someone who knows every cut is a final decision.
My mother was a seamstress, and our home was a quiet workshop where the most constant sound was the sewing machine. And yet, despite all of this, denim was not yet my destiny. Perhaps that early proximity to textiles shaped my more rational side – the one that observes, measures, analyses. Not the romantic one. Not yet.
I arrived in the world of denim by chance. Or perhaps, as often happens in life, through a chance that you only later learn to call destiny.
I was nearly graduating in management engineering, my head full of numbers, diagrams, and systems, when one of the guiding lights of my life, one of those people who change your trajectory without even trying, pointed me towards a direction I did not even know existed.
From that moment, like many others, I became fascinated by production. By matter transforming itself. By chemistry becoming aesthetics. By water that washes, consumes, and tells stories.
For a long time, I never left the laundry. Literally, and in a way, I still haven’t completely left it. I spent years with my head inside industrial washing machines, observing cycles, testing effects, smelling fabrics still wet, trying to understand how time and matter could communicate with each other.
It was technical work, of course. But for me, it was already storytelling. Already poetry, even if I didn’t know it yet.
For many years, I remained a quiet observer. Someone standing a few steps behind, with almost reverential respect, watching figures who seemed unreachable. People who were once myths. Then became familiar faces.
Then slowly, acquaintances. And sometimes–with a bit of luck–people with whom you could exchange a few words.
My encounter with Adriano Goldschmied followed exactly this path.
For years, I took photographs of him in the background. They were not called selfies yet, and I used a Canon Reflex camera. I would place myself fifteen, twenty meters away, trying to look casual, and then go home proudly saying I had a photo with him.
Technically, I was not lying. He was there. Just…very far away.
Many years later, I was fortunate enough to take photos next to a cardboard cut-out of Adriano with my daughter, inside an OVS store. A significant upgrade.
But the real turning point―one of the milestones of my professional life―came in Berlin, in 2023. By then, Adriano had already begun attending Denim Première Vision regularly again.
In the very rare exchanges we had, I always limited myself to listening. And to addressing him formally. Always. Even when he smiled in that effortless way that made everyone feel immediately at ease.
A year earlier, something small yet symbolic had happened in my garden.
I was lying under a ginkgo biloba. One of the oldest trees in the world.
A living witness of geological eras, a symbol of resilience and memory.
While absentmindedly playing with the soil, I found something fragile between my fingers: a tiny ginkgo seedling that had grown by chance from a fallen seed.
No one had planted it. No one had planned it. And yet, there it was.
What happened in Berlin felt very similar to that beginning.
At a Denim Premiere Vision dinner, I was seated directly in front of Adriano. They knew, I believe, what kind of emotion that placement would create for me.
The evening passed almost in silence. Not out of shyness–or perhaps–but out of respect. I listened.
I listened as he spoke about the future, about new generations, new worlds, and new forms of communication. Never nostalgic. Never looking backward with regret. Always forward. Always towards something that did not yet exist.
Those reflections stayed with me. And I believe they always will.
From that evening–during which I continued to address him formally, something I never stopped doing–a possibility opened that I would not have even dared to imagine. The possibility of building projects with him. And around him.
Presences at the Fashion District. Irreproducible panels.
Moments in which denim history stopped being a narrative and became a living conversation. Until that extraordinary tribute to Luigi Martelli. A tribute to life.
To prepare it, we spent many hours together. Silent hours of listening, often moved by the chance to walk inside history through the voices of those who, together with people like Giovanni Petrin, truly wrote it―and still quietly continue to tell it.
The last project we were shaping once again concerned the future of denim.
But perhaps, more deeply, it concerned the future of fashion itself, as we were trying to imagine it.
Until the very end, his reflections–his humble way of asking questions rather than giving answers–had a profound impact on how I stand in this world.
Because if a man of such greatness always chose to question himself, to listen, to search, then perhaps that is where the real lesson lies.
Not in success. Not in visibility. But in curiosity.
The same curiosity that one day made me put my head inside an industrial washing machine just to understand what was happening.
The same curiosity that made me pick up a tiny ginkgo seedling from the ground, without knowing what it would become.
And perhaps, looking back now, all of this was nothing more than a slow approach.
Not to a profession. Not to an industry. But to a story.
A story I was not born wearing, but one I learned, day after day, to put on.
Also thanks to those who wrote it with vision, courage, and an unbroken curiosity.
And so, while the great ginkgo in my garden continues to grow silent, ancient, a witness of time passing through generations I cannot help but think of how some presences resemble trees like this.
Deep roots. Branches capable of looking far ahead.
A force that remains even when time changes shape.
That small seed, once accidental, has also begun its journey.
At first it was fragile, almost invisible. A discreet presence, kept in a pot far too small for the dreams it could have contained.
I watched it grow, day after day, season after season.
Without hurry.
Without noise.
Only with the silent determination of something that knows its time will come.
Today, that small ginkgo is no longer a fragile sprout. Its roots are searching for space. Its leaves are turning toward the sky.
And the pot that protected it is becoming too small for what it is meant to become.
While the great ginkgo in my garden reminds me where we come from, the small one tells me every day where we are going.
It is time to place my hands in the soil and move it into an open field, where it can face the wind and find its own form in the world.
I will remain there, in silence, watching it grow. With gratitude. With respect.
With the awareness that some roots never stop nourishing what comes next.
Some trees never stop growing.
They only change the ground in which they continue to live.”
Fabio Adami Dalla Val