Inside Prato, a province in Tuscany, Italy, thousands of garments are produced every year. A range of brands like Brandy Melville and Zara to Gucci and Prada work with the factories in this area to make everything from mass-produced trendy dresses to luxury handbags—all with the coveted “Made in Italy” label.
What makes it all possible in this thriving textile hub, however, is the growing population of people from Wenzhou, an industrial port city on the southeastern coast of China, who started migrating to the area in the early 1990s, opening up small factories by the dozens. They've since created the largest Chinatown in the entire country, and brought a centuries-old textile hub back into relevance.
When I first learned about Prato, I was reporting on country-of-origin labels for my book on fashion waste and learning why different labels carry different perceptions. “Made in Italy,” “Made in America,” and “Made in China” all point to the origin of some of the manufacturing, but in reality, not much more than that. Just as there are ethical factories in all of these countries, there are sweatshops everywhere too.
In Prato, that distinction is less clear. Over the last 30 years, the area has become a hub for fast fashion manufacturing (Pronto Moda) and all of the downsides that come with that, including wage theft, labor violations, and overproduction. But that doesn’t take away from the craftsmanship and lineal manufacturing skills that dominate the town.
Simultaneously, Prato is undergoing a cultural shift brought on by the second generation of Wenzhounese youth who were born there and are now coming of age and reshaping the town once again.
Photographer Kaiwei Duan and creative director Olivia Chen have been thinking about this shift for a few years, and have recently translated it into a photo project, titled Home In Quiet Place. Chen tells Teen Vogue that the project follows second-generation Wenzhounese youth in Prato, “whose lives are unfolding across borders.”
Chen is Wenzhounese and has ties to people working in the fashion industry in Prato. In her mind, the teenagers and young adults in the area have created a unique culture that blends their heritage with the realities and effects of extremely hard work and textile manufacturing. “We landed on how the second generation of Wenzhounese youth identity goes with the fashion textile industry in Prato, and on this topic of what is modernity now?” she tells Teen Vogue.
Young people in Prato are both embedded in Italian manufacturing and connected closely to their Chinese heritage, creating a unique identity within the Italian fashion ecosystem. As we look to Milan Fashion Week, and of course, Vogue World Milan, this unique hub and the teens who are growing into it share another side of Italian-made fashion.
“Identity is not a fixed point but a current; constantly moving, readjusting, and finding new channels through which to flow,” says Chen. “We explore how these young people navigate the space between inherited tradition and contemporary possibility, crafting identities that refuse simple categorization.”
