In a market where the “need for novelty” risks erasing depth, the archive becomes a precious resource. No longer just to preserve, but above all to generate. It serves to build the future starting from what already exists, and what is truly relevant and identity-defining. Reread, reinterpret, reactivate: for MM Company, the archive is a strategic lever, capable of fueling identity, storytelling, and innovation.
A well-valued and living archive can be a precious input for developing collections, digital content, campaigns, exhibitions, editorial narratives. It can become the foundation of a distinctive positioning, because in depth no other brand will ever be exactly the same as its own.
We approach brand archives with a curatorial, narrative, and digital modus operandi. We do not treat them as mausoleums, but as design tools. In many of our projects, heritage is not only narrated, but made current. We work on visual identity starting from what the brand has been, with the intention of projecting it into the future.
Fragiacomo 60: a panoramic project
One of the most significant archive projects we curated was the one developed for Fragiacomo, a historic Made in Italy footwear brand.
The result was a phygital communication project: a new website and a monograph retracing the maison’s 60-year history through the voices of scholars and experts in fashion, costume, and cinema such as Clara Tosi Pamphili, Enrico Maria Albamonte, and Flavia Colli Franzone who, together with the curators, recount the brand’s heritage from different perspectives.
A distinctive feature of the book lies in its highly emotional imagery: on one side, the brand’s iconic models reinterpreted through the pop illustrations of Fabrizio Sclavi, and on the other, the evolution of Fragiacomo’s style captured in still-life photographs by Gian Paolo Barbieri’s studio.
Thanks to the collaboration with the Associazione Obiettivo Camera, internationally renowned photographers Giovanni Gastel, Gian Paolo Barbieri, Maurizio Galimberti, Piero Gemelli, Simone Nervi, and Maria Vittoria Backhaus also each shot an ad hoc photograph interpreting one of the six decades of the brand. This series of special images, which enriches the monograph, will also be at the center of the exhibition-event.
Etel: the evolution of icons
In the furniture sector, we highlight the archive project developed for the Brazilian brand ETEL: “Zanine (R)Evolution: A Story by ETEL”, which explored the evolutions and revolutions of José Zanine Caldas.
ETEL, the most important brand authorized to reissue the works of Brazil’s great design masters, has included 16 icons by Zanine in its collection—already rich with pieces from the most significant names in the country’s design culture, such as Jorge Zalszupin, Lina Bo Bardi, Giuseppe Scapinelli, and Oscar Niemeyer. To achieve this, we reconstructed and visualized the biographical connections of the designer, and curated a special installation connecting physical objects with a multitude of archival materials that influenced José Zanine Caldas’ design thinking, brought directly from Brazilian archives.
Reactivating the archive means rediscovering in the past what is most authentic, in order to shape the future of a brand. This is the idea that guided us: transforming memory into vision.
