Two hands guiding cloth under the foot of an old machine
First floor · Via Baccarini 14 · since 2017

Three people and one long table

Forty-one square metres, two windows facing north-east, a 1962 flatbed that has outlived four motors, and a kettle. Everything on this site was cut here.

A pair of hands resting clasped on a worn table top
A single seam running across olive cotton canvas
Orsola Benadí’s hands at the long table · 31 years of them · photographed 12 February

Why twenty-four

Orsola spent nineteen years cutting other people's collections in Bologna and left because a season had grown to two hundred and ten pieces, of which she could stand behind maybe thirty. Vedra was set up around a number she could defend: twenty-four, cut twice, in cloth bought in a lot she has touched.

That number decides everything else on this site. It is why there is no sale, why a piece disappears mid-season, and why the showroom holds one appointment an hour instead of a shop floor.

The twenty-four

The floor

Tuesday to Saturday · nobody works a sixth day
An older woman with short grey hair, photographed in profile light

Orsola Benadí

Cutter · founder

Cuts every piece single-ply. Will not let a coat out of the door that has not had three hours under the iron. Answers the phone on Thursdays.

A man in a dark shirt photographed against a dark wall

Teo Lanfranchi

Patterns · machine

Drafts the blocks and grades them from 38 to 52. Keeps the 1962 flatbed running. Thinks the shoulder is the only part of a jacket worth arguing about.

A woman with a tape measure round her neck cutting cloth at the long table

Rina Dalpozzo

Showroom · fittings

Takes the fourteen measurements and writes the card, usually standing at the long table. Runs the Thursday-to-Saturday hours and the waiting list. Will tell you when a piece is wrong for you.

Where the cloth comes from

We go to the mill

Three mills, all within a day's drive, all visited before the lot is bought. We buy in 40 to 60 metres because that is what one cutting needs and because a mill will sell a small lot to someone who turns up.

Bolts of pale cloth rolled and stacked end-on
Store room · 163 metres on the shelf

Lot 09·A 54 m, lot 09·B 61 m, lot 09·D 48 m. Fourteen metres of last season's 08·C that we will use for linings and nothing else.

What it became

A week in three columns

What actually happens between the measure and the garment, in the order it happens.

A close weave of undyed cloth filling the frame
A striped herringbone weave in black and oatmeal, photographed close
Monday — Tuesday

Draft and grade

Teo redraws the block against your card, grades it, and cuts the calico. Two days, no cloth touched.

Book the measure
A calico toile marked and pinned flat on the cutting table
Wednesday — Thursday

Toile and correct

The calico goes on you. We pin, mark and unpick it in front of you; most people need the shoulder moved 6 to 10 mm.

What we cut
Finished white shirts hanging on a steel rail in a dark room
Friday — Saturday

Cut, make, press

Orsola cuts, Teo makes, both press. The garment hangs forty-eight hours before anyone is allowed to collect it.

See it worn
Open floor · last Saturday of the month

Come up and watch the cutting

Six people, two hours, no appointment needed and no obligation at all. We start at 11:00 and there is usually cake.

Hours and address