Pence 1979

Pence1979: Name, Beginnings and Evolution
A play onwords and pure chance gave rise to the name Pence,which refers to the Italian for the small dart with inner stitchingthat shapes trousers (which has always been a manufacturing focus of thecompany) and also to pence as the plural of penny in British currency. The storybegan with a trip by Otello Zecchin, who, on his return from London,together with his partner, decided that he wanted to embark on a personalproject. Having returned to Italy with just a few pence in his pocket, hedecided to register the brand name (it was 1979), which subsequently became Pence Jeans,because it was mainly linked to denim and the northern European markets.

The brand was an innovator in the field of “treated fabrics”, a trendthat shaped the fashion industry throughout the Eighties. The path of the brandin the world of jeans was so important that the company became one of the starsof the Enciclopediadel Denim Italiano (Encyclopaedia of Italian Jeans), together withfigures of the calibre of Renzo Rosso and Adriano Goldschmied, to mention acouple.

Evolution: Pence1979
After completing her degree in Media Studies at the University of Padua, DoraZecchin decided she wanted to pursue the project by personally investing inregistering the brand, which changed to Pence1979 adding ‘Revived’to the logo to communicate that it was for all intents and purposes a revivaland revisiting of what it had been ‘since 1979’.
The first capsule collection by Pence1979, with just five men’s and fivewomen’s garments was presented at WHITE in Milan in 2009 and met with immediatesuccess. In June 2019, the company will be celebrating 10 years since its relaunchby the daughter of the original founder, Dora and her brother Davide Zecchin,who succeeded in taking forward and revitalising this all-Italian firm.
Dora herself says: “Between1979 and now Pence has changed a lot, even though its DNA is still the same.The passion for raw materials and fabrics and the desire to experiment on themwith special treatments remain. In the past, it was mostly a question of jeans,whereas today, in the collections, we find a wide range and variety ofmaterials. The style has adapted to the times, while remaining outside of thefashions that dictate trends; proposing its own way of life and therefore, itsown way of ressing”.
From specialist in the production of chinos, the brand has grown into a total lookcollectionfor men and women, in which the fabrics, specially developedoriginal prints, embroidery, details and various treatments are always thestars, making each garment special.

“I havealways loved men’s fashion and have always liked to wear men’s clothes,”– says DoraZecchin, “but over the years, I have also become passionate about women’sfashion, so much so that the collection, which at the outset was fifty percentmen’s, now takes up seventy percent of production”.

The main feature of the Pence1979 collections is the contemporary reworking ofclassic casual fashion garments and the almost obsessive focus on tiny elementsand sartorial detailing. It is no accident that the first models designed byDora were a pair of chinos with a flounce in ontrasting blue mesh and then apair of jeans with an unusual cut on the hem.

The Company: an Italian Family Business
The company was born out of the passion and determination of OtelloZecchin, who started out with a little clothes manufacturing workshop inthe heart of the Veneto region, to become a solid manufacturer specialising in chinos,dyed fabrics and denim.
Manufacturing excellence in a manufacturing district packed with importantfirms. Over the years, the company has grown, manufacturing for many brands,such as Ermanno Scervino, Woolrich, Burberry, Jean Paul Gaultier andErmenegildo Zegna, to mention just a few. The company, C.P.A, whichowns the Pence1979 brand, now also distributes Fortela, a successfulcommercial brand created by Alessandro Squarzi. The company represents a pointof pride on the Italian scene. In this family business, Dora Zecchin,Otello’s daughter, is ceo of C.P.A and Creative Director of Pence1979 and supervises all company production. Her brother Davide is Research andDevelopment Manager, whereas their father, Otello, is head of financeand their mother, Wanda, confidently heads up company manufacturing andproduction in Romania. C.P.A is divided into two production centres: one in Cona,in the Veneto region of Italy (with 25 employees) where the creativedepartment and fashion design/product department are based; the second in agreen and unspoiled area of Romania (employing 120 people)
with a major dyeworks/laundry, where all those processes and finishes that areincreasingly important for style can be performed.

Vision and Know-How
“Our love for what we dowill never allow us to compromise on the quality and design we intend to offer.At the centre of the creative and production process is a deep love of fabricand of ongoing innovation in the treatments.” This is the vision thatguides Dora Zecchin, Creative Director at Pence1979, whose experience has itsroots in product research and development for major firms. For the Zecchin brother andsister team, nothing is more important than quality and ongoingexperimentation on the materials. Drawing what their father taught them,Dora and Davide offer their customers know-how that encompasses everything fromdesign and cut, to manufacturing the products and the most special treatmentsdeveloped in their internal laundries. The ‘marble wash’ (marblingtreatment with pumice stone) for example, has always been a Pence asset, aprocess originally considered practically impossible, which the companysucceeded in industrialising, just like the extremely diverse andsophisticated dyeing techniques, including hand-dyeing, which make eachgarment a unique piece with an unrepeatable history.