Francesco Maglia

Francesco Maglia has been stewarded by the same family since 1854, when the first Francesco Maglia began making umbrellas by hand; the business moved to Milan in 1876 and today works from a small workshop at Corso Genova 7, now run by the sixth generation. Around 1900 Milan had roughly 100 umbrella makers; Maglia is one of the last still doing it entirely by hand, and rival houses reportedly buy component parts from them rather than the reverse.

Every umbrella passes through about 70 production steps. The house's signature is the solid-stick umbrella, in which handle and shaft are cut from a single piece of wood — walnut, hickory, chestnut, rosewood, ebony, and a dozen other species are all in use — with the handle tied to the stick during finishing to hold its round shape. Canopies are a custom Jacquard blend of cotton, silk and wool with a Teflon coating; the crown is milled brass produced in-house, the slider cast iron.

Maglia's ready-made pieces have sold through Barneys New York, Bergdorf Goodman, Paul Stuart, Gucci and Loewe, but the workshop itself remains what it was in 1854: a handful of craftspeople finishing every stick and rib by hand in one Milan address.