"Our brand is all about change, founded on inspiration, freedom and a love for art." Francesco De Falco and Pasquale Vittorio D'Avino are two young and ambitious Law students at LUISS with a passion for business and fashion. On October 21, thanks to their luxury brand, Les Bohémiens, they won the Premio Italia Giovane (Young Italy Prize) of the Associazione Giovani per Roma (Association of Young People for Rome), an event sponsored by the Consiglio Nazionale dell'Economia e del Lavoro (National Association for the Economy and Labor).
They got the idea of becoming the “bohémiens” of Italian luxury by looking around and understanding Italy’s relationship with art and fashion: "The fashion industry is one of the few sectors in which Italy continues to excel, thanks to our country’s visceral connection to art." The next impetus would arrive from a fascination with contemporary culture and from an aversion to stereotypes: "A passion for clubbing, for music, for cinema: these are just some of the ideas that inspired Les Bohémiens".
Even when they first started university, before they embarked on their adventure in fashion, Francesco and Pasquale had big ambitions: "Then, like now,” says Francesco, “I had more than one dream, even if I always considered myself a different kind of dreamer, a dreamer with my feet solidly on the ground." Pasquale however, chose Law because he was always fascinated by the idea of a business lawyer. "As soon as I began following my father in his work, I realized that I was really attracted to the entrepreneurial world. I enrolled at LUISS because I was certain that it would strengthen this idea of creating something of my own, of starting from nothing. And that’s exactly how it turned out."
Francesco and Pasquale’s luxury brand relies on the support of many different talented people, the majority of whom are their colleagues at LUISS. Like Bruno Manfuso, the creative director who designs the collections along with Sergio Chiodin, or like so many other graduates and final year students at LUISS, they are "a group of talented friends and colleagues who enthusiastically believed in the project right from the beginning." At university, these two built up a network of contacts and discovered the right tools to realize and promote their ideas: "The LUISS soft skills course, Geek Café, gave us professional methodologies for structured planning and the promotion of innovative startups. Then, thanks to the support of iLab and of several friends from the Departments of Economics and Business, we were able to acquire expertise in the drafting of a business plan."
Aside from thinking up both traditional and innovative communications ("we’re even working on a fashion film"), the future of these two students is dedicated to studying and entrepreneurship. After graduation, Francesco plans to "do a master in Commercial Law of Fashion or in Fashion and Luxury Goods Management," while Pasquale dreams of “becoming an example of made in Italy excellence in the worlds of fashion and entrepreneurship. That is, instead of going abroad, I want to get a large number of young and talented Italians involved, Italians who are definitely deserving, but who haven’t yet been given an opportunity to showcase their abilities."