Growing while remaining consistent, the Macron story We interviewed Amedeo Iossa, Head of Style and Design of Macron, in the new headquarters of the Bologna-based company

At the new Macron headquarters in Crespellano, in the industrial area just outside the historic city of Bologna, there are still empty desks and ergonomic chairs covered in cellophane. But given the expansion plans of the Bologna-based company, it is only a matter of time before these too are used. In fact, growth has been unstoppable in recent years. The number of clubs supplied has expanded dramatically and the level of jerseys produced has steadily increased, so that at some point it was inevitable to find a new home to accommodate the ever-growing number of employees. Founded in 1971, in the last twenty years Macron has grown from a local team sponsor to one of the largest suppliers of kits for football, rugby, basketball and padel. A story that shows that Italian style, attention to detail and tailoring to the customer are fundamental qualities also in the sportswear scene, reinforced by the osmosis between sport and fashion that we are currently experiencing.

Macron's rise is therefore based on a solid foundation, on the anticipation of many innovations that would later become common, and on an increasingly important role among brands of international stature. Amedeo Iossa, Head of Style and Design at the Bologna-based company and historical memory of all the jerseys produced in the last two decades, tells us how the company has changed, and with it the world of football in Italy and around the world. "I have always been a lover of sport, of the football I played, but above all I have always been passionate about fashion. And that's how I joined Macron as a communications officer in 2004, when we were just starting out and had already been sponsoring Bologna for two seasons, so I saw the company grow from the inside."

The sartorial approach is one of Macron's strengths. Macron works with athletes to investigate how to make jerseys more efficient and comfortable. "Over the years, we have always had discussions with the players about the technical side. Each time, we ask the clubs to be a little more attentive to the style aspect, because it's not easy to give feedback to someone who is not an insider, so we get immediate feedback on what we are doing," Iossa reiterates. He explains that each sport has its own rules and needs and that the designer's and planner's job is to find a unique response to a set of requirements. "For example, when we got into rugby, we designed the kits together with the players, as in the case of the Scottish national team, for whom we almost customised the kits. We realised that each player has a different role and a different physicality, and we have to dress them all in the same jersey, taking into account their needs".

Macron only entered the world of rugby relatively recently, but in just a few years has managed to become one of the world's leading kit suppliers for professional and grassroots clubs, proving that it can learn the tricks of the trade quickly. "There always has to be contamination, like contamination between different sports. What we learn one year making a jogging jersey, we can use the next year for a rugby jersey, and so on. I always like to get into a new sport, like I did recently with padel, because it allows me to get into particular fabrics. Since no one invents anything these days, it's a good trick to put an idea aside, bring it in and adapt it to the needs in a new context." Such know-how, in turn, is indispensable today for those who want to make garments originally designed for sport usable for everyday life, a situation Macron knows well because "the jersey the players wear is exactly what the fans buy, we do not have replica jerseys."

It's a culture of football jerseys that Macron has helped to create, paying attention to every detail, from the backneck to the choice of materials, and modulating his own aesthetic without constantly resorting to templates or set designs. Amedeo Iossa, who has witnessed how the role of football shirts has changed in this millennium, is aware of the importance they have acquired recently and how, even in Italy, they have reached a status that used to be exclusive to the Anglo-Saxon world. "Years ago, it was difficult to see anyone wearing a football jersey in Italy, as it was in England, where the jersey was not only compulsory in the stadium, but was often worn in other contexts as well." Iossa attributes this change in mentality to fashion, which has made the aesthetics of football less sectoralised and thus more comprehensible to an audience not used to stadium cheering.

"I think these fashion collaborations help Italy take the jerseys beyond football," a practise Macron has also used in recent seasons, first with Cagliari and Antonio Marras and this year with Bologna and Elisabetta Franchi. And Bologna keeps coming back to Macron's history, which has been woven like a thread for over twenty years and on whose relationship the company has built its success. Clear proof of this is this gigantic new complex, which embodies the dreams and perspectives of one of the strongest realities of the Italian scene and beyond.