Today, for the first time since 1977, October 4th is a national holiday in Italy again. And almost nobody there gets a day off, because this year it falls on a Sunday.
That is a very Italian kind of joke, and I think the man being honored would have enjoyed it. He spent his life giving things up. What he gave up first, famously, was a set of very good clothes.
A holiday back, eight hundred years later
The day belongs to Saint Francis of Assisi, named patron saint of Italy in 1939. His feast was a public holiday until 1977, when Italy trimmed its calendar. Parliament voted to restore it last year, starting in 2026 — timed to the 800th anniversary of his death, on the evening of October 3rd, 1226.
Assisi has been preparing for this weekend for months. The main celebrations fall on October 3rd and 4th, with pilgrims arriving from all over the world and, according to Vatican News, a visit from the President of Italy on the feast day itself. Earlier this year, the public display of the saint's remains drew nearly 400,000 people.
Because the date lands on a Sunday, most Italians will notice the new holiday properly in 2027. But the anniversary is this weekend, and the whole country knows it.
The shop he grew up in
Here is the part of the story that I think about every time I walk into a mill in Italy. Francis was born into the fabric business. His father, Pietro di Bernardone, was a cloth merchant and one of the wealthiest men in Assisi, who traveled to France to trade. The young Francis grew up among bolts of fine cloth, and by most accounts dressed the part.
The break with that life came through cloth too. Francis took fabric from his father's stock, sold it along with the horse that carried it, and gave the money to repair a crumbling church. His father was furious and brought him before the bishop of Assisi to settle the matter.
What happened next has been painted for eight centuries. Francis stepped into another room, came back out without his clothes, and handed them — folded — to his father. From then on he wore the plainest garment he could find.
Italy kept both
It is worth sitting with that image for a moment, because it is such a strange and specific one. He did not simply walk away from his father's world. He gave back the clothes, the most visible sign of it, and he gave them back neatly. Even at the moment of leaving, the cloth was handled with care.
You might expect a country with that patron saint to be suspicious of beautiful clothes. It is the opposite. Italy kept both halves of the story: the saint's plainness and the merchant's eye for cloth. Walk through any Italian town and you see it — a closet of very simple things in quiet colors, where the simplicity is only possible because the fabric is so good.
That is why the piece in these photos is the one I'd wear this weekend. It is brown, the most unassuming color there is, in the shape of an ordinary polo. Then the light hits it and the viscose knit has a soft golden sheen, and you understand that someone in Italy chose that yarn very carefully.
Plain on the outside, extraordinary in the cloth. Eight hundred years on, that still feels like the most Italian way to get dressed. More pieces made that way are in the knitwear.
She travels to Italy each season to hand-select the boutique's collection.
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