Cristina Parodi, «Life begins again, but in Bergamo we cannot forget what we have been through» – Fanpage.it

Cristina Parodi told Fanpage.it about the darkest weeks of Bergamo, the city that adopted her and that was hit hardest by the Coronavirus emergency, about her husband Giorgio Gori and that job that is not left outside the front door. About her stop in the world of TV and that dream of fashion from which she now wants to start again.

There is a hint of sadness and pain in her voice when she talks about Bergamo, which has now become her city, and the deafening silence that has filled its streets and squares for too many weeks. Cristina Parodi, journalist, presenter, writer and now involved in the fashion world with the brand Crida, told Fanpage.it how she experienced the Coronavirus emergency, what her fears were and how she faced them, all together with her husband Giorgio Gori, mayor of the Italian city most affected by the virus. “It’s the first time I’ve seen my city truly on its knees. They’ve been very difficult months.”

«Working with Cesvi helped me keep my mind busy»

Cristina, who has been involved with the Cesvi, an NGO that operates worldwide for cooperation and development, has focused in this period on a fundraiser for the city, thanks to which 5 million euros have been raised, useful for the purchase of medical materials necessary to face the emergency. “My mind was busy and engaged in a job that I felt I had to do and wanted to do. It helped me get through this period in a more constructive way. Now, fortunately, we all see the light a little more. The people of Bergamo are very willing, hard-working, productive people who don’t stop at anything. Just as they were silent during these months of pain, now they’ve all started working, the municipality first, and obviously the road is uphill for everyone. But if there are tough people who are capable of getting back up, it’s precisely those of this city, so I’ve learned to know them”.

With her husband Giorgio Gori “a profound and beautiful experience”

The whole family, however, had to deal not only with fears for the pandemic but also with Giorgio Gori’s public role. “Giorgio continued to work all the time, going to the town hall, going out. We were afraid for him, we were afraid for us who were staying at home. But Giorgio is a person who stops at nothing and it’s as if he had convinced himself that he was invincible.” Being the mayor of the city most tormented by this emergency was not easy, it’s a job that you don’t leave outside the front door. “Being next to Giorgio is always a profound and beautiful experience, because he is a man who works hard and dedicates himself with incredible selflessness to everything he does, and he does it with a truly tireless passion. Also in this case I tried to stay close to him and comfort him as I could and give him concrete help with the work I did with Cesvi, which in any case channeled into the city and the administration. It was tiring, but it was nice to live this moment with him too, certainly the most difficult to face for everyone and for a mayor in general”.

Those painful images of the tanks that will go down in history

The images of the 70 military vehicles that carried the coffins of Covid victims out of Bergamo will remain etched in our memories and certainly in history books. There, perhaps, we all truly understood how helpless and absolutely defenseless we can be in the face of a virus that has prevented many from even giving their loved ones a dignified burial. “I cried, like everyone else. Like all the people of Bergamo believe they did in silence in their homes, without showing too much pain. In Bergamo, people are like that, they are ashamed and a little shy about their pain and in an unreal silence were those weeks, the darkest. There were only the bells tolling for the dead, the sound of the ambulances. But not a sound could be heard, there was not a person around. Here in Bergamo, those who were not there perhaps cannot understand the heaviness of this silence, of this immobility. There were no songs in the streets or on the balconies, as many other cities have done, but rightly so, to comfort each other, to find a little serenity. Here, every family in Bergamo, every person I know had a pain, a person who passed away, a family member in hospital, a friend who was fighting against this disease. Those were truly difficult weeks.”.

Crida, that dream come true

Now, however, Italy is slowly starting up again. Phase 2 has sanctioned the reopening of some businesses, while waiting for the rest to be able to unlock. And the time has come for Cristina Parodi to start thinking again about the newborn Crida brand, hers and that of her friend Daniela Palazzi from Bergamo. «This project was born as a dream that I shared and have shared with Daniela for many years, one of the most naturally elegant women I know. Last summer I had a season freer from television commitments, we told ourselves that if we didn’t do it right away we wouldn’t do it anymore. It seemed right to us that even at 50 years old, two women could make their dream come true. We started working in September, researching fabrics, workers, manufacturing and in December we had our first collection ready, a small capsule. We were very proud of what we had done, then obviously at the beginning of March, when we were supposed to start the most important month also for orders and to get the clothes into the stores, everything stopped. And like the entire fashion world, we brand new freshmen suffered a setback and now we have an uphill road. Having said that, we are from Bergamo and therefore we won’t stop, also because we have cultivated this dream for a long time. We certainly didn’t choose the best time to start, but this couldn’t have been foreseen».

“Fashion must slow down”

Clothes designed for all women, timeless, made with natural and sustainable Italian fabrics. These are the characteristics of the Crida brand and that respond to the need, felt now more than ever, for a less consumerist fashion. “Fashion, like our entire country, will have to change. In our opinion, it will have to go in a direction of simplicity, as that genius Giorgio Armani immediately said. Fashion must loosen up, it must become more human, it must resume the rhythm of the seasons. These are the ideas we had in mind when we thought of Crida clothes. They are not a product to be consumed quickly, showy, to be worn only twice because after a while you get bored of them. The line is designed for all women like us, who work, do a thousand things, who have small children to take to school, or big children like mine who are already traveling around the world – she says laughing – who work all day and in the evening find themselves having an aperitif. They are clothes for women who love to travel and want to move around and not have to carry a thousand things to match”.

«They offered me a program, I refused»

«They offered me a program, I refused»
After all, fashion has always been part of her professional path, as a journalist at Tg5 she dealt with it for many years and now she has decided to change roles, putting herself on the other side. «I am not a woman obsessed with work and appearance. I did this job out of passion. I was on air daily for decades, but I never had a nightmare or anxiety if I didn’t do it anymore. Now I choose the things I like and I can also allow myself to do other things, I’m a curious person, I write books. They offered me a program on TV8, but I refused because in this period I wanted to give space to this project that I like so much, made by the two of us. And then I matured and developed an increasingly close collaboration with Cesvi, I became the director of their magazine. These are two things that I deal with full time and that I like a lot».

Love for Made in Italy

And 10% of sales will be donated to Cesvi. The proceeds will go to support a project aimed at helping the elderly who need support, care, meals and social assistance services at home. The brand also wants to be a hymn to Made in Italy. “In unsuspecting times, we named each of our clothes after a city that inspired us. Florence, Taormina, Bari, Rome, Positano. We like the idea of telling them also through the images of our beautiful Italy. We need to support our tourism and we made this choice because we are convinced that Italian fashion is special and unique in the world”.

Source: https://bit.ly/2ZiD4T2