“My adventure began 15 years ago, teaching did not give me the necessary energy and a series of unexpected events made me find the courage to open a new chapter in my life.
The small shop in via dei Termini, in Siena was since 1966 the outpost of that activity that had started Giovanna, my husband’s grandmother.

When I started the business, I had no idea what trade meant.
With the help of a friend decorator we decided to accentuate the characteristics of the ’60s/’70s: a beautiful and unmanageable carpet cream color velvet. The walls, always cream color and in the center the original chandelier, Murano glass. And a Cappellini armchair lined with a fabric designed by Emilio Pucci, to reaffirm the links with the territory and the importance of sociality.
I started with many uncertainties, but also with the desire to do well. The sign was replaced, using the same typeface as the original, it read: “Knitting Giovanna since 1935”.

My search began: fairs, meetings, some parades, pushing me to Paris, then London trying to make, step by step, a personal and innovative selection. Once I fell in love with a Lebanese designer. Wonderful fabrics, silk and wool of the highest order produced with modern techniques! I liked them, ordered them without imagining what it meant to clear them, how expensive and complicated they would be. The windows, internationalized… my mother-in-law’s clients were decreasing and came younger and curious ladies.

In June 2010, a few blocks away, a 150mq room was opened: a unique opportunity. It was an old bakery, with small vestibules and a couple of toilets: unusual, but just for this different! I decided to keep the traces of the recent past to make it a cozy boutique like a house.

My friend and husband always helped me to bring Maglieria Giovanna into the new space with a name, a little more contemporary: “magboutique”, an acronym for Matilde, my daughter, who had meanwhile started to follow me in this adventure, Antonella, mine and obviously Giovanna, the original source of the company.

Larger windows, a corner with the perfumes for the tasting: a table and sofa; then the bookcase in an original furniture of the old store. And then books of architecture from the 60s and 70s.

There is also a small kitchen to offer a coffee to our guests; the bathroom (the most photographed corner of the entire store) and, later on, the studio itself, with its original red and white checkered floor. On a table still… the chandelier of Murano!
I was beginning to have the clear feeling that these spaces could not only offer objects that the market made obsolete more and more quickly, but perhaps they should be places where to live experiences.

My passion has always been to discover talent off the main stream. Everything moves from the desire to express, even through the walls of via dei Termini, a definite and true identity.

Six years ago magboutique was included in the guide of the New York Times 36 hours.

I still believe in the store as a meeting point and sharing of taste, and that it can be the place to generate my daughter’s enthusiasm, which mag continues to seem like a fascinating adventure.”
(Antonella Gonnelli)