K-Way surpasses all storms, even Kovid’s

The sale of K-Way, a sportswear brand renowned for its nylon windbreaker jacket that fits in a banana pouch, suffers the devastating effects of the health crisis, its owner, the Italian group BasicNet, assured.

“We have more than a crisis, we have actively fought it and increased our investment”, Lorenzo Boglione, group vice president of sales, told AFP at the occasion of Menswear Fashion Week in Milan.

“K-Way outperformed our brands, 2019 was an extraordinary year. 2020 was a bit complicated but we did better than we expected given the circumstances”, she added.

In the first nine months of 2020, sales of the entire group, including sports brand Kappa and Superga sneakers or Jesus Jeans, fell 21.8% to 608.4 million euros.

K-way now on the catwalk

K-Way debuted on the catwalk at the Milan Fashion Week on Sunday after parading for the first time at the Pitti International Menswear Show in Florence in 2019.

In streaming, the parade in Milan took place behind closed doors, due to an epidemic-restricted ban on BasicNet’s new 4,000m2 campus.

Cargo pants in napkin leather, jackets in cotton gabardine with Scottish checks, quilt down jackets: Classic nylon goes hand in hand with leather, wool and velvet, a blend of clothing that epitomizes the brand’s move upmarket.

“The most special thing in this collection is that it is black leather, which is very unusual for us, but the zips are still yellow, orange and blue”The brand’s favorite color, Mr. Boglione commented.

A move upmarket has also been depicted recently in collaboration with Haute Couture House Fendi, which he says he is “very proud of”.

His father, Marco Boglione, captured the K-Way brand in 2004, invented in 1965 by Lyon-Claude Duhamel in the north of France.

Weakened by Chinese competition, K-Way was acquired by the Italian conglomerate Pirelli in 1991, before reopening under the leadership of BasicNet and marking its return to France in 2013, with a brand opening in Lille .