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Patta celebrates the first anniversary of its Milan store with a short movie

'Ladri di Patta', between streetwear and neorealism

Patta celebrates the first anniversary of its Milan store with a short movie 'Ladri di Patta', between streetwear and neorealism

To celebrate the first anniversary of its Milan store, Patta has released the original short-movie Ladri di Patta, a film about the Milanese streetwear culture set in the suburbs of the city, in collaboration with C41 magazine. The first Italian store of the Dutch brand, born in 2004, was inaugurated on June 13, 2019, in via degli Arcimboldi, next to Piazza Duomo and in a short time, it has become a landmark for Milan's street culture. 

Since the first "dirty" frames, it is clear that the film was inspired by the neorealist aesthetic, taking hints from the tradition of Italian neorealism in cinema and shaping it to tell a contemporary story about streetwear and sneaker culture, always at the core of Patta. The title itself leaves no doubts and is a clear reference to one of the most important movies of Italian neorealism: Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1948) by Vittorio De Sica.

If you ask anyone from Amsterdam what Patta means, they’ll point at their sneakers", said director Victor D. Ponten. "It literally means sneaker in Amsterdam street slang, but the word also has an Italian hang to it. So with Ladri di Patta I’ve combined Italian neorealism with streetwear aesthetics to tell a story about a boy, his father and a new pair of sneakers.

The release of the sort movie replaces in some way the party that was originally scheduled to celebrate the anniversary, cancelled due to the COVID-19 emergency. “COVID-19 was inescapable, but we were here before and we will be hereafter”, said Patta's co-founder Guillaume Schmidt. “The same counts for the things we are proud of. We are proud to be able to do what we do in Milan. Our voice will be heard and presence will be felt.”