Stories
Magata
In Every Stitch, a Story: Honoring Agata’s Legacy Through Slow Fashion
Photography by Dadi Poulain
Marina Raffaelli
Narrated by someone special. The Narrator is revealed within the publication.
Marina does not know me, but she has always known me. I was there in Florence when she first opened her eyes to the world, a Mediterranean child blessed with her grandmother’s fiery Sicilian roots. I streamed through the windows of her childhood home, settling on Agata’s hands as they guided Marina to feel fabric for the first time. “Feel its weight, its soul,” Agata would say, her voice steady and patient, with that particular warmth of someone who knew how to turn the ordinary into the sacred. And Marina—oh, little Marina—how her small hands trembled with wonder as they brushed against taffeta, satin, silk.
I remember the boutique in Lerici, tucked into a quiet corner of Italy, where the afternoon sun would spill through the curtains, and the air smelled faintly of lavender and sea salt. Agata always moved with purpose there, though her steps were unhurried. She wasn’t a seamstress, not by trade, but she had an eye, a gift, a reverence for detail. She understood that the smallest imperfection could disrupt the balance of a garment. “Perfection,” she often said, “is not just in the stitches, but in the story the stitches tell.” Marina would sit cross-legged on the floor, watching, absorbing, her young mind weaving the threads of her future without even knowing it.
Agata was a woman of contradictions, or so it seemed to those who didn’t truly see her. She would laugh and joke with the seamstresses, yet her standards were uncompromising. She was both deeply rooted in tradition and fiercely independent. She spoke of women—especially Mediterranean women—with a kind of awe, as if they were ancient goddesses walking among mortals. “Strong, beautiful,” she would say, her voice carrying the cadence of Sicilian poetry. “They have lived a thousand lives, and it shows. You can see it in their posture, in the way they wear their stories like jewels.”
I watched as these lessons—these philosophies—etched themselves into Marina’s soul. The afternoons in the boutique were slow, deliberate, a kind of ritual. Women of all shapes and sizes came and went, each bringing their own histories, their own curves. Marina learned to see beauty not as a singular, rigid thing but as something fluid, adaptable. There was no “right” body for a dress, only the right dress for a body. She learned to listen—not just to people, but to fabric, to its whispers and its resistance, its willingness to transform.
When Marina moved to Berlin, I followed her, though she was unaware of me. By then, Agata had passed, her absence leaving a hollow space that Marina tried to fill with scissors and needles, dyes and thread. I saw her struggle, saw her question whether she could carry forward the legacy of a woman who had been such a towering force in her life. But then, one day, as she sat in her small studio, surrounded by rolls of fabric and unfinished sketches, something shifted. She picked up a piece of cloth—soft, earthy, imperfect—and wrapped it around herself, just as Agata had taught her. She stood before the mirror, and for a moment, her reflection seemed to blur, her face merging with the memory of her grandmother’s. That was the moment MÁGATA was born.
MÁGATA is more than a brand. It is a bridge—a way for Marina to bring the past into the present, to honor Agata’s teachings while carving out her own path. I watch as Marina works, her hands moving with a quiet confidence that would make her grandmother proud. Each garment she creates carries a piece of her story, a piece of Agata’s story, and—perhaps—a piece of yours, if you let it.
Through her designs, Marina invites others to slow down, to reconnect with the tactile, the personal, the meaningful. She rejects the fleeting nature of trends, choosing instead to create garments that are timeless, that can accompany someone through all the eras of their life. She believes, as Agata did, that clothes should not merely be worn but lived in, cherished, and remembered.
And so I remain here, a silent witness to Marina’s journey. I catch the glint of her scissors, the soft shimmer of silk under her fingertips. I watch as she drapes fabric over mannequins, testing, adjusting, perfecting. There are moments when the light in her studio feels different—warmer, fuller—and I know that Agata is with her, not in form but in spirit. Marina feels it too. She smiles, sometimes, at nothing in particular, and I know she is thinking of her grandmother.
If you ever step into Marina’s world, into the universe of MÁGATA, you might feel it too. The sense of slowness, of history, of connection. The feeling that each thread carries a story, that each garment is imbued with a kind of magic—the magic of care, of intention, of love. You may not see me, but I will be there, as I have always been, weaving light into fabric, into memory, into the stories that bind us all.
The full story appears in our Nature’s Rhythm special >>