Corriere della Sera

"Moreover, after the first order in 1918, Prada can boast of having entered among the official suppliers to the royal household. The year after the opening on Via Manzoni also comes the consecration from the Savoias: the King of Italy formally grants, as read in the parchment signed January 25, 1922, the possibility of using the royal emblem in the logo, along with the wording "Patent of the Royal House". It is an important recognition that changes the history of the Group and is also reported in the columns of Corriere della Sera: "His Majesty the King has granted the patent of the Royal House to the Fratelli Prada company of Milan, with a store on Via Manzoni 19. This is a new title of honor for the Prada brothers, who have distinguished themselves in their trade of luggage and luxury goods in a special way, bringing their company to the height of the leading Italian houses of the kind.""

"Del Vecchio tells, who hardly speaks English, that he went directly to present the offer to the Americans. He did not have an interpreter with him. He still remembers the sniggers in the room of American managers when he formalized the purchase price. At that time, it seemed an enormity. "But I knew the glasses sector well and what Ray-Ban could give me. It would open the doors of any optician in the world. They could not understand that," he tells me. Game over. "Ray-Ban becomes Italian, American Bausch & Lomb sells it to Luxottica," announces the Corriere della Sera on April 29, 1999."

""The taxman thanks the king of glasses," headlines Corriere della Sera on November 27, 1991."

"On April 18, the agreement is reached. Luxottica acquires US Shoe for 1.4 billion dollars, as written in a lengthy article by the New York Times. Italy, for the first time, openly celebrates the timid Leonardo. "Luxottica, winning move in the USA," opens the economics section with a full-page headline and a callout on the front page in Corriere della Sera."

"At Johnson, Del Vecchio studies how to make molds for medals. He is the last arrival of eight workers, the young apprentice who can be asked anything. His colleagues send him to buy lunch every day. "But not for me," he recalls in an interview with Ferruccio de Bortoli in Corriere della Sera. "At that time I could not afford bread with mortadella and every morning my mother would prepare a 'schiscetta' with boiled cabbage: it was my lunch for years." The smell was unmistakable. There were no refrigerators, and the cabbage would ferment in the schiscetta until lunchtime."

"How was Pasta Gianduja born? It was the beginning of 1946, a year of restart for Italy, with the reinstatement of journalists purified by fascism, the return of the Corriere della Sera to newsstands, and the resumption of radio broadcasts across the national territory, and the institutional referendum between the monarchy and the winning Republic. One day Giovanni, who had just returned from a trip to Turin, came to the laboratory and suggested to Pietro to experiment with something using molasses extracted from sugar beets. Pietro Ferrero starts with a panello, which is a solid residue of hazelnuts, obtained by extracting the oil; uses coconut butter, because cocoa butter was too expensive and difficult to find; and adds lean cocoa powder, sugar or molasses, and obtains a semi-solid mixture which he pours into rectangular molds, obtaining loaves that can be sliced. He submits his discovery to his wife and son, receiving their approval. Why the name Pasta Gianduja? Because the taste of the mixture prepared by Pietro Ferrero reminds of the gianduiotti that Turin pastry chefs had invented at the beginning of the nineteenth century, following the Continental Blockade imposed by Napoleon after the defeat at Trafalgar. The Blockade had led to the disappearance throughout Europe of most of the goods from the colonies, and the Turin craftsmen, to save cacao, mixed it with roasted hazelnuts. The day after finalizing Pasta Gianduja, also known as Giandujot, Giovanni arrives with his famous fire-red Fiat 1100, known throughout the Albese, to collect this new product, approved by the tasters Piera and Michele, and tries to place it with the bakers to whom he supplies yeast."