From sketch to boutique.
Over twenty years of design and production for high-end collections. Few have seen the whole chain from the inside — I have, and that's what keeps your production on time and on budget.
I'm Lorenzo Manta. For over twenty years I've worked in the middle of Made in Italy: between the person who designs a collection and the person who brings it into production, between craftsmanship and digital tools, between a moodboard and the first fit session.
I started in a family textile business as a teenager, learning from the ground up: every stage of production, from cutting to shipping, and all the documentation that comes with it — product sheets, bills of materials, price lists, catalogs, packing lists, accounting records. I've moved through the whole Italian chain: 2D and 3D technical design, product development, third-party manufacturing, sample and collection management for high-end international brands — from the first grading to the salesman sample, all the way to the shelf.
I'm a designer and a technician at once: I design a collection, judge its fit and finish, and translate it into documentation a factory can actually produce. In 2022 I put into words what I'd been living for over twenty years, with a thesis on how the fourth industrial revolution is reshaping fashion. Along the way I found an idea from labor sociology — from W.F. Whyte and C.W. Mills — that fits me better than any other: the designer as "man in the middle," a point of balance between two worlds that rarely speak to each other directly. → Read more
Without this figure in the middle, the cost shows up later and larger: a construction that looked fine on paper but can't be produced at the quoted price, a tech pack a factory reads three different ways, a sampling round repeated because no one caught the issue early enough. That's not a skill a master's program teaches — it's built over decades, on the ground, and it's the one that will keep paying for itself as virtual sampling, AI and new supply chains reshape the industry over the next 40 years.
1. Design & prototyping
- Trend forecasting & research
- Moodboards, croquis, technical flats, colorways
- CLO3D — certified 2022 (drape, fit and fabric behavior on a virtual garment)
- Fit sessions, pattern correction, grading
- Technical validation of the prototype
2. Technical & cost documentation
- Tech packs & spec sheets
- Bill of materials / BOM, DIBA, trim sheets
- Raw material requirement calculations
- Costing, CMT, margins, price lists
3. Production & quality control
- Full production process, cutting to shipping
- Made in Italy supply chain, critical path & timing
- Quality control on pre-production & bulk samples (AQL)
- Defect sheets & non-conformity management
4. Sales & commercial communication
- Line sheets, lookbooks, sales catalogs
- Materials for showrooms, sell-in/sell-out, trade fairs
Industry experience
- Sample & collection management for high-end international brands
- Degree in Fashion Culture and Techniques (2022), thesis "Fashion Industry 4.0"
Numbers that translate into fewer sampling rounds, fewer production errors, and collections that hit the floor on schedule.
The notes below are feedback Lorenzo received directly over the years, reproduced here from memory — not verbatim quotes.
Technical management of Made in Italy sample production for high-end international brands: bills of materials, requirements, costing, projections, production organization.
Feedback
Anticipates bottlenecks before they happen, with tight control over requirements, pricing and margins — clients say they feel confident handing him entire sections of a high-end collection. — feedback from clients, high-end Made in Italy sample production, 2019 onwardFounded Dream Yourself, an independent brand entirely Made in Italy, brought to some of the best international showcases and fashion weeks.
Feedback
A designer and product lead who keeps a team steady under real creative and commercial pressure, and finds the upside even in a brand's hardest moments. — feedback from a team collaborator, Dream Yourself, since 2013First consulting practice: product sheets, margins and warehouse optimization for third-party manufacturers, including demanding international clients.
Feedback
Turned warehouse overstock into new, sellable designs — and the clarity of his documentation cut dead time out of the production chain entirely. Northern European clients rated the collaboration highly. — feedback from a Northern European client, third-party manufacturing consultancy, 2009–2013Built a product and style office from scratch for a company transitioning from importing to in-house production, coordinating a young team and manufacturing abroad.
Feedback
Built and led a young, efficient team from scratch, with meticulous attention to the documentation that kept sampling and production on track. — feedback from a colleague, product and style office, 2007–2009Intern, then graphic designer, across the textile manufacturing chain — digitizing technical drawings, product sheets, catalogs and price lists that had only existed on paper before.
Feedback
The first in the team to convert a full catalog from hand-drawn croquis to digital without a single physical sample — a technical leap colleagues still point to. — feedback from a colleague, textile manufacturing chain, 2005–2007Grew up inside a large Italian industrial denim manufacturing business, then started working myself at 14 in a family production environment.
Feedback
Even as a teenager, he combined hands-on work with the instinct to organize what was in front of him — colleagues could already see leadership potential. — feedback from an employee at the family manufacturing business, before 2005
Five areas, plus the resources that cut across all of them.
Design & Product
A real style office sets the method for the whole chain: from the idea to the documents a factory can read.
Supply Chain
Where, when and through which channels a garment is made and sold.
Fashion System
The places, institutions and schools behind the industry.
Fashion Futures
Technology and circular models changing how fashion is made.
Need a collection direction, a moodboard or a concept developed into a garment? A tech pack to check, a BOM to fix, or a feasibility question before you commit to production? The earlier I catch it, the more it saves you.
Open — 1 of 3 client spots available. I work with a limited number of clients at a time, so every project gets real attention.
studio@lorenzomanta.it →