The following is an edited transcript of an interview conducted with the co-founders of La Casa Novanta: Florence Koch, Benita Schranner, and Josephine Moell. La Casa Novanta, founded in 2025 in Milan, creates handmade artisanal chokers. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Siena: Thank you for meeting with me today for this interview for Bocconi Students for Fashion (BS4F). Could you introduce yourselves and La Casa Novanta?
Josie: Yes, of course.
We are Florence, Benita, and Josie — three roommates in Milan who founded La Casa Novanta, a creative entrepreneurial project developed alongside our studies at Bocconi.
We design and handcraft chokers using upcycled materials. Our goal is to blend sustainability, creativity, and small-scale craftsmanship into a brand that brings expressive, colourful accessories to the European fashion space.
Siena: And how did the idea for La Casa Novanta first come about?
Florence: We started with a simple problem: we couldn’t find sustainably made chokers that matched our own aesthetic — so we began creating pieces for ourselves. When our friends started asking to wear them, the idea of turning this into a group project emerged. What began as a hobby in our apartment quickly grew into a business with a clear focus and intention.
Siena: What inspired the name for your brand?
Benita: We named the brand after our apartment, where it all started, Casa 90. Our apartment is the centre of our creative life: the place where we live, work, experiment, and host our friends. As it holds many of our memories in Milan, it represents the spirit of our friendship; naming it La Casa Novanta felt like anchoring the brand in our shared story.
Siena: What have been the biggest challenges you have experienced so far — gaining exposure, ensuring sustainability, managing production and/or shipping?
Josie: In the beginning, one of the main challenges was dividing responsibility fairly between the three of us. Balancing university, production and fitting our friendship into a business structure was difficult. Logistics in Italy were also complicated — shipping can be very unreliable, affecting delivery times and costs, often forcing us to charge around 10 euros to ensure packages arrive safely.
Florence: Sourcing high-quality materials was also frustrating. We eventually found a reliable supplier in Germany who meets our standards, but especially in the early stages, many fabrics were poor quality and broke easily, costing time and money.
There’s also an increasingly competitive market in Europe for choker and necklace businesses, which makes it important to stay relevant by distinguishing ourselves through new ideas.
Siena: And on the other hand, what has been the most rewarding part?
Benita: I think definitely seeing people wear our pieces in public. Especially when you don’t even recognise them or they’re strangers, it’s incredibly rewarding. It’s motivating to know that items we made from repurposed material have become part of someone’s style.
And we also love the creative process itself — sourcing the fabrics, imagining new combinations and designing pieces together is a refreshing contrast to our academic routine.
Siena: What is your favourite part of the process — is it receiving the materials or handcrafting the pieces, or the social media strategy? I know you guys have quite an active presence on social media.
Josie: I think it depends on each of the three of us. I think Florence is very into the social media part — —
Florence: I think it’s very hard to say. All of these steps require some sort of creativity: sourcing materials, coming up with concepts, and also doing the Instagram and the TikTok. It’s difficult to choose because all three of us like to be part of everything.
Siena: So, are all of you involved in every stage of the process or do you have specific roles?
Florence: We have tried to specify roles to make things more organised — for each of us to have our own responsibilities — but because it’s a brand that we all really stand behind, it’s important that we think about every step of it together.
Siena: Now moving the focus onto your business model, going in-depth: you mentioned earlier that you operate through drop sales, could you explain how that business model works for your brand and why you chose it?
Josie: We work exclusively with upcycled materials and handmade production, so each drop is curated based on what fabrics we find and what inspires us that season. The drop model actually helps us avoid overproduction and minimise waste, ensuring that every piece is made with intention.
At the same time, it allows us to react to trends quickly. For example, we just had an Oktoberfest collection last month — it allows us to stay flexible depending on what’s happening culturally and seasonally.
Siena: Can I ask how many chokers you include in a drop then? How often do you drop?
Florence: Honestly, as many benefits as there are to drop sales, we have had some thoughts about changing our business model. Drops take a lot of work — you have to think of the concept behind it and the branding behind it, plus producing styles in small quantities doesn’t really allow you to scale the brand very easily. Because of that — and the time and effort these drops require — each drop included a relatively small batch of chokers.
So we’ve shifted our focus from drops to one fixed collection that we can adapt with one or two seasonal chokers, allowing us to sell more pieces at one time.
Siena: Wow, that’s really interesting. Shifting away from the financial to the creative aspects of La Casa Novanta, what does the design process look like from concept to final product?
Florence: It really starts with sourcing sustainably sourced materials. We look for unique fabrics in Milanese markets and often repurpose materials like vintage saris and old-fashioned borders.
Every fabric has a different history and texture, so each piece requires a tailored approach. We deconstruct and reconstruct the fabrics, sewing pieces by hand and attaching chains individually to each choker. This process results in one-of-a-kind accessories that embody a circular design philosophy.
Siena: How long would you say that process is, from the initial concept of that specific piece to the finished product?
Josie: It really depends on the material — how much of the fabric that you sourced you want to keep or, how much you want to deconstruct it or add new things, but I would say maybe like an average — —
Florence: Around 45 minutes to an hour. Then it mostly depends on if there are very delicate fabrics where you have to sew sensitively, which will take a bit longer.
Siena: Looking ahead, where do you see La Casa Novanta in one year, or after you graduate from Bocconi?
Benita: For now, we want to continue refining our collections and strengthen our presence online by expanding our social media reach.
We also see room to expand in the European market, especially the DACH region. In five years, we could imagine moving into other accessory categories while still maintaining our focus on upcycled and handmade pieces.
In the long term, we’ll go wherever the brand takes us. Not living together anymore will make working together more complex, but we see real potential for the future.
Siena: I think you already have mentioned what values and principles your brand has so let’s go to the next question. How do you see your creative direction evolving in terms of the style and materials or pieces you want to explore next? Is there anything upcoming you are excited about or want to talk about or share?
[Laughter]
Florence: We see our creative direction evolving by exploring new materials and expanding our range in a natural way. We would also love to collaborate with other small brands, maybe Milan-based, and create limited pieces together.
As the brand grows, we could imagine outsourcing parts of the production — which are very time-intensive but still part of our creative process — in order to scale. Overall, we want to stay flexible and let the direction be guided by what inspires us and feels right for the brand. A lot of that inspiration comes from our life in Milan.
Siena: Thank you so much for your time speaking to Bocconi Students for Fashion! Is there anything else you’d like people to know about La Casa Novanta that I didn’t touch on? Do you have any upcoming projects you would want to tell readers about?
Florence: We might be moving more into male accessories — we haven’t explored that yet. We’re also thinking about expanding beyond chokers to include belts and other pieces that are still in the early stages.
Benita: I think we’ve just found the experience of creating La Casa Novanta super rewarding. To be able to experience the natural ups and downs of the business in the early stages — we definitely have learnt so much, but we hope that we can still benefit from this venture in the future, that we will have this in our future.
Siena: That’s exciting. Well, this is the end. Thank you so much.
By Siena Jackson
La Casa Novanta’s website can be found here: https://lacasanovanta.com/.
La Casa Novanta’s Instagram and TikTok page: @lacasanovanta.
