A visit to SivagStore, Milan’s most ‘stylish’ shop

There is a shop in Milan where, if a pen goes missing, a judge must be informed. Everything that enters the shop – a dress, a handbag, a watch – comes from judicial proceedings and is recorded in an official report; anything that is not sold must be returned, down to the very last button, and if one is missing, the person in charge is held accountable, even under criminal law. The shop, SivagStore, is owned by Sivag, the Judicial Sales Institute of the Court of Milan, the company to which a liquidator (appointed by the judge) entrusts all the assets to be liquidated when a company goes into liquidation. Until about a dozen years ago, clothes, accessories and small items of furniture were almost always auctioned off in batches: if things went well, five hundred jackets might be sold for twenty or thirty euros each. Then, in 2014, two Milanese boutiques went into liquidation: twelve thousand garments, made from excellent fabrics with handcrafted finishes. It was late November, with less than a month to go until Christmas, when Albino Bertoletti, the director of Sivag, suggested to the president of the court: ‘Why don’t we try organising a retail sale?’ A former furniture factory measuring just over 700 square metres was found and fitted out over a couple of months – ‘just an experiment,’ they said, ‘nothing more’. By the end of January, takings were five times higher than expected, and the creditors had been paid off. Twelve years on, the shop is still there, at number 47 Via Farini.

Elena Vedovato, the architect who used to work in the old furniture factory, is in charge of it. Six people run the shop – helped, at Christmas time, by university students “who pay for their studies this way”. When the liquidator calls her, Vedovato goes to inspect the stock, assessing its quantity, condition, marketability and seasonality – “there’s no point displaying swimwear in September” – and decides what to bring into the shop, at reduced prices. But don’t call them ‘discounts’. Here, they only talk about ‘markdowns’. This is the percentage that the liquidator sets on the list price, ranging from a 50 per cent to a 90 per cent reduction. The difference is not merely semantic. “The point,” Vedovato reiterates, “is that nothing we sell belongs to us. We are merely custodians: the proceeds, after deduction of the commissions laid down by law, are paid in full to the insolvency proceedings, which will compensate creditors to settle the debts of companies in difficulty. For this reason, every item is numbered, inventoried and recorded.” And indeed, the rules – all displayed at the shop entrance on a laminated sheet – sound as strict as those of a court: no bulky bags allowed, no large animals except service animals, and above all, no returns or exchanges. Once the receipt has been issued, the item is removed from the judge’s inventory under the ‘seen and approved’ rule. “It’s a restriction that customers don’t always grasp,” admits Vedovato. For example? “The gentleman who buys a swimming costume – tried on, as per the regulations, over his underwear – and brings it back the following Saturday because ‘it doesn’t fit’, demanding an exchange that not even lingerie shops would grant.”

Not everything that arrives in Via Farini, however, comes from a shop or a company in liquidation (the adjective ‘bankrupt’ is no longer used, as required by law). There are, for example, furs forgotten in the ‘Milanese fridges’ – the storage facilities where, in summer, the ladies continue to leave their mink and sable coats; if the owner disappears, stops paying and nobody comes to claim them, after a court case they may end up here. The main attraction, however, revolves around hides and leather. “A few years ago,” recalls Vedovato, “a consignment of clothing and accessories made from alligator, caiman, elephant, zebra and ostrich arrived. The most prized item was a men’s crocodile coat, crafted by Tuscan artisans who pounded the leather until it became as soft as a slipper.” There’s no point asking whether it was all sold. “In the blink of an eye, for 5,500 euros.” It is the handbags, however, that steal the show. In 2024, around 250 arrived from the liquidation of a platform specialising in the resale of pre-owned luxury goods: Hermès, Dior, Valentino, Yves Saint Laurent. At seven o’clock in the morning on the day the sale began, there were people queuing outside the door; shortly afterwards, the queue stretched over fifty metres: it became necessary to hand out numbered tickets and limit the number of people allowed in at any one time. The most expensive handbags, kept in a dedicated section, were handled only with cotton gloves; before trying on a dress, you had to pull a white pillowcase over your head, so as not to stain the fabric with foundation. “The problem isn’t just preventing something from going missing,” observes Vedovato, “it’s preventing it from being damaged.” And here the repertoire of anecdotes expands. Some time ago, a rather lively little boy, standing in front of a fur coat, decided to test the strength of the fur for himself: by biting it off. His mother, outraged, denied that it was him, but the shop’s CCTV cameras told a different story.

From the outside, SivagStore looks like an outlet; inside, it operates with the rigour of a court archive. Today, around thirty-five thousand items are on display, with just as many stored in the adjacent warehouse. Every evening, the takings are divided up by transaction; at the end of the month, the total sales are calculated. On Thursdays, however, the newsletter goes out: 16,000 subscribers receive updates on the latest arrivals – yesterday there were 300 quartz watches – always including the date and start time of the sale. “The procedure never changes,” assures Vedovato, “whether it’s a T-shirt for three euros or a Birkin bag for thirty thousand.” What changes, if anything, is the turnout: for T-shirts, few people check the calendar; when the Birkin bags arrive, it’s a different story: there’s already someone waiting outside the door, number ticket in hand.