Como Still Says Silk
Como, Italy. I came for the silk district, the mills behind the fashion houses.
What I found first was a path. It runs behind a blue metal fence, brick pavers with moss in the seams, and ends at a door set in rose-brown stone panels. A dark sign says Museo. That is the silk museum. The one piece of Como's silk you can still walk into is the piece that explains it.
The record is plain. In the early 1970s Como's silk output passed China and Japan. Then the 1990s came, the small firms that did the weaving started closing, and manufacturing stopped being the city's main work. The district still weaves and finishes silk for the fashion houses. But a district is a name you point to, not a floor you stand on.
Then I walked to the water. The lake did what the lake does: deep blue-green, boats idling, forested hills on every side, terracotta roofs tucked into the green. The postcard is honest. The industry did not vanish, it moved out of reach, into finishing rooms and sample books.
The mills closed. The name stayed. Como still says silk, and means it. What shrank is the floor under the word, not the word.