Eduardo Fagliano speaks in places. His identity is seeped to the lot from which he calls me, with sounds of bustling work in the background and the phone appropriately muted whenever a client arrives. The questions asked to him always return to the history of the land in which his family name and craft has developed over the last 200 years. Experts in artisanal shoemaking, Casa Fagliano has specialised over time in the finest leather and craftsmanship, focusing primarily on polo shoes as a mirror to their roots within Argentina’s region of Hurlingham.
Casa Fagliano began with Eduardo’s great-grandparents. Boarding from the port of Genoa, Italy, they arrived in Argentina in 1884. Bringing their knowledge with them, they laid the groundwork with the previously common practice of door-to-door service within the city center of Buenos Aires. Over time, they found business in Hurlingham, a region only just beginning to develop, as English arrivals imported the railway system to Argentina. “All this used to be open, cross-country fields,” Eduardo reminds me. “This street we are on was a street of suppliers. There was the butcher, the baker, the shoe shop. It was a street of services. That was the beginning of Hurlingham.”
The shoe shop was called La Confianza - The Trustworthy. “Because people used to say ‘The Faglianos are trustworthy folk’,” explains Eduardo. It remained The Trustworthy until 1929, when the name Casa Fagliano replaced it, a sign of a growing legacy.
A fourth-generation Fagliano, Eduardo continues this legacy passed down from his father, his grandfather, and the generation before that. The craft is taught from hand to hand. “We watched them work, my grandfather and my father. The art is learnt by observing.”
The values that serve as a compass to safeguard the craft and guide the lineage across centuries, when asked to Eduardo, are simple, absurdly so.
“The quality of our work,” he says. “That has always been the top priority.”
The personable relationship with the client is something Eduardo mentions often, another vital key to their work that they prioritize above anything else. “When people come, they know they will be greeted and taken care of by a Fagliano. That is very important.”
The power of their name drives the relentless devotion to quality across temptation to sacrifice the art of a trade that takes years to develop and master, for the sake of convenience, mechanisation, and expansion. “When your name is on something, you have a different relationship to it. We are responsible for it.”
Offers to expand to multiple locations and take over larger factories elsewhere are measured against impact towards the quality of their output. “It wasn’t easy, and we continue on with that work, with the principles that guide our work: commitment to the client, quality, attention. You can’t put a price on that.”
These principles of dedication towards the craft, and the longevity of their product, are the reason clients choose Casa Fagliano, and why their global reputation has grown to the stature it is today.
Their sought-after mastery is deeply rooted in the sport of polo that historically defined Hurlingham. As the Hurlingham Polo Club grew throughout the last two centuries, so did Casa Fagliano’s expertise in polo boots. Paired with their mastery of leather, their hallmark quality matured alongside the professionalization of polo, a response to the growing demand for higher-quality boots that can withstand daily practices, seven days a week.
Indeed, a pair of Casa Fagliano polo boots is not made for a season, but for decades. Their shoes age alongside their owners, shaped by use rather than worn down by it. In that longevity lies the true meaning of their value: not status, but respect for a craft mastered over generations. Time is built into the object. What one pays for is not an image, but for excellence, and a craftsman’s hand.
Casa Fagliano uses the finest hides from the highest quality tanneries, with which they hold generations-long partnerships. While their polo boots are still handcrafted in Argentina, their expanded collection is produced in a small number of select Italian workshops, where artisans curate the leather using techniques taught by the Faglianos. Everything is quality-tested and curated to the clients’ requests and needs.
Though now well-known across Europe and worldwide, Casa Fagliano holds enduring bonds with England, not only due to the foundational relationship to Hurlingham, but to clients residing abroad who esteem the name Fagliano, not least the latest King of England. That part is not mentioned by Eduardo, who speaks of his clients only as equal partners who care for great quality the same way he does, who are on his mind as he works, and who motivate his love for this work. “I still have letters from clients that would write from fields across Argentina, when it was only through letters that we were able to communicate.”
Eduardo works alongside his two sons. They are both there, observing. The ground is fertile, laid out to keep being built together. Conversations are had together, about what they can learn, about what opportunities are in the future to incorporate without impacting the work, but “primarily,” says Eduardo, “about what the client needs. That takes a lot of time.”
When asked about the future of the brand, Eduardo does not speak of it as something to be decided. He has four granddaughters, still young, still observing. “And who knows,” he says, “maybe they’ll be the next leaders of this place.”
