Chef Tommaso Arrigoni — Worn and Signed Chef's Jacket

A chef's jacket carries the hours it has worked. This one belonged to Tommaso Arrigoni, the Milanese chef who founded Innocenti Evasioni and earned it a Michelin star in 2008, and it was worn in service before being signed by his own hand.

Arrigoni belongs to the generation that rebuilt Milanese fine dining around technique rather than theatre: international training, a kitchen opened in 1998, a star a decade later, and a cooking language that holds tradition and contemporary precision in the same frame. The jacket is the working garment of that practice — cloth rather than trophy, carrying the wear of a real service.

It was donated personally by the chef to support the Fondazione Don Gino Rigoldi and its Credito al Domani project, which offers training and opportunity to young people from the city's outskirts. It is the second of six pieces given by Italian starred chefs for the foundation, released in sequence through the season, and the collector who assembles the largest position in this piece is invited by Collecto to the foundation's Christmas Charity Dinner in Milan on 16 December, cooked by Arrigoni alongside other starred chefs for a combined seven Michelin stars. A collectible that is also a contribution — and, in the kitchen, a rare object indeed.