Etro tradition flourishes with the palm of the cashmere design, an ancient decorative feature born in Mesopotamia, where it symbolised the shoot of the date palm, considered to all effects and purposes the tree of life. The palm tree, which was conceived as a decorative feature on precious hand-woven Indian fabrics, flourished until being adopted for the shawls of Nineteenth-century ladies. Given that passions positively cry out for collections, it is only natural for Etro to have a collection of one hundred and fifty cashmere design shawls dating from 1810 to 1880. The originality of this old collection inspired the birth of Paisley, the common thread that runs throughout all the collections from 1984 to the present. The classic palm foliage has become the preferred means of making technological explorations and daring experiments: the cashmere design is illuminated with pop hues, fossilised in lunar prints, pulverised in embroidery with crystal fragments, sectioned into small samples and plastified in glass-bags. This is the story of an ancient decorative motif which, season after season, collection after collection, flourishes on fabrics, trailing all its magic in its wake.