Media Company Nss to Launch Digital and Physical Platform to Celebrate Italian Culture

MILAN — Naples has been having a cultural renaissance in recent years, giving birth to many artistic and fashion-adjacent projects that have done their part in advancing the international perception of the Southern Italian city.

Earlier this month former Gucci creative director Sabato De Sarno released a book titled “Napoli Infinita,” which celebrates 2,500 years of the city and invites readers to discover it through the voices and works of 35 contemporary artists.

The publisher behind the 131-page tome, Nss Edicola — which is part of the broader Nss media ecosystem entailing also a digital magazine and the Nss Factory agency — has also been instrumental in forging a new narrative for Naples over the past decade.

Now, it wants to do the same for the whole country.

Nss Edicola was established in 2022 by Nss cofounder and chief executive officer Walter D’Aprile when he made what he bills as a provocative move. This entailed purchasing a newsstand in Naples to have a physical location to engage IRL with the growing digital community it had been amassing for 10 years.

“Newsstands became intergenerational gathering places in our concept, where adults buying newspapers and magazines mingle with teenagers there to just hang out,” D’Aprile said. “The most important lever to succeed is to put the community at the center of it all and to do so one needs to be physically engaged with the audience,” he said.

The move paid off and the Neapolitan space catalyzed events, brand collaborations and conversations around culture. It also led to the launch of the “J’Adore Napoli” brand, a community-minded merchandising project inspired by tourist-core, which has sold 100,000 items in three years. It has become a full-fledged brand and is planning high-profile collaborations towards the end of 2026.

The Nss team brought the physical Edicola project outside Naples by acquiring a second outpost in Milan in June 2023. Following the same playbook, the “Ti Odio Milano. Ti Amo,” or “I Hate You Milan. I Love You,” merchandising project centered on the love-hate relationship locals have with the city, accrued fans and customers.

D’Aprile said the company is now looking at taking over a third newsstand in Rome.

The physical Nss Edicola concept has garnered many brand partnerships since its launch, which D’Aprile characterizes as joint collaborative efforts rather than venue renting. The next one will bow for Valentine’s Day.

Born as a physical extension of Nss’ mostly digital world, Nss Edicola is taking the reverse route, too, and gearing up to becoming an independent digital vertical, part of the Nss media platform, dedicated to celebrating Italian culture at large, across locations and beyond stereotypes and clichés, D’Aprile said.

“Culture will be at the core of it, toying with fashion and adjacent sectors. It is going to be a cross-generational and cross-sector editorial project aimed at spotlighting the country’s culture through a contemporary lens, talking about Italian excellences in different industries,” D’Aprile said. “Italy is known as ‘il bel paese’ [‘the beautiful country’] and for many it’s synonymous with wonderful beaches and hamlets, but it is also home to entrepreneurship and industrial prowess, which we want to showcase,” he said.

Jump-started in 2012, Nss — an acronym for Naples Street Style — built on the experience of a blog launched in 2009 by D’Aprile, Vincenzo Schioppa and Simon Laudati. It first looked at the Southern Italian city for inspiration, starting to showcase its street culture.

It has grown to include a French digital magazine; Nss Galleria, a digital space for exhibitions; the Sports and female-focused G-club verticals, in addition to Nss Edicola, the magazine and the Nss Factory creative agency. In November it acquired a 50 percent stake in DSLO, a digital music-focused media.