What could have been a bad investment became the origin of one of Latin America's most important textile companies. In the mid-1950s, Rodolfo Francisco de Souza returned to his home in Luiz Alves, Santa Catarina, with 600 metres of silk that no one wanted to buy. The fabric had gone out of fashion and seemed destined to remain in the family storage.
His wife, Adelina Clara Hess de Souza, found an unexpected solution for the material. A mother of 16 children with knowledge of cutting and sewing, she decided to transform that silk into shirts. The first garments sold quickly through family commerce and demonstrated that the fabric could have a more profitable future than initially planned.
In 1957, Adelina hired two seamstresses to work in a room of her house that functioned as a small workshop during the day and returned to its domestic use at night. Since the family lacked money to buy machinery, the employees brought their own sewing machines and received additional payment for using them. To keep the workshop operating, the family acquired a used generator, as the town still lacked sufficient electrical infrastructure.
With increasing demand, production moved to a nearby building. In 1962 the company officially adopted the name Indústria e Comércio Dudalina S.A., a combination of the nicknames of its founders: "Duda" and "Lina". One of the first major orders came from the Lages Road Battalion, which ordered 54 shirts. That contract marked the beginning of an expansion that accelerated in the decades that followed.
By the mid-1990s, the company had approximately one thousand employees, five factories between Santa Catarina and Paraná, and an estimated production of 1.8 million garments annually. Several of Adelina and Rodolfo's 16 children participated in the company, and one of their daughters, Sônia Hess, came to hold executive leadership. After Adelina's death in 2008, the company entered a new phase. In 2013 new investors entered and a year later, Dudalina became part of the Restoque group, now called Veste S.A. The brand currently continues operating with its own stores, franchises and e-commerce.
