Search Results for: italian tailoring

In a bittersweet address on Facebook last week, Simone Righi of Frasi told his followers he’s shuttering his menswear boutique in Florence, Italy. The store, which is located just a few blocks from the Arno River, has long been known for its personalized service and quality clothing. Inside were luxurious cashmere knits from Fedeli and Hawick; tastefully patterned ties from Mattabisch and Tie Your Tie; and natural-shouldered sport coats from Sartorio Napoli and Orazio Luciano. 

The store’s main draw, however, has always been the man behind the counter. Simone has exceptional taste and an easy-going style, and he dresses with a natural sophistication that arguably can’t be taught. He has what antique collectors call The Eye, which is that unteachable and irrevocable power to discern art from trash, real from fake, inspired from derivative. “Most of the great dressers I know tend to dismiss complaints such as ‘your sleeve is a quarter-inch too short,’” David Isle once wrote of The Eye. “It’s not that they don’t care about these details. It’s that they have developed the ability to look at an outfit holistically, rather than in parts. They have The Eye. […] The legend of The Eye would have it that this talent cannot be learned.” Still, that hasn’t stopped many men from trying. Over the years, men from around the world have come to Frasi not only to shop, but also to pick up a few lessons from Simone on how they can wear clothes in such a carefree but considered manner. 

Unfortunately, the store is now closing, going the way of Louis Boston and Harvard Square’s J. Press. While wrapped in a brown checked tweed and duo-toned scarf, Simone remained composed throughout his Facebook video, but was also visibly choked up. “This is a peculiar message for you all. It’s a thank you message for everyone who came to meet me, who came here to my shop, a shop that’s like a home to me,” he started. “To all those people, I want to say thank you for giving me your trust and for letting me create a connection with you, for a few minutes or a few years, so that I could give you a tool for you to express your personality. Thank you for letting me grow and express my creativity. Thank you for your kindness. This, however, is a peculiar thank you message because it’s also a goodbye. A part of my life is coming to an end, a part that includes my profession. My shop here in Florence is closing. I truly hope we can meet again on some future project because it has all been really beautiful.” His last Instagram post is of two people hugging. 

For much of the 20th century, men’s media was about general interest publications giving readers the information they needed for “right living.” They told men how to dress for the office, grill meat on weekends, and mix delicious cocktails for after-dinner parties. As Cathy Horyn once wrote, “almost no one cares about this sort of thing anymore.” Online, audiences can easily find communities that share their specific interests and advertisers can target people more closely than ever before. It’s no longer enough for a publication to just say it’s “for men.”

This is Will Welch’s challenge at GQ. Welch was recently promoted to Editor-in-Chief at the magazine, replacing Jim Nelson, and while GQ isn’t losing money, it’s lost some cultural relevancy. To get readers to return, Welch promises to make GQ to be about more than just telling men how to match pocket squares with ties. This month’s music-themed issue, for example, covers Frank Ocean and dives into John Mayer’s Visvim-heavy wardrobe. And when Welch headed Conde Nast’s smaller, but edgier, GQ Style title, he featured the romantically styled designer Haider Ackermann, cult-favorite streetwear label Noah, and Gauthier Borsarello’s private Paris showroom, which is full of vintage inspiration. With Welch now at the top of GQ’s masthead, we can expect something similar between the main magazine’s covers. 

“Instead of dictating what’s good and what’s bad from some sort of imaginary mountaintop, if we can be meaningfully participating in a community of people – helping to elevate and tell the stories of the people who we think are doing really exciting things – to me that is a higher calling than, ‘don’t wear those pants, wear these pants,’” Welch told Business of Fashion. “If you try to be everything to everyone, you end up not being much of anything to anyone. So we’re making GQ less a big tent and more the only place to go when you want a rich, intelligent, and transportive plunge into all the stylishness the world has to offer.”

No Man Walks Alone is a sponsor on this site, but they’re also one of my favorite online retailers. The shop’s founder, Greg – who can be clearly seen above walking alone – simply has great taste. He knows his way around a coat-and-tie rig, but also has a good eye for casualwear. For guys who love Italian tailoring and want to build a weekend wardrobe, No Man Walks Alone is a great one-stop shop. 

This morning, they started their end-of-season sale, where you can find select items marked down by as much as 40%. Some of my favorite brands here include Sartoria Formosa, which is wonderful for high-end Neapolitan tailoring, and Kaptain Sunshine, which offers slightly quirky and offbeat takes on Americana and workwear (they’re like LL Bean with a sense of humor and a lot more style). Few stores capture my personal interest in clothing as well as NMWA, especially in the way they mix tailoring with workwear and contemporary styles. Here are ten favorites right now from their sale.

Men’s style has never been more factionalized. Whereas men once agreed on what they thought were The Good Clothes, today’s landscape is such that the ascendency of one look doesn’t necessarily displace another. Ten years ago, men rallied around Americana and denim, then prep and Italian tailoring. Now with a million style tribes, it’s hard to coalesce excitement around any one thing. There’s streetwear and techwear, tailoring and normcore, the brutalist avant-garde and Japanese folk. Nothing is fully in or out. 

There is, however, one small sliver of overlap: the classical overcoat, loose and slightly oversized, which has somehow managed to cut across style genres. Preps pair polo coats with tweeds and flannels. Streetwear aficionados have worn camelhair topcoats ever since Kanye sported his with suede Chelsea boots. Contemporary menswear guys, those of both maximalist and minimalist stripe, like theirs with sleek jeans and textured sweaters. Even workwear lines such as RRL offer the occasional belted duster or tweed.

These are not just superficial overlappings, either. As men’s style has started loosening up, both fashion forward guys and classic menswear enthusiasts have found common ground on how they think a coat should fit. Whereas traditional overcoats once seemed out-of-touch, shoulder-hugging coats now look out-of-date. Classic overcoats right now are the one thing we can all agree on. 

A couple of years ago, former Eidos designer Antonio Ciongoli and Stoffa founder Agyesh Madan headed to India to work on a collaboration. They developed two hand-dyed indigo fabrics – one shirting weight, the other trouser weight – and came up with a hand-block pattern for some prints. Unfortunately, the collaboration never came to fruition. Eidos’ parent company, Isaia, wasn’t sure how the market would react to unstable dyes (in contrast to synthetic dyes, natural dyes fade and run easily). Like Brooks Brothers’ customers in 1959, who angrily stormed back into the stores and complained about how their madras shirts were bleeding in the wash, they worried that people would mistake the character of natural dyes as defects. 

The work wasn’t all lost, however. Madan eventually used part of that trip for a Drake’s collaboration, and Ciongoli used it as inspiration for a new line. Since stepping down as Creative Director at Eidos – which is now run by Simon Spurr – Ciongoli has started 18 East, a new menswear apparel brand under Roller Rabbit. The line is debuting tonight at New York City’s 180 the Store. 

18 East isn’t necessarily a travel line, but it’s about traveling. The number 18 refers to how R is the 18th letter of the alphabet (a nod to their parent company, Roller Rabbit), and East is an allusion to Eastern manufacturing. “Everything we make is with small, artisanal suppliers,” Ciongoli explains. “When people talk about handwork, they’re often talking about how someone is operating a machine by hand. But handwork here means real handwork – even the embroideries are done purely by hand.” 

In 1936, the editors of Apparel Arts published “Permanent Modern,” a fourteen-page article introducing their vision for the ideal menswear store. The article spares little in details. Included are elaborate floor plans and descriptions of the materials that should be used for the architecture, fixtures, and display cases. According to the editors, things should look modern, but not “voguish modern,” as you want to catch the customer’s eye, yet also make the place feel inviting. They even specified the lighting and air conditioning systems (two whole pages were dedicated to that). Should the reader want to implement their vision, they included a directory for the contractors, suppliers, and equipment manufacturers who could help with the store’s construction.

The store they imagined was grand – something like a Saks Fifth Avenue, but solely dedicated to men. There were five retail floors, each dedicated to a certain class of items. On the first floor, you had accessories and footwear. Moving up, there were sport, prep, and university clothes; then high-end tailoring; and finally moderately priced attire and boy’s clothing. The basement floor was to be a club lounge with fruitwood furniture and a fully stocked bar. And at the top-most floor, there would be a penthouse restaurant with an open-air dining terrace. Apparel Arts’ editors imagined that the terrace could be converted into a skating rink in the wintertime, which could also double as a stage for showing clothes on live models. 

One of the things I love about Drake’s is how they’re able to present classic clothes in a way that feels a bit fresher, a bit newer, without veering off into the bushes. This season, the company shot their spring/ summer lookbook in Charleston, South Carolina, where they’ve mixed their English ties and Italian tailoring with some of their favorite pieces from the heydays of American style. And at a time when prep feels beleaguered – sometimes dated, sometimes lacking in self awareness – Drake’s presentation makes me think, “oh yea, this stuff is pretty good.”

In an old post at Put This On, my friend Pete once wrote a great essay on what’s happened to prep. In the mid-2000s, “J. Crew sales were booming – critter shorts and tiny collared OCBDs abounded. Grosgrain enthusiast Thom Browne won a CFDA award and got his own line at Brooks Brothers. Ralph Lauren launched an over-the-top youthful prep brand allegedly named after Ralph’s dog, Rugby. Old prep labels such as Gant were resurrected, and Barneys stocked new, prep-riffing labels like Band of Outsiders and Benjamin Bixby. The author of the Official Preppy Handbook was writing a sequel.” 

Now in 2018, Rugby and Bixby have shuttered, Thom Browne is no longer at Brooks Brothers, and J. Crew and Ralph Lauren are struggling to find their footing. Even the term preppy feels pejorative again. It’s sticky and gross, referencing a sense of smugness, as well as the squeamishly elitist things we blissfully ignored ten years ago. Pete writes: “Prep implies privilege and inherited money; some of prep’s charm comes from the unquestioning self-confidence bestowed only by independent wealth. Today we still like our wealth obnoxious. But not smug or entitled.” To the degree prep feels relevant, it’s often through generic things that have simply become “clothes.” Flat front used to be preppy, but now they’re just common attire for everyday office workers. 

Even with the explosion of online media nowadays for men’s clothing, it can be a challenge to find good, relatable content for how to wear a coat-and-tie. Much of what’s celebrated online is too aggressively styled for most offices – tightly cut suits, heavily patterned fabrics, and unusual accessories. Great for Instagram and menswear blogs, but less so for the day-to-day grind of most people’s lives. 

Which is why it was such a pleasure for me to talk with Mr. Kazuto Yamaki. He’s the CEO of Sigma, a Japanese manufacturer of camera lenses, flashes, and other photographic accessories. He’s also an exceptionally well-dressed public figure, but so far removed from the world of menswear blogs that I had to try a few times to convince him that I was not, in fact, joking when I said I wanted to interview him about how he dresses. 

Much of what Mr. Yamaki wears will be familiar to anyone who reads this site – softly tailored Italian-influenced suits and sport coats, paired with tastefully designed ties and solid colored dress shirts. Where I think he makes a distinction is that everything looks relatable, something you can wear to most offices today. It’s thoughtfully considered without being obsessive; informed without nit picking. And in being so, it looks more naturally put together. 

Tailoring is a fierce trade with an ever-shrinking market. Which is perhaps why, if you talk to enough tailors, you’ll find they all hate each other. A tailor will tell you so-and-so is cheating his customers by using cheaper trims. Or such-and-such tailor isn’t cutting things right. For whatever reason, this sort of talk is especially common among the older tailors in Southern Italy, who are all too eager to tell you how everyone is doing things wrong except them. 

Part of this is the natural sniping that happens in small, competitive industries. The other part is about how tailors are trained. Traditionally, a tailor will enter the trade by apprenticing under a master cutter or tailor. Since their work as an apprentice is still contributing to the shop’s general output, that means things have to be done in a very careful and specific way. This lends a kind of rigidity to the learning process that, I assume, carries with the person throughout much of the career. People who do things differently are thought to be wrong, lazy, or just outright evil. 

Not all tailors are so rigid in their thinking. I’ve had some great conversations with Herrie Son, a young up-and-coming tailor located in Nashville, Tennessee – a city admittedly better known for its down-home country music than traditional suits and sport coats. Still, Herrie brings a bit of Savile Row craft to the American South. She got her start at the London College of Fashion, where she focused on handcraft tailoring, and then did some work for Thom Sweeney and Welsh and Jefferies. At the first, she learned how to cut; at the second, she learned how to make.