“Lots of people say I’m a bit of a grouch, but it’s only a defence mechanism.” These are the opening words, between a series of cigarettes, of Antonio Panico, born in 1941, in his atelier in Via Carducci, in the Chiaia district in Naples. He’s unanimously considered to be one of the few living legends of Neapolitan tailoring, as proved by the Italian and international clients that swarm to his doors. The interview is peppered with various cries of “Oh, don’t write that!” or “Don’t take my photo, I beg you!” Some ice needs to be broken before you can persuade him to start at the very beginning. It was the year 1953, and he began working in Casalnuovo for a tailor who later became a priest; at only seventeen, he had already completed his apprenticeship, opening his first tailor’s shop in Piazza Amedeo in Naples in 1964. Then he was offered a job at Rubinacci, where he stayed for twenty-two years, until 1992, the same year he decided to branch out alone and open his atelier in Via Carducci, opposite the renowned Liceo Umberto school. “The majority of tailors just want to make their own living, they’re not interested in creating jobs, they have no entrepreneurial spirit,” he tells me. And I can’t help but agree with him, especially when he adds that he was the first in the 1970s to take on staffers in his atelier.
It’s pointless trying to get Panico to reveal technical secrets, partly because he is not exactly inclined to reveal them, and partly because it wouldn’t be giving them their due if we were to reduce them to mere formulas. “I have the first dart reaching the bottom if necessary, and the sleeve has a slight furl, but it all depends on what the client needs; if he has an informal meeting abroad, that kind of sleeve could look absurd, like a country-boy playing dress-up” he explains.
When I ask about the traits of his jackets, he draws my eyes to what he himself is wearing, adding: “This was made twenty-five years ago; it still fits well and when I wear it, I forget that I am wearing anything. That is real tailoring.” One thing is certain: he has never ever put a central vent on any of his jackets, and he swears blind that he never will. “If I get asked to, I simply refuse,” he states, determined but amused. And it would seem that side vents came into vogue in the 1970s, and that he was the very first tailor in Naples to put them into his jackets.
As I try on a few of his creations, my mind cannot help but conjure up images of the numbers of style-hounds who would have paraded before the same mirror. I try on a jacket without side stitching, a unique piece, which he made in the days when he was at Rubinacci. But the item that really makes my hairs stand on end is the Ulster Coat in tweed, of a sublime cut, with an almost incredible contrast between, on the one hand, the solid, robust image of the coat – we imagine it to be a weighty object – and, on the other, the lightness of its actual being.
Today, Antonio Panico has a workforce of twelve in the atelier, besides his offspring, Luigi and Paola, who help in both the Naples and Rome bases. “You’ll never see a Mafioso sitting in my atelier; when I measure a client, I have to touch him, and I could never lay a hand on people like that.”
Starting price €2500.
Bespoke hugs,
Fabio
