A delicious interview with Mr Umberto Angeloni, CEO at Raffaele Caruso. While tasting exquisite salami and cheese hailing from Emilia Romagna, we sit down to talk about sartoria, made in Italy products and the history of clothing. After his quit from Brioni, where he was CEO, Mr Angeloni is now the Head of Fabbrica Sartoriale Italiana, whose projects include also Caruso and Uman brands. Mr Angeloni believes in three main factors: esthetic, quality and functionality. “All the rest is waste” – ha says. It’s hard not to agree with him when he says that often brands prefer esthetic over functionality, forgetting quality too. We discourse on vestigial organs in menswear (our conversation led to the writing of this article), but also on the sad race among producers as for the amount of hours needed to make a product. Numbers go from 50 to 100 hours to make a suit and from 50 or 80 hand-made steps to make a shirt and that's misleading.
Fabbrica Sartoriale Italiana offers full canvas suits with several hand-made steps and Made-to-Measure option available. Running fifteen different projects, among which are Balmain, Dior and Berluti, the “Fabbrica” offers a modern made in Italy product, since it is a sort of “bespoke off-the-rack”, whose pros are velocity, precision and consistency of costs. They proud themselves for the ISO 9001 certification since 2005, cut one jacket at a time and have seventeen thousand different models. 32 people are in charge of the R&D, 12 of patter-making in this company, defined by Mr Angeloni as an “atelier”, similar to a factory as for the units produced per hour and similar to a sartoria for the quality.
If you had to choose between a sartoria from Napoli or Milan, which one would you prefer? - "The question is wrong" - he says - "because a true gentleman is a connoisseur, who grabs the best from each artisan. That is why total look is not elegant, albeit every brand persist in doing it. In Napoli I would pick the fabric that the tailors are more accustomed to work, while in London I would commission a smoking jacket at Hanry Poole, who is said to be its inventor.” Far from him the mere possession of things, Angeloni prefers to find out what suits him the best and use it, this is why Uman only produces blue jackets. Blue is an intellectual and modern colour. Moreover, it’s the colour of the man himself. I can’t disagree from him.
Bespoke hugs,
Fabio
