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Traditional clothing is built upon fabrics, whose realm has always spoken the language of wool. Knowing that no season is superior to another, as the qualitative perspective deems the difference itself to be more important than any individual term, the Classic man particularly loves winter for the variety of styles and fabrics in which wool still r...

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After the spring solstice, the sun's rays in our hemisphere increase at an accelerating rate. This acceleration awakens the energy that was dormant during the long winter. In the streets, not only the green of the trees but also the gray of the buildings no longer look the same. Everyone can, somehow, feel it. Regarding summer, it is fascinating to...

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A famous Italian chef once said: “If you are not cooking with passion and love, then you are not cooking – you are just making something to eat”. I’m starting with this analogy because dressing, just like cooking, can be a form of art. An art that is mastered by those gentlemen that have well understood that building up a wardrobe takes a certain d...

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Countless times I have found myself in an airport lounge reading something while I wait to board my next flight. And to this day, I still vividly remember that incredibly humid evening and the impressive not-so-bad espresso at Changi airport in Singapore. As an Italian man passionate about the fine art of tailoring, it is not infrequent for me to c...

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The art of Maria Lai feels relevant in a time when many of us are seeking symbols of unity. This woman of Sardinia, an important voice in Italian postwar contemporary art, wove a message of universality into all of her work. Each piece told a story of connection and shared human experience. Over Lai’s almost 70-year career (Lai died at 94 in 2013),...

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In this time of virus-imposed isolation, it’s comforting to sift through old possessions in forgotten drawers. I recently came across two neatly folded women’s Borsalino hats my mother had bought in Rome in the early 1950s. Still unblocked, but well-preserved for future shaping, they inspired a look into the history and current state of the legenda...

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There’s no putting the work of Italian fashion designer Antonio Marras – or the designer himself for that matter – into a neat box. Marras is as eclectic as he is brilliant. He is known as one of the most intellectual of the Italian designers, adept at weaving poetry, literature, cinema, music, and the visual arts into his collections, including tr...

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Silent films can be an acquired taste. Melodramatic plots and the absence of synchronized sound are not to everyone’s liking, but those aren’t good enough reasons to dismiss the genre as archaic or tedious. There’s much more to these films than meets the eye, including the story of the Italian divas, Lyda Borelli first among them, who defined the a...

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Certain images from films just don’t fade from memory. Take, for example, actor Toni Servillo playing the jaded Jep Gambardella, king of Rome’s nightlife, in Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar-winning The Great Beauty. Who could forget his above-it-all gaze and supple yellow sports jacket that screamed Neapolitan elegance? Then there’s the mysterious scaled...

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What happens when award-winning Italian and American costume designers get together on a university stage to discuss cinema, fashion and costume design? The audience is treated to a little slice of cinematic magic.  There’s the lively repartee between masters of the craft – costume designers who have created the wardrobes for the best-known movies...

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