Return of the Neapolitan Tailoring School (in Documentary Format This Time!)

The most surprising thing that this blog has done so far for me is putting me in touch with people based a bit all over the world working in different fields, from fashion to art and film.

One of them is Italian artist and film-maker Gianluca Migliarotti, who got in touch with me after reading my post on the Neapolitan tailoring school (which at the moment is still among the most read posts on this blog).

In an early email Gianluca explained me he was a Neapolitan tailoring fan and wanted to shoot a documentary on this topic. He bumped into my post and, little by little, carried out his own research and shot his documentary, “O'Mast”.

“As a child, my father and my uncle would take me to the tailor's when they had their measures to be taken,” Gianluca told me about his early "tailoring memories". “They would sit me in a chair and give me fabric swatches to play with while the measuring ritual took place. At times, they even asked my opinion about their suits. When I was 18 my father got me the first tailor-made suit and, from then on, I became a true and passionate tailoring fan. I think it's almost weird for me to buy a ready-made jacket, I don't think I'm a snob, but there isn't any kind of emotional component in buying such an item. As time passed, I came to admire tailors, and I felt it was time to pay homage to the Neapolitan tailoring school, make some order in its history and celebrate these men who have made different generations of men happy through their art. The documentary takes place in Naples obviously, but it's an unseen Naples, a city that will hopefully reveal itself the documentary audience in all its beauty and splendour, with its traditions, culture and craftsmanship. When I started working on this project I thought I would have come up with a historical documentary. Instead I ended up writing a visual love letter to my city.”

Gianluca is currently editing the documentary, in the meantime, enjoy the trailer (unfortunately Irenebrination doesn't get any mentions or credits in the documentary, even though its author contacted me in May 2010 asking for help regarding Neapolitan tailoring historians and such likes. Who knows, maybe Irenebrination will get a mention in the next documentary that Migliarotti will shoot and that is about a Florentine tailor – by the way is that inspired by another post on this same site? – we'll see…).