Pitti Immagine Uomo officially opened today in Florence and I want to pay homage to it with a special post on the history of Florentine tailors.
There’s probably no other town in Italy like Florence. The Tuscan town has indeed produced some of the finest examples of menswear, extremely beautiful garments not only for the precision of their cut but also for their artistic connotations. For centuries, and especially during the Renaissance, Florence was the city of art, but it was also the city of fashion.
Florence's monuments and churches always incarnated elegance, beauty and perfection, ideals that must have inspired to the locals the so-called “moda individuale” (literally “individual fashion”) that was very popular in the 1400s. The two words described a trend that had quickly spread among men who turned to tailors, painters and artists and asked them to create extraordinary and unique garments.
Look at the paintings by Piero della Francesca, Raphael, Benozzo Gozzoli, Filippo Lippi and Andrea del Castagno, Sandro Botticelli, Luca Signorelli and Pollaiolo, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Pinturicchio and Andrea del Sarto and try to spot two men who are dressed in the same way: it will probably be rather hard to find them. Individual fashion inspired Florentine tailors to push the boundaries and use their fantasy, creativity and artistic impulses to design colourful tights, little capes with pleated sleeves and blouses and jackets in precious fabrics decorated with bright details.
Florence became fashionable again at the beginning of the 1800s when a clever milliner from Signa, Domenico Michelacci, created a very thin and elegant straw hat. This special hat was so successful that the milliner even obtained funds from the local government to help him launching his own factory and export his creations as far as England.
Around the same period of time, the Italian courtesan Countess of Castiglione, born Virginia Oldoini, but known as La Castiglione, mistress of Emperor Napoleon III of France, launched the famous “capelines”, hats characterised by very large brims and decorated with beautiful ribbons.
Menswear in the meantime flourished in Florence thanks to its tailors. In 1870 Olinto Maltagliati opened his tailoring house in a building near Santa Maria del Fiore. Maltagliati contributed with his work to elevate the Italian tailoring school to the level of other famous and prestigious European schools, and thanks to his designs Florence was able to compete with Paris and London.
Maltagliati was very young and talented and though he wasn’t the only tailor in Florence (there were also Cellerini, Bicchi, Asso and Tasselli), nobody before him had ever dared opening his own tailoring house. His technique was impeccable, his taste was very refined, and in a very short time he became the tailor of the aristocracy. Maltagliati’s star shone for a long time and after him his son Roberto (working in Florence between 1910 and 1940) became famous for creating a double breasted smoking.
In the early 1900s the fame of the Florentine tailors spread, also thanks to great masters such as Stevani, Miranda and brothers Ubaldo Luigi and Gino Maurilio Rossi, all well known for their styles and techniques. Between 1930 and 1950, three new tailoring masters appeared on the scene, Otello Pecchioli, Aldo Cappelli and Evandro Franchi.
The ‘60s were marked by the arrival of younger and more innovative tailors. Sicilian Letterio Speciale produced suits characterised by the “classic line”; Giorgio Giuntini had studied at Evandro Franchi’s tailoring house and could make suits as beautiful as him, but infused with modernity and characterised by a special lightness both in the cut and in the fabrics.
Elio Rettori opened his tailoring shop in Via Calzaiuoli, near Piazza della Signoria, and soon became one of the stars of Italian tailoring thanks to his light and elegant suits. Remo Maltagliati and his son Raoul created instead classic and stylish suits, with accurate details and a cut inspired by the Milan and the London tailoring schools.
But the list of famous Florentine or Florence-based tailors could go on and on and it should include Neapolitan Vincenzo De Vita, Leo Rosella, Armando Di Preta, Sbraci, Virgilio Marras and Franco Rossi. There were skilled and talented tailors also in the rest of Tuscany and in particular in Livorno, Montecatini, Pistoia and Lucca. One of the best artisans was Pisa-based Mammini, who, after studying the anatomy of human beings and horses, designed a special pair of innovative riding trousers that were soon adopted all over the world.
The bold designs of Florence-based tailors soon spread to the rest of Europe where the innovations introduced by some of these artisans sparked a lot of interest. The designs of Filippo Nativo, who emigrated from Sicily to Tuscany in the mid-40s, were among the most original ones. Nativo had a talent for making classic suits, but he also had a genuine passion for experimenting with new materials, cuts and techniques.
He launched double face jackets, the "tooth" rever and the Olympic jacket, a classic menswear jacket with five coloured rings on the back. As a young man, the late designer Enrico Coveri once modelled for him a suit that could be radically transformed by opening and closing different zips.
For decades the tourists that went to Florence didn’t only visit its famous churches and museums, but also stopped at the local tailoring houses to get their wardrobes revamped. As the years passed, though, things dramatically changed: ready-to-wear revolutionised the habits of buyers and wiped away tailoring houses, threatening to destroy this form of craftsmanship forever.
At the moment there are around 120 tailoring houses in Tuscany and last year at Pitti Immagine the Italian tailors met with the Savile Row tailors, and debated about the problems their category goes through in educating new and young tailors. Apparently, though there are fewer tailors, the job is in high demand, so it should be rediscovered and maybe remarketed.
The biannual menswear trade show Pitti Immagine Uomo might not be as spectacular as the Milan catwalk shows that usually follow it, but the event still manages to prove that, though centuries might have passed, Florence still retains its very special and fashionable power.
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Bellissimo articolo, interessante e piacevole da leggere. E' bello conoscere di più su questi grandi artigiani fiorentini.
Posted by: Fabrizio | January 14, 2011 at 10:42 PM
The tailor Maurilio Gino Rossi, named in this article, was my grand-father, he died before my birth; the tailor Franco Rossi, his son, was my uncle. published in a magazine named "Vestire", year V, num. 9 in 1963-1964. I'm very happy that someone had remebered this interesting history of Florence tailors and put it on this website.
Thank you!
Posted by: Teresa Arrighetti | January 31, 2011 at 09:08 PM
WHAT A WONDERFUL ARTICLE... TEARS CAME TO MY EYES.....
MY LATE HUSBAND, RAOUL MALTAGLIATI,HAVING BEEN TAUGHT BY HIS GRANDFATHER, ROBERTO AND HIS FATHER, REMO, RAOUL BECAME AN EXCELLENT ACCOMPLISHED TAILOR AS WAS HIS FATHER. MY FATHER IN LAW WAS PRESIDENT OF THE 'FORBICI D'ORO .. " GOLDEN SCISSOR " IN ITALY THIS WAS A VERY PRESTIGIOUS AWARD!~ GLI ARTIGIANI FIORENTINI NON
MORIRANNO MAI! THIS IS A WONDERFUL TRIBUTE TO MY FAMILY AND I COULD'NT BE PROUDER. WOULD VERY MUCH LOVE TO DISCUSS MORE OF OUR MANY YEARS IN FLORENCE IN VIA CAVOUR 21..LA SARTORIA MALTAGLIATI..!
UN SALUTO CARO, GIULIANA MALTAGLIATI
Posted by: GIULIANA MALTAGLIATI | October 03, 2012 at 04:49 PM