Neapolitan tailoring is famous in menswear—something as wonderful and regionally particular as Normandy cheese or Californian Pinot. Why? Because the tailors of that great southern Italian city devised a variation of the stiff and constricting Savile Row suit—something that would work in their sweltering climate by allowing the wearer to revel in sartorial clothing without ever breaking a sweat. The best Neapolitan jackets feel as light as shirts and are utterly unconstricting—they are designed to liberate movement rather than maintain posture.
Kiton, Naples’ largest manufacturer of top-level tailoring, has long cut suits for women, but it was very much a sideline. Today only 10 percent of its considerable business is womenswear. However, Maria Giovanna Paone, scion of the house, has quietly set about redressing the balance. Today’s collection was presented in three rooms of the former Gianfranco Ferré palazzo which Kiton acquired a few years ago. Notable elements included blouses, skirts, and dresses cut in the same heavy silk traditionally used in Neapolitan unlined ties, done up in blown-up prints drawn from 1970s tie designs in Kiton’s archive. There were a series of impressive fur pieces designed to complement the menswear sourced womenswear below them.
Best of all, though, were the suits. These included a cuffed long-culotte grey Prince of Wales shot through with the faintest bit of yellow; a tuxedo that was neither slim nor wide but just so, fastened via an external loop of grosgrain at the waist; and a wide-lapel cashmere mix grey jacket, long and double-vented, with a gorgeous wide pant. All featured the transformative “Neapolitan shoulder,” which you need to wear to appreciate (Kiton’s press release trumpeted the fact that Melinda Gates already does). Kiton’s manufacturing is 100 percent vertically integrated—its factories make everything in Italy—and so is their philosophy. In the past that quality control has had the effect of insulating Kiton, preventing it from looking outward. The result: Its womenswear has been sometimes fusty. But this wasn’t at all. Only Brunello Cucinelli—and potentially Agnona—can rival Kiton when it comes to quintessential luxury Italian feminine tailoring, and here Paone showed there’s more lurking in her Neapolitan arsenal.
