Vitale Barberis Canonico

Neapolitan tailoring, pride of Italian elegance, is a history within a history. A paragon of taste and excellence, the tailoring production of Naples is a solid bastion of style unaffected by the changing nature of fashion. Existing somewhere between myth and reality, the tailors of the narrow lanes of Naples and the slopes of Vesuvius have risen to worldwide fame as paragons and touchstones of sartorial excellence. Nevertheless, in attempting to trace the evolution of this history within a history, one becomes aware of an omission. 

All the most authoritative experts, all the literature devoted to it, all the blogs of passionate aficionados point out a tear in the fabric. Even though their roots extend far into the past, all the way to the fourteenth century, Neapolitan tailors experienced a long period of obscurity in the 1600s and 1700s. The 1800s saw a slight uptick, but until the early 1900s there was a considerable dark tear in the fabric, patched up eventually by the great names that even today contribute to the legendary nature of the quality of so many Neapolitan tailoring enterprises (all linked together in complex relationships and cycles of apprenticeship, achievement, and the transmission of knowledge and skills to new apprentices). Beginning in 1870, Raffaele Sardonelli and Filippo De Nicola would be the first to cut, baste, sew, and eventually create the Neapolitan made-to-measure style.

But this historical moment, in an Italy only recently united, a colonial Italy, an industrial and combatant Italy, is even now still quite mysterious where Neapolitan tailors are concerned. Of course, there are two or three immortal ones, for example Antonio Caggiula, author of the famous technical manual L’arte del taglio (The Art of Tailoring), published in 1887, but apart from them? The true breakout of Neapolitan tailoring – despite the ‘communication’ that harps on a mythology of ancient origins – occurred almost entirely after World War II. But a half-century before the Rubinaccis, the Ciardullis, the Kitons, the Attolinis, and the Marinellas became what they were and what they are today, there must have been a whole ‘world’ of skilled hands of which, however, little – or nothing – is known. A still almost entirely obscure system of shops, clients (including very famous ones), salespersons, wholesalers, suppliers, journeymen ready to steal the trade, and, most of all, craftsmen (whether actual masters or less talented), not always true artists yet nevertheless able to interpret a stylistic language that was still being refined.

The dawn of the last century was a heroic and pioneering phase in which the Neapolitan tailor and the Biellese weaver were in close contact. Both of them, geographic, anthropological, and cultural poles of the same land, were seeking to succeed not only on a local level but also on a global one. Seeking respect and recognition around the world.

The historical archives of the Vitale Barberis Canonico Woollen Mill provide us with a unique opportunity for beginning to understand this ‘world’. Its tissue paper copies of letters from the early 1900s recall the close relationship between the mill in the Ponzone valley and the tailoring establishments of the Gulf of Naples. A great deal of direct correspondence with clients along with terser messages to salespersons evoke flourishing, continuous, organised commerce. The Vitale Barberis Canonico Woollen Mill perfectly met the requirements for quality and quantity that the tailoring trade in the shadow of Vesuvius demanded in this volcanic phase of its development. Thus many forgotten figures become clearer, who had been completely ignored by the historiography of the trade. However, documents and samples can provide us with information about them, and all that remains is to discover them.