T
he Italians seem to be engaged in something of a sartorial arms race to produce lighter and lighter menswear. Anyone familiar with the history of men’s tailoring will know that much of the impetus for this lies with Giorgio Armani, who began experimenting with the deconstruction of traditional tailoring in the 1980s. He himself credits his first boss with setting him on this path. “It was Nino Cerruti who asked me to try to find a way of making men’s tailoring more relaxed, less stiff, less restrictive. He was the one who encouraged me to seek a fresh, softly classic, more comfortable style,” he says.
That was in the previous century, and since then the Italians have been using technical advances in materials to create ever more lightweight styles. Witness the Santoni Easy collection of shoes and boots, whose leather models weigh only 295g each because of a rubber composition in the sole that was developed by the brand. A classic boot or shoe with the feeling of a trainer.
The ultra-soft sage green suede overshirt (£2,490) and green suede chinos (£1,490)
Now we have Canali entering the field. The CEO, Stefano Canali, is the grandson of the founder Giovanni Canali, who created the company with his brother in 1934. Stefano cut his professional teeth on Wall Street in the 1990s, when he and his colleagues wore the requisite suit, shirt and tie as a daily uniform. This tailoring was not only formal but constructed in a way that felt substantial; it was a kind of corporate armour.
