gennaro paone: former head tailor of rubinacci

People who use different tailors, do it for their own reasons and some of it is probably related to the male condition of wanting to "collect" things - for some it's model trains, for some tailoring experiences / styles.

As long as they are happy with the end product and can afford it and are not bankrupting themselves or their loved ones, it really doesn't need any further input from the outside world than that. And yes, same applies if they have a highly read blog on the topic. Their business, not ours.

This idea of tailoring getting iteratively better with each suit by the same tailor - hmmm.... Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but I've used several different tailors, most at least 2X if not more, differences are marginal with each subsequent piece.

For me, I like them to get it about 95% perfect for the final day of collection. There is always going to be something a little amiss after you have walked around in it though (no one stands perfectly for their whole life to unsure no movement like they do on here so they can get "likes" and swooning fans about "perfect" the fit is).

I know many will disagree but I really do not think there is such a thing as 100% perfectly fitting suit in the way some people on here hope there is. What these people want is a mannequin look, locked in place and then hermetically sealed to your back.

What the layman (e.g. your normal friends and family) will say to you however is "wow you look great, nice suit!".

I think if people remembered that, they'd be a lot happier.



jedwards said:

I know many will disagree but I really do not think there is such a thing as 100% perfectly fitting suit in the way some people on here hope there is. What these people want is a mannequin look, locked in place and then hermetically sealed to your back. .

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IMO, there are such things as 100% perfectly fitting suits, and a good tailor should be able to deliver that for you on the first commission.

It's more the issue of styling, which I've always thought is underrated on here. That goes for RTW, MTM, and bespoke. Quality and construction are often overrated. Design and styling are often underrated.

The things that can be improved often have to do with styling -- how are the shoulders and quarters cut, how clean or drapey is the chest, and how does the overall silhouette look.

Unfortunately, these things can be ever changing -- partly because of (gasp!) trends and partly because of our own changing taste. It's not only a hard thing to get right, but it's also a moving target.

Couple that with the fact that everyone has different taste. Someone's idealized suit might not be someone else's. And, as it goes with human nature, more influential members can argue (sometimes with great force) that one style is better than others, and convince others that this is actually true. This leads to a lot of groupthink and people mistaking a poorly styled suit with a 'just-differently-styled' one.

Styling is so under recognized when it comes to bespoke. People think they're going to someone to get a perfectly fitting suit, but you can often find that off the rack. The real advantage of bespoke is that you can adjust the styling.



Grammaton Cleric said:

While subsequent garments do get marginally better by virtue of sticking with the same tailor, it's worth noting that not very tailor can knock out a different style.

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When I attempted to order a shooting jacket from my longtime SR tailor I was gently rebuffed and directed to a shop down the street where he thought I would be better served.

As for an improvement in the fit of suits ordered subsequent to the initial order: Not in my expierience with any of the four tailors that I've used. Mind you, I never had less than five fittings for the first suit with any of them. With my first tailor, it had to be close to ten fittings before he let me have the suit. And whenever we met on the street (which was often since we were neighbors) he would give me the once over and if he thought anything was not quite right (usually cloth related) he would want to drag me into his shop. He was old school, in that he valued his reputation more than the money. Not too many like him around these days.



lordsuperb said:

Heaven only knows.......... Sorry, I wasn't trying to ruin the thread. I noticed some individuals taking issues with the fit. I think Gennaro is an excellent tailor based on the stuff posted by Mr. Fan. I was trying to imply we don't know if some of these pictures are from the initial commissions as well as the camera doesn't always show the whole picture. Using Matt as an example I initially had some issues with the initial commissions but I think he weathered the storm and ended up with some really nice garments.


I didn't mean to come across as dictatorial, but I think Permanent Style, ASW, and Dieworkwear carry considerable clout with people looking to get into custom clothing. Some discretion may be needed for readers who aren’t in it for the long haul or with deep pockets when dealing with new tailors. I’ve seen it on many occasions where something may not be ideal with the first commission and the customer will get online to complain while other readers will jump in to throw shade. I think that does the customer and the tailor a great disservice. That’s all I wanted to get a cross.



But hey don’t listen to me clearly I’m just some StyleFo dude with no inherent experience and a bunch of preconceptions.

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Experience, by its very nature, is not inherent to a person.

I look at it this way.

I'm poor. Not po' (at least not at the moment) but poor enough that I care about what I get for a £.

If I were trying to maximize the fit of each suit, I'd use one tailor. I really only like that souf souf I-talian style so I wouldn't even need two for style variety.

But Im finnin to maximize the fun I have at this hobby. For me, right now, that means trying a bunch of different shops.

It's rumspringa, brah.



RDiaz said:

I know perfectly who you are talking about 

I think his tuxedo by Calvo de Mora turned out quite well, actually, but that's about it. I was about to try Langa (Joaquín Fernández is the actual tailor), but no longer have money for it - maybe that's a blessing. Some garments I've seen from him actually look quite good to my eyes, but not the stuff for the blogger you were talking about - that looks a bit awkward, to be honest; although Joaquín himself (whom I met some months ago) mentioned he's got somewhat particular taste.

I think I might just stick with MTM from my current tailor for now... €300 for jackets with the basic fabrics is fair enough.

Sorry about thread derailment 

 

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Hi, i didn't mention that Joaquin as for us is not a tailor but a fabricripper. On the bottom of pretentiousness, a person with my same age, 36, with any studie of tailoring, with any skill or knowledge, who selfs calls master tailor, when to be a real master has to have 30 or 40 years of work, is another offense to the tailoring world.

Just see his horrid wrinkled bad cuts, unmatched patterns all around and mixes of 5 cm Prada skinny lapels with concave 1976 shoulders with baggy jacket cut but skinny short trousers and other stylistically abominations that even are not goodly ejecuted if we let around the stylistically issues and concentrate only on the sewing and fit.

I showed it to my grandmaster, a very quiet humble man, saying he called master, was theonly way i have seen him upset, he said: master, master of HORRORS.

Google maestro sastre joaquin fernandez and tell me. He has been shilled even by Simon Craptom, on a bag of wrinkles neapolitan failed attemp on brown linen.

An evidence of shill and ignorance of both, specially the blogger was writting, a great play on small details.

Look per example the fail on details of how the lapel buttonhole is crooked and not parallely drawn on the lapel line as an example of writting without any idea and shilling. 1800 euros for it... Sure he got it for free and got other 3000 in cash... Bloggers...

Lastly, another technical fact not know but general.public not tailors is that a tailor is good and passes the exam when he does the most difficult part that is not drafting or sewing but in Italian.is DIFETARE, to skip defects.

To quit all the extra fabric hanging, wrinkles and fit issues, not to draft a beautiful silhoutte as believed, that also has to be.

That is why i can't say Rubinacci or Madrid famous tailors are good when they deliver wrinkled, extra fabric around and general bad fit as on the light grey Rubinacci's master tailor sleeves or client trousers.

Is like having a burnt steak on a restaurant or your car new body paint with traces of other colour or the cristal gums plenty of dead paint.

And now will be called troll by the same ones... but that is what real tailoring means.

Sure on the 1950s any suit was delivered that way by top houses, as were general knowledge from both the clientele and the tailoring houses who had docens of deeply trained on schools workers that for honour or selfsteem won't let go out of the door some suits i watch all the time nowadays at very high prices.

I thought some extra cloth at certain points like the chest, together with high armholes and a somewhat fuller sleeve cap were good to allow ease of movement. Is this really not necessary?



RDiaz said:

I thought some extra cloth at certain points like the chest, together with high armholes and a somewhat fuller sleeve cap were good to allow ease of movement. Is this really not necessary?

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Not in Sarto's world. He likes the condom fit.

dieworkwear said:

IMO, there are such things as 100% perfectly fitting suits, and a good tailor should be able to deliver that for you on the first commission.

It's more the issue of styling, which I've always thought is underrated on here. That goes for RTW, MTM, and bespoke. Quality and construction are often overrated. Design and styling are often underrated.

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Great response. Fit is the bare minimum to expect from a good bespoke tailor. Style, however (which is, in my opinion, what lordsuperb was really trying to convey), is really an ever developing matter.

C&A said:

Not in Sarto's world. He likes the condom fit.

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But what I wonder is if there's a way to make such a close fitting jacket comfortable, which there might be....not counting other fit issues, of course, which shouldn't be present on a decent bespoke garment.



RDiaz said:

But what I wonder is if there's a way to make such a close fitting jacket comfortable, which there might be....not counting other fit issues, of course, which shouldn't be present on a decent bespoke garment.

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Of course you can have close fitting jacket and still be comfortable, just not it's so skin tight that the buttons is about to pop out. You'll need to consider when you sitting down, moving and even after a big meal.

Some of stuff I've seen from @gusvs are fine examples of well tailor slim fitting jacket.



Cantabrigian said:

T to the 4, I looked on the blog but couldn't find any info re: visit to the Nederlands.

Off the top of your head do you know when that will be or still in the planning stages?

Though I guess it's not too much harder to fly to Naples than to Amsterdam.

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it is nearly finalised
for the weekend of
29th-30th nov.
email them if
you are thinking of
coming

tchoy said:

Of course you can have close fitting jacket and still be comfortable, just not it's so skin tight that the buttons is about to pop out. You'll need to consider when you sitting down, moving and even after a big meal.

Some of stuff I've seen from @gusvs are fine examples of well tailor slim fitting jacket.

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I'd have thought Liverano is anything but lean, shoulders are quite extended and chest is generous... waist and skirt seem close fitting though



RDiaz said:

I'd have thought Liverano is anything but lean, shoulders are quite extended and chest is generous... waist and skirt seem close fitting though

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I agree on all accounts.

And IMO that's the ideal combination.

Okay, a few things.

First of all, let me clarify my thoughts on how to pick a tailor. My main principle is that one should take a holistic approach. It is not simply a matter of finding a skilled craftsman. As we've seen before, a fantastically talented tailor is not necessarily a competent business manager. Yet, as a bespoke client, you need both. You need your orders delivered in a timely manner and with peace of mind that they will be made right at the end, regardless of how they start out. After all, the "perfect" jacket or suit is a myth. Nothing fits 100% perfectly. We are dealing with man-made, hand-made objects. So, to my mind, the best tailor is not the one who can theoretically make the best suit, but the one which will persist to get each order as right as possible, whatever it takes. A client must be able to work closely with his tailor over multiple orders and extended periods of time. As such, the increased risk of a faraway one-man shop should be obvious. Further, international clients should keep in mind that tailors tend to view their local clients as a universe apart. You can let down one without losing much reputation with the other.

Second, I recently spoke to Luca about the specific situation with Gennaro. Apparently, over the past seven or eight years, Gennaro has become increasingly less active at Rubinacci due to age and health. He has been overseeing any necessary alterations and fixes for my orders, but another cutter by the name of Andreas has been chiefly responsible for their making. There are currently three cutters at London House, each with a slightly different stylistic speciality (Neapolitan vs. Milanese vs. English). Cutters are deployed as appropriate for each client and project. There is no "head" cutter and there has not been since the company significantly expanded its operations several years ago. As previously discussed on my blog, there are presently about forty or so tailors working in-house. As Luca puts it, the company's philosophy is to guarantee quality and fit, regardless of whose hands are making your suits. Either he or Mariano would be happy to explicate on the matter if anyone were to ask directly.

Ultimately, I'm not saying using Gennaro is a good or bad idea. However, I am saying that hiring Gennaro on his own is not the same as hiring Rubinacci with Gennaro. Each prospective client needs to weigh the risks he is willing to accept, and at what price.