In an age where stylists rule the red carpet, finding
men in the public eyewith their own distinct sense of style is a
rarity. Enter: Luca Rubinacci. Heir to his grandfather’s
tailoring dynasty and founder of the Rubinacci’s three-year-old
ready-to-wear line, the Italian designer is a regular on street
style blogs around the world thanks to his signature Neapolitan
style, documented most notably by The Sartorialist‘s Scott Schumann. Whether he’s hitting Pitti in an electric blue bespoke suit or the
New York shows in windowpane check, there isn’t a colour or pattern
the man can’t pull off. However, these bold looks are not ones he
expects his ever growing client list – including Bryan Ferry and fellow street style fodder Lapo Elkann – to adopt: “With my tailoring I
want to make only one person happy,” he says, “and that’s the
customer who is going to wear it”.
We caught up with Rubinacci downstairs at his shop’s
luxurious new bepsoke room – think club chairs, dark green walls
and acres of the softest fabric you can find – to talk “pyjama
tuxedos”, training on Savile Row and why you should always button
your jacket the Neapolitan
way…
Bespoke is an art, it’s a way of
life. A jacket is a jacket, there’s not much I can do to
reinvent it, but I can certainly have fun.
My grandfather was one of the most stylish
men I have ever seen. In the Twenties he wore big collars
and ties fastened with gold safety pins. When I see photos of him I
get the passion behind menswear.
When I started at Rubinacci, my father said I
had to go to fashion university. ” No,” I said, “send me to an
English tailor”. I spent one year interning at Kilgour. When I came back I said, “Dad you’re
doing a great job, but we need to be a more modern tailor and do
both bespoke and ready-to-wear. Right now a customer has to go for
a winter coat in London and a summer jacket in Naples, when they
could have a tailorcome to their house and do everything at the
same time”. Our old tailors thought I was crazy.
We have 45 tailors in our house, which I
think makes us the largest handmade tailor company in
Europe. I oversee 15 tailors that are aged 18-22 years -
they are my future. From the new generation come the new ideas.
When I floated the idea of doing a
ready-to-wear range to my father, he said only one
thing: “Make sure the materials are of the highest quality
and after that you can do whatever you like. It doesn’t matter how
much it will cost.”
The ready-to-wear is meant to be a bit like
finger food. Our customers come for their bespoke suit
and, if they see something they like, they can pick that up while
they’re waiting for their tailoring to be finished.
I first met Scott Schumann in Milan in 2002. He
came up to me and asked to take my photo for his blog. I said,
“What is a blog?” After a while whenever I went to New York or
Milan or Paris he would send me a message to ask if I was around.
Once he told me, “I’mgoing to take a photo of you every time I see
you so that by the time you are 40 or 50 we will have a complete
escalation of your style”.
Lapo Elkann is one of my very favourite
customers. We collaborated on a Ferarri together once – I designed it with a
fully bespoke denim interior.
Last Milan fashion week a famous artist comes
into my studio. “Luca,” he says “I want a pyjama tuxedo”.
So I thought about how to make that happen – I took the silk
material I usually use for ties and got to work. We made pyjamas
with a shawl collar and replaced the buttons with a tied waist. Not
everybody would like something like this, but he will when he is in
his huge villa in The Hamptons or on Lake Como.
One of my very good friends once told me that
he would never wear one of our blazers. Not because he
disliked them, but because there’s no call for them in his line of
work. So I took some of our finest cashmere and made a knitted
double breasted jacket. Very versatile, very soft but structured
enough to wear over a T-shirt like a blazer. It’s classic, it’s
simple.
You should always wear our double-breasted
jackets in the Neapolitan way.
That means one button done up at the bottom, rather than the
top.
We have only 2 tailors working on our
ready-to-wear. For winter they are making a jumper lined
in silk scarves – something I saw a gentleman in New York wearing
when I was there last July.
With bespoke you don’t buy a suit, you buy a
service. We don’t want to sell you a new suit, we want to
alter that one we’ve already made you to suit your needs. You can
wear a Rubinnaci jacket for over 20 years.
You never finish learning about
tailoring. Every day is a new customer, is a new
experience.
From £3900. Rubinnacci’s new bespoke room is now
open at 96 Mount Street, London, W1. marianorubinacci.net
Nick Carvell
Nick is fashion editor of GQ.com. He has also written for Hercules and Mr Porter’s The Journal.
Article source: http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/style/articles/2013-04/23/luca-rubinacci-tailor-style-interview