Fashion Houston 2011
Featured
Kiton
This man is all about sprezzatura.His silk tie knotted artfully askew, his crocodile belt a hushed shade of purple, and his left wrist (covered in this photo) wrapped in what looks like a red-and-white bandanna, Antonio Paone, the president of Kiton USA, is a walking billboard for the Italian art ofseemingly effortless style. And yet even with all those singular details, that sprezzatura, you can't help but notice his suit. It's a great suit. The cut, the fit, the cloth—everything about it looks just right, so you notice it. Of course you do: It's a Kiton suit, and ever since Paone's uncle Ciro Paone and a handful of Neapolitan tailors started making them in 1968, that's what people have done. They notice.
From the time he was 18, Paone has worked in and around Kiton's factory to learn how suits come to life. He's watched as bolts of cloth—pure weaves of merino, cashmere, and vicuña, as well as blends of cashmere-linne and cashmere-silk, all made exclusively for Kiton—unspool across cutting tables; he's watched as Kiton's tailors spend hours building each suit almost entirely by hand; and he's watched (and has been one of the driving forces behind) the company's expansion into sportswear, accessories, and jeans. He's since become one of Kiton's leading executives, traveling back and forth between Naples and New York City to oversee the brand's growing U.S. operations.
"We've done everything," Paone says of the company's recent product launches. "So now we must build on our relationships with our customers and grow with them." For all that growth, Kiton remains, first and foremost, a tailoring brand, offering everything from the lightest of summer-weight suits—the fibers in the finest cloth they carry, Paone says, measure just 11.2 microns, meaning each fiber is about one-ninth the thickness of human hair—to the midweight stock of its CI.PA. collection (pronounced chee-pa) a new capsule line of suits made from vintage '60s-era fabrics and cut with slim, contemporary silhouettes. Fit is the common denominator.
"When you try on our jackets, you feel the difference between us and other suit makers," says Paone. The armholes are a little higher, the chest feels a little stronger, and when you opt for one of the lighter fabrics, you can barely tell you're wearing a jacket at all. You'll notice the difference. And so will everyone else.
