At Arzano, just outside Naples, there’s a man who has kept the name of Neapolitan hand-crafted tailoring alive for almost 50 years, creating clothes, especially jackets and suits, that prestigious clients from all over the world wear with pride.
We’re talking about Ciro Paone, a former cloth merchant and a man born into the business, a lover of beauty and of fine dressing; in 1968 he founded his company, Kiton, which has become synonymous with total elegance throughout the world of men’s fashion.
From being a small workshop, Kiton is today a successful company with stores all over the world (Kiton is also present in New York, on 5th Avenue), but it still retains the concepts of craftsmanship and high quality that Ciro Paone has always wanted, in order to back up his tailoring business.
kiton suit
The Kiton suit is a harmonious combination of exclusive elements – fabrics, workmanship and the accessories.
Care is taken with everything, right down to the last detail, so that the tailors take from 25 to 50 hours to create a suit to satisfy the Kiton quality standards.
The choice of the fabrics is made by Ciro Paone in person. He loves to visit the best cloth factories in England, Scotland and Italy to select top-class fabrics and yarns: in fact, on the shelves of the Kiton warehouse you can find whole rolls of cloth from Huddersfield, indisputably the place where the best worsteds in the world are manufactured.
The Kiton suit adapts to the figure of the person wearing it. Each garment is cut individually, using the fabric necessary so that all parts match perfectly and in a way that will guarantee softness and comfort with each movement.
The attention to detail is evident also in the choice of linings and the buttons on Kiton jackets. The linings are made of silk, in very bright colours, and are hand-sewn along the internal patterns. The buttons – made of tortoiseshell, horn or mother-of-pearl – are sewn on by hand with Faro silk thread. The jacket is sewn with three buttons on the front, a small button that serves to close the inside pocket on the lining and 4 perfectly symmetrical buttons on each sleeve, a touch that distinguishes every Kiton suit.
These are the three most exclusive styles in the vast range of the Kiton suit collection.
– LASA model: only a few of these suits are produced each year, since they are made by a single tailor who looks after the entire workmanship of the garment. It is a light, close-fitting model, created in very fine linen cloth; the shoulders are unpadded and the tucks around the top of the sleeve are a particular feature of the Neapolitan tradition.
– K50 model: this has a longer silhouette than other Kiton styles, because the shoulders are sewn at the same point where the collar meets the lapel, and therefore very high up. The five finest Kiton tailors make this suit, to produce a maximum 50 suits per year.
– CIPA1960 model: created by Ciro Paone in the 1960s, this was reintroduced into the current collection with a revised styling and a slimmer shape.
Ciro Paone
