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[Luca Rubinacci] First of all, everybody was dressing well.
Everybody was dressing with a jacket.
The first thing that you was giving to your son and was 14 years old
bringing him to the tailor.
[Stephen Hitchcock] You know, even if you look back at football games in London,
everyone would be wearing a suit in the crowd,
standing up with their [inaudible], wearing suits.
[Massimiliano Attolini] Elegance is something that you cannot explain sometime
but it becomes from tradition, from a family, from your father.
[Luca Rubinacci] And you see all that picture from the 30s
of these young gentleman wearing a tie and a shirt.
Maybe the shirt of his older brother and the ties because was long was inside the trousers.
[Massimiliano Attolini] The difference between 1930 and today that in the 1930 when the clients
was coming into the tailor shop of our grandfather, they knew what they want.
[Luca Rubinacci] It was dressing for the pleasure of dressing,
not for the way of being seen or being well-dressed
because I'm wearing this brand instead of another brand.
If you look inside that many jackets from that time I don't think you find the brand.
You find the name of the customer was using it.
[Stephen Hitchcock] People that could dress well had an individual tailor.
I mean, we just get a suit made in a factory.
To wear it, you don't really feel comfortable in it, you don't really love it.
Well, all the best-dressed people -
Cary Grant, Fred Astaire - they all look fantastic because
they had a vision that they shared with the tailor.
[G. Bruce Boyer] Probably the most photographed man
in the first half of the 20th century was
the Prince of Wales, later the Duke of Windsor.
The reason, really, that he was so popular was
because he had an incredible sense of style.
There are a lot of pictures of him
surrounded by heavy, stiff, black suits and frock coats
and swallowtail coats and so forth,
and there he is, in the middle of them, wearing a
light gray flannel, double-breasted,
softly constructed, easily shaped garment.
It's obvious right away that he's the new man.
And it was really all due to the Prince of Wales's tailor -
this Dutchman named Frederick Scholte.
[Stephen Hitchcock] He wanted to make a suit
that was very comfortable to wear and he had all ideas
from the army uniform.
[G. Bruce Boyer] Scholte was particularly taken by the
shape of the Guardsman's greatcoats.
He was very much aware that these Guardsmen looked
muscular, youthful, and vigorous.
So, for Scholte, the technical exercise became,
could this be somehow translated into a civilian garment?
In other words, into a man's suit coat or a sport jacket.
And what he got eventually was a jacket that actually had sort of a V-shape.
It started out with very broad but easy shoulders.
[Stephen Hitchcock] With the high arm holes keeping them very high and the drape,
like the uniform, was fuller for the chest and for the back blades.
[G. Bruce Boyer] The extra material in the chest
tended to corrugate and fold a bit, so it looked
kind of like drapery, so it was called the drape look
or the drape cut or the London look.
[Stephen Hitchcock] High cut waisted trousers, two pleats, usually in a fuller cut,
turn-ups at the bottom, a nice two inch or an inch 5/8 turn-up.
It's a very good look. Much more balanced, really.
[G. Bruce Boyer] And this became really the
modern look and it was Scholte's creation.
[Stephen Hitchcock] The 1930s cut we still produce today exactly same.
The wide lapel, the soft shoulder, the drape.
I'm just going to quickly undo this a little bit to show you the insides of
a jacket because it's very important that it's all done by hand.
All right, can we see this? All hand padded.
Long and loose stitching that creates a very soft jacket.
I mean if you had very small stitches, half the size, that closer together,
it'd be more like an armor-plated jacket.
Underneath here, we got the canvas, which is cut on the bias, so it gives.
If it was on the straight, it doesn't give.
On the bias, that gives and what that would do that would that would bed itself in.
When you wear the jacket, your body heat and the things you put in your pockets
will accelerate the process and when it drops down,
the coat would drop down and into you, underneath your armpits and fit you even better.
And this is what the Duke of Windsor would've had.
His suits would be exactly the same as this, in the same way, and that's what we're after.
We're after a high arm, wide, and a big sleeve.
The sleeve is three inches bigger than the armhole
and when you move forward you can see you got a lot of movement in the sleeve.
A lot of movement.
You must feel comfortable in what you wear and the Duke did, definitely.
[G. Bruce Boyer] The English drape style became immensely popular all over the world.
In South America, in the United States, in Europe - it became very popular in Italy.
There's a long tradition of the Grand Tour and Englishmen in Italy.
The last port of call, as it were, would have been Naples.
The Neapolitans had for a long time been great Anglophiles.
It's not by accident that Gennaro Rubinacci called his tailoring firm "London House."
[Luca Rubinacci] Because he was thinking that London
was the capital of the men's clothing but he never been to London.
[G. Bruce Boyer] He had employed as head tailor a man named Vincenzo Attolini.
[Massimiliano Attolini] The relationship between Rubinacci and Attolini was very tired.
My grandfather who was doing all the tailoring suit for Mr. Rubinacci,
which was anyway was a high-class man, very elegant - Mr. Rubinacci.
[G. Bruce Boyer] It was Attolini's job to help
Gennaro Rubinacci to translate the English style into
something much lighter and more adaptable to Neapolitan climate.
[Luca Rubinacci] He started to change the way of dressing a jacket.
Not any more formal like was at the past
but little bit more sporty with less canvas, less padding, less structure.
[Massimiliano Attolini] Neapolitan style is a very light with volume very tight like a second skin.
[Luca Rubinacci] And my father always says that a jacket has to look big inside and shaped outside.
[Massimiliano Attolini] At that time my grandfather was
thinking that to be elegant is to be very natural.
[Luca Rubinacci] The clothes was made to be comfortable not to be fashionable.
They was enjoying the elegance in the terms of elegance so
wearing clothes because they liked to wear clothes.
[Massimiliano Attolini] Today is the designers
that they take inspiration from the tailoring suit
of our father and of our grandfather.
We can still find a lot of gentlemen
which, in the world, around the world, that they still love this kind of style.
[Stephen Hitchcock] Customers do like the 1930s look and they come to a tailor to get that look.
[G. Bruce Boyer] So with these famous men,
these Scholte's, the Attolini's, and the Rubinacci's,
and the drape cut of London and the more casual look of the Neapolitan jacket,
the sense of dignity and propriety was loosening up
and it was being replaced to a certain extent by comfort.
There's good reason to call this era a truly golden age of fashion.
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