Naples-Saville Row.Under two different Skies.

[carpu65]

From the italian magazine "Club" ,two DB suits.On the left from Kilgour French & Stanbury,London, and on the right from Sartoria Piacentini,Naples.The year is 1950.

[whyescalar]

Very interesting. My wife pointed out my suits from London look like some sort of military tunic. While many may be aware of this, I have never seen a photo that demonstrates this so well. Thank you.

[kolecho]

Ahh.... the padless shoulder and high peaked lapels so well illustrated against an English silhoutte. Many thanks for sharing the photo.

[erasmus]

Very interesting side by side comparison!

[SouthPender]

Yes, thanks, Carpu65; that picture presents a very useful illustration of the differences between the two sartorial traditions. I found myself viewing the two examples with Manton's book in mind and his characterization of suit silhouettes. I wonder whether someone might be able to find a similar side-by-side illustration of current Savile Row and Neapolitan jackets.

[dan328]

To my (very) uneducated eye, there appear to be far more similarities than differences between those two jackets. Could a more experienced member point out some of the more salient silhouette differences? While there have been the occasional discussions on silhouette, I think the accompanying photo here will make it a lot easier for novices such as myself to understand exactly what is being described.

Regards,

Dan

[couch]

This is a good exam question. I'll start things off--others please add/correct:

1. SR shoulder line more horizontal (built up). Neapolitan line slopes more.
2. SR lapel points nearly horizontal; Neapolitan ones angle up towards shoulder, as does the lapel buttonhole (only one hole on the Italian?)
3. SR gorge is muich lower--buttonholes almost at armpit level. Gorge seam almost vertical. Neapolitan gorge higher and gorge seam close to 45 degrees from vertical.
4. SR button stance lower for all six buttons; especially the middle pair: at the waist for SR, slightly above for Neapolitan (presumably this is for rolling through to buttton one and not a national school variation).
5. Breast pocket set farther outside on Neapolitan: inside edge fully exposed by lapel, even when rolled to lower button; outer edge partly covered by sleeve; pocket possibly angles upward--hard to tell from the halftone screen in the photo.
6. Noticeable "waterfall" fulllness or draping (vertical lines) in the Neapolitan sleeveheads; SR by contrast is cleaner.
7. SR skirt has classic "cupping" around hips--shaped out from waist and then back in at hem. By contrast, the Neapolitan skirt flares out straight from the waist.
8. Neapolitan jacket has no hip pockets--don't know if this is characteristic or an idiosyncrasy of this particular garment.
9. Hard to be sure from the pictures, but it looks like the Neapolitan sleeves are fuller at the sleeve head with a more dramatic taper to the wrist, while the SR sleeves are a bit slimmer at the top--I think of Fred Astaire's tailcoat cut as the extreme version of this.
10. The amount of chest fullness looks similar, as does the waist suppression. Does the Neapolitan accomplish this without front darts? They're not obvious to me in the photo.

What did I miss?

[oldog/oldtrix]

In addition/contrary to what Couch noted:

1. The armholes on the SR appear significantly smaller to me, both higher and tighter than on the Neopolitan.
2. The buttons on the Neopolitan are in a keystone arrangement; therefore, only the bottom button is designed to be and capable of being buttoned. On the SR, the bottom two rows of buttons align vertically so that it is a true 6 on 2.
3 The Neopolitan appears to have some/more drape as compared to the SR. Look especially at the fullness visible on the right (wearer's) chest.

I question the photos to some degree. Though I cannot see any, I don't want to believe that there are no hip pockets on the Neopolitan. I also have some difficulty accepting that the upper sleeves on the SR are actually as narrow as they appear.

I find the Neopolitan more elegant, if a tad flashy. I would, however, square up the bottom two rows of buttons to make it a real roll through. And, if there really are no hip pockets, I would add jetted ones. I'd also add side vents, if there are none. I would then nearly have recreated an RLPL DB jacket.

[couch]

You may well be right about the chest drape; I made some allowance for the more raking angle of light on the Neapolitan jacket. Good catch on the keystone button and implications--thanks.

Astaire's coats with arms extended show armholes as small and high as these (but his shoulder line was much less built up--closer to the Neapolitan here). I agree that this SR looks odd combining such high armholes with such a broad chest, low gorge and button stance, and horizontal lapel peaks--makes for an even more visually sagging impression. In fairness, this is on a form--maybe it looked fine on a tall client.

I'm not sure these proportions would be usual for today's SR--Philip Parker and Alex Cooke at Poole told me recently that their preference, other things being equal, was to use as little padding in the shoulder as possible and to cut as high a gorge as the figure permits, subject to client preference.

I too would do some blending. I don't think I'd want DB lapel peaks quite so high/wide that they lose contact with the chest as it curves back toward the shoulder and stick out into space. I like your idea of making a real 6 x 2 roll-through. I like a bit of cupping over the hips, but not as dramatic as in the SR pictured. A high but pretty round armscye to allow more sleeve fullness than this SR but perhaps not so much waterfall as this Neapoltian. Hip pockets, yes. And I think I'd compromise on the breast pocket placement too. I see the point of clearing the lapel and having the pocket linen add visual width to the chest, but I have one Italian RTW jacket with a pocket placed like this Neapolitan, and the hank is always catching on my sleeve when I move. Probably doesn't matter, but I don't care for it.

[cufflink44]

2. The buttons on the Neopolitan are in a keystone arrangement; therefore, only the bottom button is designed to be and capable of being buttoned. On the SR, the bottom two rows of buttons align vertically so that it is a true 6 on 2.

Early in his book, Manton says, in speaking of David Letterman's DB suits (p. 14):

"Their chief virtue is the jackets' button stance, which forms as it were a double-legged martini glass that buttons at the middle row . . . But Johnnie Cochran's suits were examples of the most common and vulgar deviation from the classic mode: their button stance forms a keystone that buttons only at the bottom row . . . And though the trapezoid is not a flattering shape on a man's body, these suits are seen and sold everywhere."

He goes on to say that one will find "great panache" in wearing a jacket with the former button stance, and "great unsightliness" in wearing the latter.

This pronouncement has caused me to look askance at some of the suits in my closet. Now, however, I see an apparently respectable suit with the "disfavored" button arrangement. So I'm wondering: Do most of you gentlemen agree with our esteemed author that 6X2 is always to be preferred over 6X1 in a DB jacket?

[couch]

Well, if the point of rolling to the bottom button is to present a relaxed, degagé manner of wearing a garment that can be more "buttoned up" (thus the appearance of elegant carelessnes, sprezzatura), then a keystone pattern that can only be worn this way undermines the effect, since it is no longer a relaxation, but a necessity. This Neapolitan jacket has very straight, diagonal lines (lapels, skirt, etc), so one might argue on grounds of mere visual harmony that the straight diagonal lines of buttons in the keystone shape are more consistent with the other aspects of the cut, which may be one reason I didn't notice them right away. They do visually widen the waist compared to the martini-glass shape, so would probably work best on average to slim figures. Perhaps the choice is between a more architectural logic (this Neapolitan) or a more organic logic.

Personally, I like the bottom four buttons vertically aligned in either 6- or 4-button DBs, with the stance at a point that allows rolling to the bottom or not as the mood and occasion strike me. Note that this effect can be even more dramatic--there's a photo on page 199 of Dressing the Man showing the POW in a 6-button DB with all six vertically aligned, rolled to the bottom, so he's really unbuttoned. Maybe it was the suede shoes.

[dan328]

Thanks for the responses so far. They are very helpful. As an aside, would single-breasted jackets from Savile Row and Naples have the same silhouette features with the obvious exception of the button stances?

dan

[couch]

I'd defer to others with more direct experience of Neapolitan cutting, but I'd expect the sleeve-head, breast-pocket placement, and waist-skirt distinctions to persist as a generality, and a Neapolitan proclivity to higher gorges in more eras than SR. But there's so much variation, at least on the Row, from maker to maker and client to client, and these days so much cross-pollination with Italy, that I'm sure I could be fooled by any given jacket.

On a related note, it might be fun to look again at the Astaire film "Top Hat," where Fred's romantic rival is the comic character Alberto Bedini, an Italian fashion designer. He's intended to be a caricature--a silly, dashing, fop (if that's not a contradiction) so one would expect the film's costume designer to have given him an exaggerated "Italian" cut for his suits. Has anybody looked to see if this is true, and if so, analyzed some stills to compare the cut of his suits to Fred's SR numbers? Could be interesting.

Also, thinking about the quote from manton's book, that trapezoids aren't flattering--surely the particular application matters. Don't we see the keystone shape on many DB waistcoat styles? And there are/were some DB military tunics that ended at the waist which had a keystone button pattern. These would be more flattering as the narrow point would be at the waist and the widening would follow the male V. Of course, the overlapping front of such a tunic would not be cut to be vertical when open, so it would be a very awkward arrangement on a jacket of suit length. But perhaps some vestigial martial allusion is behind the persistence of this pattern in some suits? Not that I'm defending it.

[Outrigger]

Also, thinking about the quote from manton's book, that trapezoids aren't flattering--surely the particular application matters. Don't we see the keystone shape on many DB waistcoat styles? And there are/were some DB military tunics that ended at the waist which had a keystone button pattern..

I think those coats are cut so all three rows of buttons are funtional.
With this Napolitan jacket, only the bottom button is functional. The former is flattering, the latter isn't