Savile Row in Sicily

Influences and Interferences between the Two Islands in the Nineteenth-Century European Men's Tailoring Sector

Abstract

When it comes to fashion and design is taken as typical of the contemporary concept; in the following essay, through the analysis of some archival documents and specific bibliographic texts, it was investigated how the men’s tailoring sector found in Southern Italy, and precisely in Sicily when the island became an English protectorate – from about 1806 and until the Congress of Vienna in 1815 –, its own characteristic expression and well-defined identity, the result of the encounter between the particular historical and social context of the island and the uniform of the bourgeois man codified in another island, England in the nineteenth century.
It may seem a paradox, and probably to some extent, right in the paradox is the research charm on the past because, while differing from other Italian tailoring traditions, the South has generated a “fashionable product” and an equally characteristic way of enjoyment, always in accordance with the context in which it was inserted. This is because, before and even more than women, men have used their clothing appearance as an ideological, cultural and social mirror of their own being.
Through an analytical methodology, based on the reading of images, archive photos and reference literature, it will be possible to understand how the encounter between English tailoring and the socio-cultural context of Southern Italy has given rise, not surprisingly, to a peculiar interpretation of the men’s way of dressing and traditional tailoring; the reflection on Western man’s clothing leads to thinking of a uniform that is always similar to itself and with few substantial variations over time. The same expression uniform is the most suitable if you think that the male dress, as we know it today, was born when the bourgeoisie of the nineteenth century decided to give a clear cut to social inequalities, the result of which will be a model that it is currently in use and has given character to what is now identified as Italian male clothing.