Kiton

Founded at Arzano, outside Naples, in 1968 by Ciro Paone, a fifth-generation cloth merchant. The house employs around 800 people, devotes roughly 25 hours to a standard suit, and trains its tailors in its own school.

Excellent

Sold out

Kiton Trousers — Cipa 1960 Wool-Cashmere — Grey — Size 50 (Sold)

€355 €1.100

Kiton Suit, Diamante Blu Super 150's, charcoal windowpane, jacket front, size 50

Excellent

Sold out

Kiton Suit — Diamante Blu Super 150's — Charcoal Windowpane — Size 50 (Sold)

€1.075 €7.500

Sartorio Napoli suit jacket in brown glen check wool with a rose overcheck, fastened at the top button on a cream dress form against a white studio backdrop.

Excellent

Sold out

Kiton Sartorio Napoli Suit — Brown Glen Check with Rose Overcheck — Size 50 (Sold)

€600

Kiton sport coat in pale silver-grey cashmere-linen with a white windowpane, shown open on a cream canvas dress form so all three front buttons are visible, notch lapels and flapped hip pockets

Very good

Sold out

Kiton Sport Coat — 50% Cashmere 50% Linen — Grey Windowpane — Size 52 (Drop 8) (Sold)

€805 €7.800

Kiton shirt, blue and white dobby weave, front view on form

Very good

Kiton Shirt — Blue & White Dobby, Reads Solid Blue — 100% Cotton — Collar 40

€150 €520

Kiton windowpane sport coat, front view on a mannequin, notch lapels and jetted besom hip pockets

Excellent

Kiton Sport Coat — Green & Blue Windowpane — Size 52 (Drop 8)

€1.075 €6.600

Kiton sport coat in green houndstooth with red and blue windowpane, front view on a dress form

Excellent

Kiton Sport Coat — Green Houndstooth Windowpane — Size 49R

€850 €6.300

Kiton double-breasted suit jacket in pale stone wool, front view on a tailor's dress form, peak lapels and six-by-two button front

Excellent

Sold out

Kiton Double-Breasted Suit — Pale Stone Wool — Size 52R (Sold)

€1.165 €7.600

Kiton cashmere suit jacket, front view on a studio dress form: dark charcoal cashmere, notch lapels, three-roll-two fastened at the middle button, black buttons, barchetta breast pocket and flapped hip pockets.

Very good

Sold out

Kiton Suit — 100% Cashmere — Charcoal — 3-Roll-2 — Size 52 (Drop 8) (Sold)

€1.165 €8.800

Ciro Paone came to tailoring from the other end of the trade. He was a fifth-generation cloth merchant, and Kiton — founded at Arzano in 1968 — began as a merchant's answer to a merchant's problem: he had the cloth and was unimpressed by what was being done with it.

The thing Kiton does that nobody else quite does is manufacture its own tailors. The Scuola di Alta Sartoria opened in 2000, takes pupils between sixteen and twenty-one, costs them nothing, and runs three years, the last of which is spent on a single operation. Around eighty graduates have gone into the workshop, and the average age on the floor has come down from fifty-seven to forty-eight. Every other claim a tailoring house makes about its future is a sentiment. This one is a payroll.

What to look for is the split between hand and machine, which is the house's real signature and not the "all hand" story usually told about it: hand-cut buttonholes and hand pick stitching on the same jacket as machine-run lapel padding.

How it wears now depends entirely on which cloth you are buying. Kiton drove the micron race — 14 down to 13.2 down to 12.8, Super 150s to 220s — and superfine cloth shines at the seat and the elbow and does not recover. The cashmeres and flannels are the durable buys.

Reading it in the hand

What gets looked at before a piece is catalogued, and what you can check yourself. Nothing here depends on the label.

Sleevehead eased into the armhole at roughly two to two and a half times its length, giving a dense band of gathering. The ratio is house doctrine; gathering on its own is only Neapolitan.
Full canvas with machine-run lapel and collar padding — even machine stitching under the lapel on the same jacket as hand-irregular pick stitching and hand-cut buttonholes. This hand-and-machine split is the tell, not handwork everywhere.
Buttonholes hand-cut and hand-sewn, short and tight, with a raised bead — noticeably denser and smaller than English work.
Single row of pick stitching in matching thread, close to the edge. Not a contrasting double row.
Barchetta welt breast pocket; darts running through to the hem.region
Body fully lined, trousers lined to the knee. Older pieces ventless, current ones side-vented.

Marked region — this tell places the garment in its city or its group, not with one maker.

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