Super-soft suede drawstring chinos? Welcome to the new business uniform

Times

5 hours ago

The Italians seem to be engaged in something of a sartorial arms race to produce lighter and lighter menswear. Anyone familiar with the history of men's tailoring will know that much of the impetus for this lies with Giorgio Armani, who began experimenting with the deconstruction of traditional tailoring in the 1980s. He himself credits his first boss with setting him on this path. 'It was Nino Cerruti who asked me to try to find a way of making men's tailoring more relaxed, less stiff, less restrictive. He was the one who encouraged me to seek a fresh, softly classic, more comfortable style,' he says.
That was in the previous century, and since then the Italians have been using technical advances in materials to create ever more lightweight styles. Witness the Santoni Easy collection of shoes and boots, whose leather models weigh only 295g each because of a rubber composition in the sole that was developed by the brand. A classic boot or shoe with the feeling of a trainer.
Now we have Canali entering the field. The CEO, Stefano Canali, is the grandson of the founder Giovanni Canali, who created the company with his brother in 1934. Stefano cut his professional teeth on Wall Street in the 1990s, when he and his colleagues wore the requisite suit, shirt and tie as a daily uniform. This tailoring was not only formal but constructed in a way that felt substantial; it was a kind of corporate armour.
The fun started, Stefano says, when his Wall Street company introduced casual Fridays. 'It was a disaster, a complete disaster,' he says. 'Back then there was no credible and viable alternative to the suit.' He talks of mismatched colour combinations and ill-advised pairings of trousers and sport jackets. 'Today we are lucky, because now there are collections where you can look well put-together wearing casual clothes.'
Canali's Nuvola collection is the most extreme iteration of the label's commitment to the trajectory of relaxing menswear. In its main line you will still find the type of suits that a Wall Street traditionalist could wear, but they have been reimagined to be less restrictive. 'The shoulder pad on one of our classic suits is now something like one fifth of the thickness it was in the 1990s,' Stefano says. Fabrics too have become lighter. 'I remember my father telling me that when he got married it was in July, some 60 years ago, and the suit he was wearing was made out of wool fabric that we now only use for winter collections because of its weight.'
So one part of Canali's offering still serves the boardroom. But the Nuvola collection is for the man in search of a new freedom. 'It's all about the craftsmanship,' Stefano says. 'Back in the 1990s people thought that a lightweight jacket should not be an expensive item; they felt it was a cheaper option, of poor quality. What they didn't understand is that to make a deconstructed jacket where you remove the lining and shoulder pads and still maintain a degree of sartorial form, like a defined shoulder line, requires immense skill. It's complicated to manufacture.' An unlined jacket needs to create shape through the expertise of the cut. There is no room for error, because you can see all the work that is usually hidden from view by an internal lining.
It is for this reason that Nuvola is Canali's ultimate expression of its tailors' skills; 'a lightweight, precious and complicated-to-make collection'. The firm has had to develop new methods of construction, like finding a way of stitching together fine suede taken from the manufacturing of gloves — 'it's the only way to join two pieces of suede that are this lightweight'. The suede is accompanied by cotton cashmere jersey, ultra-light nylon and lightweight wool. But Stefano is keen to point out that the softness and comfort of these pieces is less to do with the fabrics than the 'skill, craftsmanship and attention to detail of the atelier'.
The result is a casual collection of jackets, outerwear, knits, shirts, T-shirts, trousers and shoes, including sneakers. Key pieces are an ultra-soft suede overshirt (£2,490), suede calf-skin sneakers (£450), a cashmere travel shirt (£2,450), a wool and silk polo shirt (£690) and a pair of ultra-soft suede drawstring chinos (£1,490). The pieces are designed to be effortless to wear and effortless to put together: remembering those casual Friday disasters, Stefano has made sure the style and colour of his Nuvola items mix together in a way that is almost impossible to get wrong.
'If I were to describe a typical Nuvola outfit, I'd pick a suede sneaker in one of the natural colours like sand, or light brown (£450), and pair these with woollen drawstring trousers in a complementary tone (£570),' Stefano says. 'I'd add a woollen unlined overshirt (£690) and put an understated cotton silk T-shirt (£590) underneath … If you feel like it, just grab a hat, a baseball cap (£290) for instance, made out of precious fabric as well. And that's it.'
Canali's Nuvola collection is available as ready to wear and as part of the label's made-to-measure service, Me by Canali; gb.canali.co