Editorial policy
Who decides what appears, what separates a fact from an opinion here, and what we do when we get something wrong.
Independence
Editorial decisions are made solely by Il Sartoriale's editors. No maker, brand, mill, retailer or agency has, or has been offered, any influence over which subjects are covered, how they are described, or how they are assessed. Nobody has ever paid to appear on this site and no assessment is for sale.
If sponsored content is ever published it will be labelled as such in the body of the page, excluded from every ranked or comparative list, and excluded from the structured database that feeds the comparison tools. A paid placement will never be presented as a ranking.
Fact and opinion
The two are kept structurally separate. Facts live in the database with a source attached and are rendered as records, tables and quick-facts. Opinion appears only in clearly marked editorial sections (the verdict on a comparison page, an assessment in a guide) and is written as opinion, in the first person plural, with reasoning attached. Where the trade genuinely disagrees, the page says so and gives both positions rather than picking one and asserting it.
Gifts, samples and access
We do not accept garments, shoes, cloth or discounts from subjects of coverage. Travel and workshop visits are paid for by the publication. Where a maker has granted access for an interview or a workshop visit, the resulting page says so; access is not a reason to soften a description, and it is not a promise of coverage.
Conflicts
Anyone contributing to a page must disclose any commercial relationship with its subject, past or present. Where a conflict exists and the page is still worth publishing, the conflict is stated on the page.
Corrections
Errors of fact are corrected as soon as they are confirmed, and the page's review date is updated. Substantive corrections (a wrong price, a wrong founding date, a misattributed technique) are noted on the page rather than silently overwritten. Typographical fixes are not noted. Removal requests from subjects are considered on the merits: we will correct anything inaccurate, but accurate published information is not withdrawn on request.
To report an error, use the corrections form. If you are the house being described, say so; it moves the report to the front of the queue.
Anonymity
Prices and workshop practices are sometimes described to us by people who cannot be named without professional cost. Where a fact rests on an unnamed source it is marked as reported with low confidence, and it is never used to contradict a house's own published statement without saying that is what is happening.
AI
AI assistance is used in research, in cross-checking and in translating the interface. It is never used to generate a fact that no source supports, to write an assessment, or to produce an image. The site's own AI feature, Ask the Archive, answers only from this database and is instructed to say when the archive holds nothing.