Tailoring style · Italy
Florentine tailoring
Florentine jackets look rounded, with wide curved lapels, a full chest and soft shoulders, shaped by the cut of the fabric panels rather than extra seams.
The Florentine coat is distinguished by roundness: a wide lapel with a pronounced belly, a generous clean chest, a soft but present shoulder, and a front cut with minimal or no darts, so the shape comes from the panels rather than from seams.
Shape without darts
Most tailored jackets get their waist shaping partly from a front dart: a seam running down from the chest that removes cloth. The Florentine method associated with Liverano reduces or eliminates it, taking the shape instead out of the cut of the side panels and out of ironwork.
The visible result is a very clean, uninterrupted front, a lapel that can be cut wide and full because there is nothing competing with it, and a chest that looks fuller than its measurements. The invisible result is that the cutter has fewer places to correct an error.
The proportions
A wide lapel, noticeably wider than Neapolitan or Milanese practice, with a pronounced belly and a high gorge. A rounded chest cut full and pressed clean. A soft shoulder that follows the body. A coat length on the longer side, and a front with little or no dart.
The lapel is what people see first and the dartless front is what makes it possible: nothing else on the front of the coat competes with it.
Influence out of proportion to size
Florence's tailoring trade is small, but it has trained an unusual number of the Japanese and Korean makers now working internationally. The Florentine accent (wide lapel, round shoulder, no dart) consequently turns up in Tokyo and Seoul more often than its origin would suggest.
Cutting without a dart
Removing the front dart moves the shaping into the side panels and into the iron. It is harder, because there is one fewer place to take out cloth and one fewer place to correct an error, and it produces a distinctly rounder chest.
It also changes how the coat ages. A darted front creases along the dart over years; a dartless one does not, and the chest keeps its shape longer.
At a glance
Houses working in this tradition
Picture credits 3
- A round, wide-lapelled Florentine-cut jacket: Original art · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale original art
- An illustration of the house's recorded cut: soft shoulder, light canvas chest, rounded, wide lapel, dartless front. Not a photograph of the house's own work.: Original art · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale original art
- An illustration of the house's recorded cut: soft shoulder, light canvas chest, florentine: wide lapel, rounded chest. Not a photograph of the house's own work.: Original art · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale original art