Bespoke tailor · Naples · Founded 1930
Cesare Attolini
Said ah-toh-LEE-nee
Cesare Attolini is a Neapolitan clothing house run by descendants of the creator of the soft Neapolitan jacket, and it produces in volume while keeping much of the work done by hand.
Cesare Attolini descends directly from Vincenzo Attolini, the cutter at Rubinacci credited with the unstructured Neapolitan jacket. The house makes ready-to-wear, made-to-measure and bespoke, and is unusual in producing substantial volume while keeping a very high proportion of hand work.
The lineage
Vincenzo Attolini cut at Gennaro Rubinacci's London House and is the figure most associated with removing the canvas and padding from the Neapolitan coat. His son Cesare established the house that carries his name, and Cesare's sons run it now. That continuity is the house's core claim, and unlike most such claims it is straightforwardly documented.
Handwork at volume
Attolini's distinctive achievement is industrial rather than artisanal in the strict sense: producing thousands of garments a year in which a very large share of the operations are still done by hand, by tailors, in a workshop outside Naples.
This is a different proposition from a one-man bespoke workshop and should not be confused with it. What you are buying is a hand-finished garment made to a house pattern, in a Neapolitan idiom, with the consistency a structured workshop provides. Bespoke is available and is a separate service.
Buying it
Attolini's ready-to-wear is sold internationally through specialist retailers and the house's own shops, and is the way most customers meet the name. Sizing follows a Neapolitan pattern (cut close through the chest and short in the body by English standards), and it is worth trying rather than ordering blind.
The bespoke service is separate, made in the same workshop, and involves the fittings a bespoke commission requires.
Inheritance as a business model
The house descends directly from Vincenzo Attolini, who cut at Rubinacci, and it has built a substantial modern company on that lineage. The coat retains the defining Neapolitan features (minimal canvas, an unpadded shoulder, a shirt-style sleeve head) executed with more consistency than a small workshop can manage.
That consistency is the trade. A one-man Neapolitan workshop can produce a more personal coat and can also produce a worse one; a house at this scale produces the same coat reliably. Which is preferable depends entirely on whether the buyer wants a relationship or a garment.
The record
What it costs
Prices across the site →These are not quotations. Prices below are the most recent figures we could attribute to a source, shown in the currency they were published in.
| What | Service | Price | Observed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Two-piece bespoke suitAn indicative band, not a quotation. Bespoke entry prices normally exclude tax and cloth beyond the house bunch, and houses raise them without announcement. | Bespoke | €5,500–9,000 | September 2026 |
| Ready-to-wear suitAn indicative band, not a quotation. Bespoke entry prices normally exclude tax and cloth beyond the house bunch, and houses raise them without announcement. | Ready To Wear | €4,500–7,500 | September 2026 |
Where they travel
Find a maker who visits you →Trunk shows let a house take orders and hold fittings away from its own workshop. Dates move; treat this as the pattern, not a calendar, and confirm with the house.
Houses often considered alongside it
Grouped because they compete for the same commission or work in a comparable idiom: not a ranking, and not an equivalence.
-
Kiton
Naples · 1968Ciro Paone's answer to the question of whether Neapolitan handwork could be industrialised without being ruined.
-
Rubinacci
Naples · 1932Rubinacci is the oldest and best-known tailoring house in Naples, founded in 1932, where the soft Neapolitan jacket without heavy padding was first created.
-
Isaia
Naples · 1957
Isaia is a Naples tailoring brand making soft, light jackets in bolder cloths and stronger colours than its neighbours, with a red coral lapel pin as its signature.
Sources
- House history , Cesare Attolini.
Where a figure is disputed or a house has not published it, the page says so rather than choosing a number.
Picture credits 3
- An illustration of the house's recorded cut: shirt shoulder, light canvas chest, soft neapolitan, high armhole. Not a photograph of the house's own work.: Original art · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale original art
- IMG Kiton Toronto: Photograph · Shanmeichen · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 4.0
- An illustration of the house's recorded cut: natural shoulder, light canvas chest, soft, short, open quarters. Not a photograph of the house's own work.: Original art · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale original art