Bespoke tailor · Paris · Founded 1880
Cifonelli
Said chee-fo-NEL-lee
Cifonelli is a Paris tailoring firm, founded by a Roman family in the 1920s, famous for a padded, rounded shoulder and a very close-fitting chest.
Cifonelli is the defining Parisian tailoring house: a Roman family that established in Paris in the 1920s and developed the built, rounded shoulder with a pronounced roll at the sleeve head that is now called the Cifonelli shoulder. The chest beneath it is cut extremely close and clean, and the amount of hand labour involved is at the top of the trade.
The shoulder
What Cifonelli is known for is a shoulder that is built rather than padded: layers shaped so the line rises slightly at the end of the shoulder and rolls into the sleeve head in a continuous sculpted curve. It is not an English rope, which lifts the sleeve above the seam; it is a three-dimensional junction that has to be made rather than inserted.
Beneath it everything is pulled clean. The chest is cut very close, pressed smooth, and left free of any detail that would compete. The waist is high and narrow, the skirt flares slightly. It is the most deliberately theatrical silhouette in serious tailoring.
A Roman house in Paris
The family traces its tailoring to Rome in the 1880s and established in Paris in the 1920s, which is why the Parisian style is neither straightforwardly French nor Italian. Lorenzo and Massimo Cifonelli, cousins, run the house now, and both cut.
The workshop is on Rue Marbeuf in the eighth arrondissement. Waiting times are long and a substantial share of orders are taken on the road, particularly in New York and Tokyo.
What it costs, and why
Cifonelli sits at or near the top of the international price range along with the Milanese houses and the upper end of Savile Row. The reason is hours: the shoulder alone represents work that a conventional construction does not require, and the house's finishing standards extend to parts of the garment no one will see. It is worth being clear that this is a stylistic purchase as much as a technical one. A Cifonelli coat looks like a Cifonelli coat, and a customer who wants an unobtrusive suit should buy elsewhere.
Why the copies do not work
The shoulder is the most imitated detail in contemporary tailoring and most imitations fail for the same reason: they treat it as a shape to be padded outward rather than as an assembly. The ridge is built by how the sleeve head is constructed and set, which is a workroom skill, and it cannot be reverse-engineered from a photograph.
The tell is behaviour rather than outline. A built shoulder holds its curve when the arm moves; a padded approximation collapses or breaks. This is the clearest case on the site of a detail that has to be made rather than designed.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bespoke jacketAn indicative band, not a quotation. Bespoke entry prices normally exclude tax and cloth beyond the house bunch, and houses raise them without announcement. | Bespoke | €8,000–13,000 | September 2026 |
| 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 | €11,000–18,000 | 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.
01
Camps de Luca
Camps de Luca is a Paris tailor known for fine hand sewing and a signature lapel where collar and lapel meet in a mouth-like notch.
02
Huntsman
Huntsman, Savile Row's sharpest tailor, makes lean jackets with strong shoulders, a high nipped waist and usually one button, rooted in riding clothes.
03
A. Caraceni
A. Caraceni is a Milan tailoring house, one of several family firms sharing the Caraceni name, making clean, firmly built jackets among Italy's most expensive.
04
Knize
A Viennese house behind an Adolf Loos shopfront, cutting a shoulder nobody else cuts.
Set side by side
Sources
- House information , Cifonelli.
Where a figure is disputed or a house has not published it, the page says so rather than choosing a number.
Picture credits 5
- An illustration of the house's recorded cut: roped shoulder, full canvas chest, sculpted shoulder, very clean close chest, high waist. 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: roped shoulder, full canvas chest, sharp, strongly built shoulder, defined waist. 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: roped shoulder, full canvas chest, lean, high-waisted, single button. 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, full canvas chest, clean milanese, defined but light shoulder. Not a photograph of the house's own work.: Original art · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale original art
- Knize cossa: Photograph · C. Cossa · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0 at