Ariston

Neapolitan suiting with colour and nerve, since 1920

Ariston is a Neapolitan cloth house, and it dresses like one. Around the turn of the twentieth century Ferdinando Imparato decided to tie his future to fabric. It was, as the house tells it, an age with no clothing factories, only tailors dressing a demanding clientele. His family has sold men's suiting from Naples since 1920, and four generations on it still runs the house.

Ariston is a merchant rather than a weaver, and it says so plainly. It buys its cloth only from Italian weavers, with Irish linen the one exception, and sells it only under its own name. The book is large and restless, ranging across wool, mohair, silk, cashmere, cotton and linen, and it is renewed every six months by a family that has been choosing cloth for a century.

What Ariston is known for is nerve. Where Biella leans towards restraint, Naples likes colour, bold pattern and lighter cloth for a warm climate and soft tailoring. We go to Ariston when navy and grey have been done and the brief calls for personality that still belongs in a well-cut suit.

Naples dresses for heat, and so do we. A lighter Ariston cloth moves air in a way a dense northern worsted never will, and the colour range gives a commission somewhere to go. The Rue Meynadier Burgundy Suit in our range is a double-breasted, six-button suit in an Ariston cloth, a bold red check in Super 130s wool. It shows what the house does best: a strong idea made with enough discipline to wear to work. It is made to measure. Bring us the brief at a fitting and we will open the Ariston book.