Cerruti

Biella worsteds with a couturier's hand, since 1881

Lanificio Fratelli Cerruti has woven on the banks of the river Cervo in Biella since 1881, when Antonio Cerruti founded the mill with two brothers and a cousin. The family traded in wool long before that, as far back as the 1770s, but 1881 is the year the house puts on its label.

The name most people know came in 1951, when Nino Cerruti took over at twenty, after the death of his father, Silvio. In 1967 he opened a couture house in Paris under the name Cerruti 1881, and in the decades that followed he dressed film stars, on screen in Wall Street and Pretty Woman and off it at Cannes and the Oscars. Few Biella houses have ever stood so close to fashion.

It shows in the cloth. Cerruti worsteds drape softly and take colour well, with a hand that reads as designed rather than merely woven. They suit commissions where the photographs matter as much as the wearing: a wedding suit, say, or tailoring for an evening that will be documented.

We have no standing Cerruti garment in our range just now. The lengths pass through our library as bolts are cut and replaced, so ask at your next fitting what the current book holds.