Just this once, for the groom who has everything, wear the finest Italian fabrics and bespoke tailoring, and even put your best foot forward in a made in Italy jacket inspired by Indian royalty, the Nawab jacket. That’s how you can roll, for any wedding celebration, from the cocktail, to the youngsters’ bash or the Big Day itself. Stefano Canali, the CEO of Canali, a 92-year-old legacy menswear maison founded in Brianza, Italy, in India on one of his frequent visits, knows his Indian customer well, and what that customer wants in a suit, not just for the most important day of his life, but for the rest of it.
Made for royalty
“Our Indian customers are knowledgeable, and demanding,” says Stefano Canali. “This stems from your country’s passion for luxury – it’s ‘maharaja heritage’ – craftsmanship, detailing, and quality of raw materials.” Canali’s first foray into India 25 years ago (the brand’s ‘love affair’ as Stefano Canali puts it), with a store at the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai in 2009, has evolved into a JV that today encompasses six stores in India. And it all began with that jacket, that is universally famous for being the Indian man’s most formal vêtement – the bandhgala.
“We decided to give our own interpretation to this Indian garment,” says Stefano, of the Nawab jacket launched just for India in 2011, with a sleeveless ‘bandi’ version introduced a decade later, along with a full ‘Nawab suit’. “We took the shape, idea, and created the Canali version. We made the full canvas of the jacket, with all the details and craftsmanship Canali is renowned for, and also introduced a sporty version, it was an instant success. We called our project Nawab.”
Bespoke, in its highest form
For the fabrics, a would-be groom can choose between 500 fabrics (and leathers for accessories), 97 percent of which come from Biella, Italy. For a classic Nawab, he can choose the finest Merino wool , mohair, or cashmere, but for warmer climes, the Nawab can be made in a linen, silk and wool blend, or pure linen.
“The su misura (made to measure) is the highest level of service that we provide our customers with, and it was applied to Nawab as well,” says Stefano. Even today, a groom can literally walk into a Canali store and ask for whatever is on display, to be made su misura using the brand’s special service – any jacket, any suit.
Values, built to last
“For a company to last this long (since 1934), it’s important to have a foundation,” says Stefano. “This is a set of values, of family and what the family infuses into the company on a daily basis. These are: Respect, Responsibility, and Reliability. Respect and responsibility towards the people working for us, towards people buying our products, and towards the planet. In fact, we were sustainable, before the term became a byword!”
Stefano says that sustainability experts have analysed Canali’s data for two years, under the umbrella term Canali CAre, to obtain OEF and PEF certifications (16 indicators), from sourcing to retail, water consumption to human health, which provided them with answers for the future, for the environment, that they already knew. “Because they told us that we were doing the right thing, for 92 years,” he says.
The ‘floating’ difference
That Canali piece for your special day or man trousseau – will it be long-lasting, and why? “By investing in quality and making sure we use the highest quality fabrics and materials out there to craft the jackets and the suits,” says Stefano. “For our most exclusive fabrics, we even have our designers sit next to the wool mill fabric designers, to customize special fabrics for Canali.”
There’s magic in the stitching as well. “We use a canvas, to make sure that alterations can take place over time,” says Stefano. “And it’s never fused; it’s a floating canvas, where the canvas is stitched to other materials – on a curved surface – so that the fabric moves properly over your chest, which as you know, is three-dimensional, and not flat.”
Stefano says that this time-consuming method is what a sartorial garment is all about. “That’s why it lasts,” he says, “And it’s easy to enlarge and shrink – just take the stitches off and restitch. That’s 92 years of history!”
The Canali brand, a favourite of former US President Barack Obama, has been evolving as per its customers, has survived World War II, changing fashion tastes, and the pandemic. “Our young consumers are interested in credibility and authenticity,” says Stefano Canali. “But beyond age brackets, it’s about the attitude of a customer who wants quality. It’s about consistency and not altering one’s identity to persuade everyone.” And that is true luxury.
