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Please correct me if I'm wrong but I was told it's 80% off, but it could be category dependent. Some great pieces. Great banter with the staff.
80% off
Archives by Via Cavour (@archivesbyviacavour) • Instagram photos and videos
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Sorry, not sure what point you’re making?
If I remember correctly the Private Equity firm (ESL Investments) bought the assets during the Bankruptcy auction so the firm was already in Chapter 11. It was either Chapter 7 to repay creditors or this so the Company was dead in the water either way.The following is only my understanding and I may be wrong (if anyone knows better, please correct me).
Sears, an iconic US department store for almost a century, was struggling like all department stores in the 2010's. Then, some fund or someone, noticed something: The real estate occupied by Sears (just the value of the land, to use for further development into something that makes more money than a Sears store), was worth more than the enterprise value of the Sears company.
So they bought the company, expressly citing mismanagement and saying they would modernize the US icon to be retail behemoth going forward.
Then they killed it. Laid everyone off.
They then just had the land - prime real estate in Manhattan, Chicago, etc. to do with as they pleased.
On that space they could open superfood showrooms, goat yoga studios, condos with goat yoga studios in the lobby, civet coffee shops, etc etc etc.
The outrage was they killed the icon for real estate. People lost jobs, industries lost markets, consumers lost choice...just the landowners can now get rich.
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After my last entry dissecting the Attolini jacket, many people reached out regarding how much they enjoyed my informative description regarding everything I discovered within the lining. Several of you have offered to give me your old never-to-be-worn-again garments. Well, today I received a package from the States, it had several garments inside of it but I was most excited about one of them in particular. A Cucinelli suit, though my dissection for this entry only features the jacket. A removal of the sleeve and a slight curiosity what I would find under the facing.
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Jacket is a 48/38R, therefore the previous owner had the sleeves lengthened. I will only critique construction based on original production. This is why there is only two handmade buttonholes, done by the alteration tailor that did the work post-purchase. Aside from some buttonholes that was posted by another poster previously, I have only ever seen Cucinelli garments with machine buttonholes. Several ex-Cucinelli employees that are friends of mine were able to back this up. However, I know that Cucinelli production has changed a lot from previous B2B production to their now own private manufacturing.
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One thing that baffled a co-worker of mine was the shoulder construction, which used canvas as the sleevehead, but only on the front and back of the armhole. This is obviously intended to keep the front and back of the sleeve looking clean and rounded but not to take away any of the shirring from the centre.
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Between each canvassed sleeve head is domette, which I have found used as the sleevehead in Attolini jackets in the past. It's a soft fabric that is also used to canvas construction of chest pieces. Along the domette, you can see the many different stitches that display the steps that go into the sleeve construction of a jacket.
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The picture below, displays the construction of a Neapolitan sleeve, this is how I was taught to do them, however the sleeves I've dismantled in the past doing alterations from companies like Attolini or Orazio Luciano do not make them this way. There are two slits that are cut into the top-sleeve panel, and pressed backward into the shoulder, the picture above shows the top-stitching (machine) that holds the fabric back keeping it place.
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One thing I have not seen with any garment, is fusing along the edge of the top-sleeve, this is done for fast, mass-production. Sleeves are hung faster and with more ease and is a good example of cheap manufacturing. Behind the armhole seam, you can see the shoulder seam running perpendicular into the armhole. The fabric of the suit is a pinstripe, so that flat, blue non-pinstripe material you see holding the shoulder together is just more fusing.
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Hanging the jacket sans sleeve. From this picture you can see how soft the Cuccinelli shoulder is, there isn't a lot of padding. I was going to save it for my next post when I take apart the skeleton of the jacket, but without spoiling nor surprises, the shoulder pad is made up of a single layer of canvas and domette... from what I recall. Either way, it's pretty light.
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For comparison, the Attolini sleeve lining was attached with basting to the outseam of the jacket the same way that I was taught (only I was also taught to do the inseam as well. Cucinelli displays further examples of cheap manufacturing by anchoring the lining down with a piece of cloth to both the inseam and the outseam at the bottom near the vent opening of the cuff. Aside from these small anchors, the sleeve is mostly loose throughout the sleeve with nothing holding it in place:
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Similar to the way my bespoke garments are finished, Attolini did similar, seams, which were raised and top-stitched. This what is also what is referred to as a lapped seam. Cucinelli seams are all open, lapped seams provide durability and longevity whereas open seams are far more delicate and far easier to come undone and wear out faster. You can see that the seam was cut (similar to the neapolitan sleeve), but rather than folding both seams in the same direction and tacked down, Cucinelli leaves this seam open.
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I've noticed there can be a lot of confusion about prick-stitching and top-stitching as many people think it's done by hand. Factories use two different machines to do their edge stitching. One functions similar to a blind-stitch machine, Cuccinelli uses this on the inside of their facings and their piping. You can left up the edge and see a similar stitch pattern like that of a hemmed trouser. If you snag the stitch in the right place, you can see the whole seam unravel in just one pull. The other top-stitch machine is what you would see used along the edge of a jacket, collar, lapel, quarters and pocket flaps. It's a continuous thread that holds all of the layers together without all the mess on the bottom layer. This is what you will find on the edge of your Spier garments and other machine made products. I will include a picture at the end that shows the finishings under the collar that can exhibit how these machine stitches look.
If you look at the picture below, you can see the prick stitching runs in one continuous line crossing over from the lining to the piping of the fabric. This is something that would make no sense for any tailor to do by hand.
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The pornographic shot of the anatomy of the suit... that, unfortunately I will try to cover separately. However, because many of you have brought me Cuccinelli jackets for alterations, I can explain a lot of issues you all have with your jackets from the following pictures:
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Ironically, though you see full canvas, both the front panel and the facing are completely fused. Practically makes the full canvas useless. But what is even crazier is the lapel construction. Along the lapel crease line, we see a strip of fabric that is blind stitched to the jacket at the edge of the canvas... I have an odd suspicion that this may be Cuccinelli's really odd attempt at a bridle... Bridle-less or not, it cuts off the canvas and we don't see any more canvas run past the lapel crease. What is seen is more fusing; the lapel has absolutely zero structure to it at all. I've seen half-canvas production jackets that at least blind-stitch the lapels down.
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Alas, the only production hand-stitching I was able to uncover so far is the back of the collar sides:
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It is absolutely mind-blowing that Cucinelli suits can sell for over $4000 at Harry Rosen and become a household name with a luxury reputation, but nothing I have ever seen has had the opportunity to back this up. You can spend far less money and get superior product elsewhere. I'm getting pretty antsy and excited to start taking apart the construction of the chest and the trousers.