Sleevehead's Guide to Sicilian Tailors (2nd edition print, 2017)
Sleevehead's Guide to Sicilian Tailors (2nd edition print, 2017)
Published originally in 2011, #SGST is the first and only comprehensive guide exploring the largely undiscovered world of Sicilian bespoke tailoring. The new 2017 expanded edition contains twice the content of the first edition. It remains the definitive reference on Sicilian tailoring whose signature is a softly structured jacket and whose heritage rivals Savile Row and Naples.
The author covers an expanded list of more than 20 tailors across Sicily including the four largest cities (Palermo, Catania, Messina and Syracuse) and two smaller towns (Ragusa and Modica) as well as other artisanal makers of shirts, ties and accessories. Logistical and travel details have also been updated to plan your own sartorial trip.
New to the second edition is a useful framework showing how the Mediterranean sensibility of Sicilian tailoring differs from Savile Row and Naples and why it deserves to be known as the third major school of Western tailoring.
Finally, purchase of this guidebook gives you free, lifetime membership to Sleevehead Forum, offering premium content and updates going forward.
Contents
108 pages
140+ photos
The paperback version is full color and letter sized (8.5 x 11 inches) featuring a glossy cover and 80 lb paper.
The hardcover version is full color and case wrapped (8.25 x. 10.75 inches) featuring 70 lb paper.
The digital e-book can be found here.
Disclosure: This guide is based solely on visits, interviews and experience as a prospective or actual customer. No money, gifts, sponsorships or endorsements were made in exchange for inclusion in this guide.
In our digital age, we are fed a constant diet of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and WeChat updates by friends, colleagues and digital influencers with millions of followers.
People share anything and everything online. These days very little in terms of fashion and style is truly new or a secret. Women decide on the next handbag or #ootd by swiping on Instagram. Likewise, men get inspired by what other guys are wearing by browsing #wiwt or #mensstyle. Most of this is "free" and easy. Everything is see, click or buy.
Against that backdrop, writing a full-length book could be construed as either retro or out of step with the times.
I chose to write a book on Sicilian tailoring. Why? Because only a long-form narrative can do justice to the topic. My view is this: the deeper the secret, the more that needs to be told.
Sleevehead's Guide to Sicilian Tailors is the first and only guide to unlocking the last secret left in men's bespoke tailoring. That’s quite a statement but I truly believe it.
This is a sartorial story that cannot be told in a single tweet or Instagram, or even a hundred of them. Sicilian tailors have a tremendous story but no one has been willing to tell it. I remember thinking how shocked I was that tailors so skilled could be so unknown. So I decided to tell their story.
Sicilian tailors offer tremendous value (thanks to their relative obscurity) and possess their own unique approach which I instinctively saw and have elucidated more crisply in the new edition of #SGST.
After more than six years of traveling, researching and personally commissioning bespoke clothes in Sicily, I sum up what I know and love most about Sicilian tailors and their Mediterranean stance to cutting and making superbly tailored clothes.
If you are truly serious about bespoke tailoring and masculine style, this is a secret you cannot miss out on.