L'Uomo: interview with Nino Cerruti

Nino Cerruti is a perfect gentleman who has just turned 90. He swathes his body in shirts like Audrey Hepburn. Rather than buttoning them, he overlaps the edges and tucks them into his trousers, cinch- ing them with a belt and slipping a sweater or jacket on top, or whatever else happens to take his fancy. The effect is slightly anarchic and very pleasing to the eye, which tends to become used to tailoring’s typically harmonious proportions. “Style is balance, but with a dramatic twist,” he says with a knowing smile. Cerruti was the first to deconstruct the formal suit and bring genderless garments to the masses. (It’s true that Orry-Kelly had already dressed Marlene Dietrich in a jacket, tie and pleated trousers in the 1930s, and Saint Laurent introduced Le Smoking in the 1960s, but it was rare to see women in trouser suits until the late 1970s, and then largely thanks to Cerruti.) He detests everything that clings to the body, that constrains it, that fails to indulge its capacity for movement and expression of thoughts.

For Cerruti, it’s these thoughts that above all have to flow freely, unhindered even by garments. “The right to be comfortable has its limits, but even a pair of sweatpants can be elegant, perhaps worn with a carefully chosen sweater. It all depends on who is wearing them and how they suit that person’s character,” he says. While chatting via Zoom about the mutations of fashion in the pandemic-ravaged age of distance working, we do our best to steer clear of the familiar anecdotes: his studies of philosophy interrupted by his father’s untimely death; how he founded the first elegant men’s ready-to-wear label, Hitman, in 1957; his first Paris boutique in the late 1960s that sold a mix of women’s and men’s fashions in a space designed by starchitect Vico Magistretti, who was also a regular customer of his; and of course his mentorship of Giorgio Armani.

The biography of “Signor Nino”, as he has long been called, is due for an update. There are plenty of new details to add about his life – developments and initiatives that have not only made him an entrepreneur, but also the man whom the Encyclopédie de la Mode describes as “the most French of Italian designers” – which considering that pantheon includes Pierre Cardin is a compliment indeed. We’ll start from the medium that allows our conversation to take place, the internet. The medium is the message, and this kind of communication intrigues him. Observing how the digital and productive evolution of businesses has been thrown into overdrive due to Covid-19, he recognises that the revolution brought about by the internet, e-commerce and social networks is changing how and when we express our desire to buy. But in Cerruti’s view, the coming tasks of fashion will certainly go beyond merely speeding up the production and distribution processes to satisfy these new purchasing patterns.

(Continues)

Opening picture: a portrait of “Signor Nino” in his headquarters of Lanificio Fratelli Cerruti, in Biella, photographed by Jonathan Frantini.

Read the full interview in the February issue of L'Uomo, on newsstands from January 22nd

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