Umberto Angeloni helped the Italian sartorial company of Brioni to the world point. Then they separated. Now he opens his own label - directly beside the Brioni parent company.
Suddenly he was away. Not that Umberto Angeloni would have ever been meddlesome. On the contrary, nevertheless, he belongs to the dwindling kind of the true gentlemen. As just such, he had embodied with big success the sartorial brand Brioni and had led it, too. Both if possible too successfully. Also in Italian families there is envy.
After nearly 16 years at the head of the traditional enterprise he announced in the Indian summer in 2006 suddenly and without other explanations that he is not any more CEO. And went down. It is so elegantly as his disposition always. Even if it raved internally in him. How you can still anticipate if today you meet him.
The voice is so quiet and singing as ever, becomes the quieter, the more importantly to him the said is. This is a fine trick to bind the attention, and, besides, gives to every conversation a certain intimacy, creates an aura of the special, the refinement. Automatically you would like to wake in his present in no case even the impression of commonness.
Even the waiter who has gone some meters away from the table into position understands right away the almost whispered, but good probably accented words. However, this may be also due to the fact that the Roman Umberto Angeloni is a denizen in the hotel “Four Seasons”. As well as “via Gesù” with which the hotel lies, his street is his district. Always and it also remains.
Since the departure with Brioni only surely! They maybe have taken from him his honour for a moment, but not his hotel and not his street and already at all his vision.
And thus it comes to the unusual situation that the small lane which goes off from “via Montenapoleone”, in which all big luxury brands are found, has become now an arena in an exciting fight for the crown of the man's clothes.
Full pride Angeloni had refined here his Brioni world on and on, with a fashionable business of the ladies' fashions, even with a Brioni suite in " Four Seasons " and a hidden studio for man's custom-made clothing, “molto elegant”, completely in such a way, as it corresponds to his claim, there to the luxury.
However, who searches him, now will go on if possible a few more meters. Past in " Four Seasons " which stands like a referee in the middle of the gamecocks, exactly towards from “Kiton”, which have likewise settled in the suction of the lane, that Angeloni with Brioni had caused, now the new confidential tip is found. On Friday Angeloni will open the door to the quiet rooms, where even the pictures fastened to the frame in the Entree behind linen curtains can withdraw.
A quite new label, the logo lively in deep-blue writing writing. The abbreviation of Umberto and Angeloni and less hubris was with the search for a name in the play than deep sense. If the word rescues, nevertheless, also the concept " Humanly " and also the word " man ", so that what it is about. Around men. XXX The bonvivant Angeloni who masters reliably the splits between nobleman's cultivation on the one hand and technology-eager Blogger, on the other hand has developed a draught, which the Hamburg gentlemen's outfitter Lars Braun who will offer Uman as one of only six addresses at first worldwide, calls evolution. “A really sometimes innovative, intelligent beginning, to approach to product and mass.” Or how Angeloni who strictly fights for the preservation of the becoming extinct species " true luxury " says: " Uman stands synonymous for passion, fed from research and Erfahrung. "
Quality is natural, the chief attraction lies in the research. Angeloni let mesure with the help of modern scan technology more than 3000 forty-year-old men worldwide and was created from it a" new body " as a model. Sounds simple, however, really the man's manufacture is based in the essentials on the statistics which are from 40 to 50 years old! Angeloni works with own masses and own dimensions, no year old. There are not classics 50, 52, 54 with Uman, only jacket types. Three at first. And a suit. The dimensions step in not in 4, 5-centimetre steps, but rather in one to at most three. Besides, the Uman body accepts different figure. London, Paris, Milan, for example, formed the measuring axis for the " West- Europe body ". There is a body for Japan and one for China, Asians are absolutely different, in the end.
While the German man's body, oops, finds itself then, nevertheless, rather in the East Europe stature. Another measure counts to North America and also for the Arabs. "Uman will be the best fitted suit of the world. And also if he very much fashionable is, I left hundreds of years history ", swarms the boss. And nobody sees grund this to doubt. Angeloni does not stick the perfumed appearance of an Oscar Wilde, rather the consequence of the Kultivierers. About the fascination which released the discovery of a silver flower holder for lapel with anantiquarian, immediately an intelligent book writes "The Boutonnière - Style in One 's Lapel ". Since if a little bit excels the elegance of the Roman, it is a care. Side way he has philosophised as an inspiration basis for the employees only on the Uman colour Blue, about Kokoschka and Kandinsky, also about proportions and silhouette, about " modern wealth ", the new consumer. Hundreds of sides all together about the Uman ethos. "It is not about made-to-measure clothes, but rather about the measure of the Mannes." For the modern, wealthy consumers who does not orientate himself by seasonal dictation and already not at all by Celebrities, which gets on as an avant-garde and is on the move with intellectually pleasure, which has no desire on dull rituals like"by appointment" or " bespoke" which wants to accept no longer that of the Powersuit is the synonym for elegance.
Oha - more finely and subtly nastier one cannot probably say it. " Powersuit " is same a sort of the DNA of Brioni, made since 1945 for the powerful figures, the high-powered in the world. A word which also led Angeloni long in the vocabulary.
Time to speak about what passed three years ago?
Reluctantly, clearly.
It was like so often about the future and if possible also about envy. Brioni is a family enterprise, since the tailor Nazareno Fonticoli and the material designer Getano Savini got together after the war and named her distinguished business to the so chichi island Brioni once. In 1978 Umberto Angeloni married the granddaughter one of the founders. He grew up in Somalia, had studied economy in Canada and Rome, ten years he lectured as a qualified professor, before he got in 1982 into the enterprise, in 1990 the guidance took over and formed from the famous, but tired enterprise to a lifestyle icon and, besides, raised the turnover by chance 20 million dollars on more than 200 millions and the enterprise what counted maybe even more, did the number one in the market. Even James Bond wore Brioni. (Has, however, meanwhile on Tom Ford resettled). However, then it came to the break.
Angeloni wanted to sell, the other members in the supervisory board held it for a silly idea and generally the relative for too futile, too much in the foreground. In the Indian summer in 2006 it came to the showdown:”Either I sell, or you have to do me buy me out.” With which he meant his participation in Brioni. They have him bought out. He took the money, woman and children and went. Since that time any contact is cut.
In June, 2007 he was finally a free man. At the right time, for the right price, as turned out. In the meantime, Brioni negotiates with buyers about higher and higher shares. An Italian economic newspaper blasphemed," only these were 500 million euros, now 300 worth,at first 20 percent stood for the sales and now 49 percent".
The departure was painful, nevertheless. Suddenly there rang no more phone. "A few friends still called, but suddenly I did not know at all what I should do. I was just 54. A Sabbatical? The image to begin something absolutely new seemed to me wrong. Everyone should act what he is proficient in."
He thought. What was never there under man's clothes? What puts the culture of the clothing out? He thought and wrote more than one year. In the interim collapsed the financial world. To him it was clear:"You need more arguments than hand made for high prices. You need romanticism, Ethos."
He travelled through completely Italy, visited all factories to invest. And found and bought itself by the majority one in Caruso, a traditional production company which began a career as a licence manufacturer once by Werner Baldessarini and produces with 600 employees not only own Caruso label, but also works for fire like Ralph Lauren, Dior, Lanvin. "1000 new models per season! The developing department is like the Nasa", says Angeloni and amuses itself well.
Caruso is such a kind of Cap Canaveral for the style rocket, the Angeloni now shoots. It would be very right to him if the customers bring not only her apparel on person in front, best of all also her library, her knowledge, her clothes culture. "Uman is no brand, but a draught, a mental community, nothing has to act with money, but with style, is a quite new history and with 1500 to 1800 euros also not a mad thing, no Tom Ford, who offered a Zegna suit with a price of a Brionis.
"Typically Angeloni the new comes from a Palazzo, from the germ cell of the sartorial art. The ground of hand-broken black marble, the grey-green matt walls were also found in the Milaneser Palazzi about 1900. In the tied wall decoration the U initials remind in the ornaments of aristocratic tradition, illuminated from lights which served once the navy as mobile floodlights.
Only the crocodile, once the protective animal of the cathedrals who hangs on the wall behind Angeloni´s desk signals the reined belligerence with which this gentleman on has returned the fashion stage.