E. Marinella Brand Guidelines: The 20-Square-Metre Naples Shop Behind a Diplomatic Tie

Twenty square metres on the Naples seafront.

E. Marinella opened in Naples on 26 June 1914, the date given by Il Giornale in 2023 and Il Sole 24 Ore in 2025. Its founder, Eugenio Marinella, took a shop of about 20 square metres on Piazza Vittoria, along the Riviera di Chiaia seafront. Forbes Italia and the craft guide Homo Faber place it in the same square. The name is now tied to silk neckwear, but the shop began as a seller of English goods, at a time when, as Maurizio Marinella told Il Giornale, elegant men dressed the English way.

The writer Matilde Serao is linked to a phrase the shop is known for. Quotidiano Nazionale and the company both credit her with “a little corner of England in Naples.” Il Sole 24 Ore quotes her telling readers of Il Mattino that they would find English articles made exclusively for the house, among them shirts, ties, braces and handkerchiefs. In an interview with the Italian magazine iMore around the firm’s 105th anniversary, Maurizio Marinella, the founder’s grandson, said Serao inaugurated the shop and compared it to a village pharmacy, because customers stopped to talk.

The company says Eugenio was the first to travel to England to import fine fabrics, including hand-printed silk, along with goods such as Aquascutum raincoats, Floris and Penhaligon’s perfumes and Lock & Co hats. Il Giornale reported in 2016 that the boutique itself was fitted with English materials, down to the door jambs.

Making came alongside selling. The company says Eugenio set up two tailoring workshops, one for made-to-measure shirts and one for bespoke ties, and places them under 1940 in its timeline, while Maurizio Marinella’s iMore account mentions them with the early imports. The company says it was starched shirts for formal dress that first made its name, with ties taking over later.

The English supply line broke in the 1930s. Il Giornale reported in 2023 that sanctions on Fascist Italy from 1935 made it impossible to import the printed fabrics, leaving the shop empty, and that the business came through both world wars. Luigi Marinella, Eugenio’s son, carried it on through those changes, Maurizio told iMore, as the old nobility declined, a new bourgeoisie appeared and American goods altered men’s clothes.

From a shop counter to a head of state’s gift.

The tie’s second life was diplomatic. Sources differ on where the habit began. Il Sole 24 Ore and Quotidiano Nazionale credit Enrico De Nicola, Italy’s first president and a Neapolitan, with giving boxes of Marinella ties, five to a box according to the company. Maurizio Marinella told iMore that real growth came in the 1980s, when President Francesco Cossiga took to carrying a box of five ties on official visits. He also said organisers of the 1994 G7 in Naples gave each head of state a box of six, which he described as the moment the name opened up beyond Italy. Il Giornale reported in 2016 that Silvio Berlusconi, as prime minister, ordered ties in the hundreds, with special boxes, partly as gifts.

The customer list is told largely by the family, and it is long. FashionUnited reported in 2004 that clients included John F. Kennedy, Mikhail Gorbachev, Bill Clinton, François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac, along with Aristotle Onassis and the Agnelli family. Maurizio Marinella has named Totò, who he says came in to show how to tie a bow tie, along with Eduardo De Filippo, Vittorio De Sica and Marcello Mastroianni. Il Giornale listed ties for Daniel Craig as James Bond in Skyfall in 2023.

Museums and anniversaries have added a second record. Items: Is Fashion Modern? at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which ran from October 2017 to January 2018, included Marinella ties. Maurizio Marinella told iMore there were four, shown as an archetype of the tie; InsideHook reported in 2023 that the tie chosen for the show was an E. Marinella. In 2014 the firm marked its centenary with the exhibition Un secolo di Storia, cento anni di Stile at the Palazzo Reale in Naples, the Italian site EC News reported. FashionUnited reported in 2004 on a book of black-and-white photographs by Fredy Marcarini showing the knots of fifty ties, with proceeds going to charity.

The archive has become a product. Il Giornale reported in November 2016 that the Archivio collection drew on one-off patterns from 1930 to 1980, printed on silk and finished by hand, each marked on the back with its year. Maurizio Marinella found the designs on a trip to the English town where his grandfather and father had chosen their patterns. He called the range a kind of family album. Quotidiano Nazionale reported in 2025 on another line, Cravatte da re, which uses the Bourbon lily found in historic silk damasks and looks to the silk tradition of San Leucio, near Caserta.

Cloth and the counter.

Shirtmakers show their work through cloth. A bolt of poplin, a stack of stripes or a swatch book does what a logo does elsewhere: it tells a customer what kind of house this is. Charvet presents its shirtings in full bolts rather than on swatch cards, according to English Wikipedia, which describes a wall of four hundred white fabrics on its bespoke floor. Turnbull & Asser says its pattern books from the 1920s and 1930s survive, and it sells bespoke and made-to-measure shirts from its London shops.

Collars are the category’s other recurring image. They are small, repeatable shapes, easy to set out in rows and easy to tell apart. A Highsnobiety visit to Charvet found collar samples pinned to velvet and framed on the wall, and Turnbull & Asser names a collar of its own, the Classic T&A, as its signature style, English Wikipedia says. Paper patterns and fitting shirts belong to the same picture of a trade built on measurement.

Place matters as much as product. London’s Jermyn Street, in St James’s, is home to shirtmakers whose shop fronts appear in their own storytelling, and Turnbull & Asser dates its address there to 1903. In Paris, Charvet’s full name includes Place Vendôme.

Neckwear shares the same visual stock: silk ties folded and laid out by colour, and woven or printed patterns shown in ranges rather than one at a time. This guide sets out what can be checked about each house, including who founded it, who owns it now and where it says its products are made. Where a story rests on a company’s own account, the text says so. The tones and typefaces shown are our own interpretation.

Made in Naples, and staying there.

Production remains close to the shop. Il Sole 24 Ore reported in 2025 that the workshop stands about 100 metres from the shop, looking onto the Villa Comunale gardens, where seamstresses cut and sew at least 150 ties a day by hand. The standard tie measures 147 centimetres by 8.5, and is made in three, five, seven or nine folds. A classic three-fold tie takes about 45 minutes, Il Giornale and Forbes Italia reported. The silk comes from England: Forbes Italia and Maurizio Marinella both say it is printed there, and the company says it is hand-printed exclusively for the house. Homo Faber, the craft guide, lists the firm as a Naples tailoring workshop.

The shop’s manners are part of the brand. Several reports since 2004 describe it opening at 6.30 in the morning. Maurizio Marinella told Forbes Italia in 2021 that until 9 the pace is slower, customers stop for a coffee, and selling a tie becomes almost secondary. In 2004 FashionUnited reported that there was still only one Marinella tie shop, alongside a space at the George V hotel in Paris and a showroom in Milan. The company says stores have opened since 2002 in Milan, Rome, Turin, London and Tokyo, and Il Giornale listed Naples, Milan, London and two in Tokyo in 2023.

Ownership has stayed in the family. Maurizio Marinella, the third generation, was named sole director by Il Giornale in 2023, and Fortune Italia reported in January 2026 that he has repeatedly turned down offers from large groups. His son Alessandro Marinella, the fourth generation, joined in January 2017, Forbes Italia says, and has worked on ecommerce and systems. Il Sole 24 Ore counted about seventy staff in 2025. It also reported a framed letter in which Donald Trump, then a businessman, invited the family to open at the top of Trump Tower, an offer they declined. The answer, Alessandro says, became a family rule: great things can be done not only starting from Naples, but staying there.

For a design guide, E. Marinella shows how a brand can be built from a place, a counter and an archive; FashionUnited reported in 2004 that it relied on word of mouth. Compare Charvet, another house known for shirts and ties, and Lock & Co, the London hatter whose name is on the company’s list of early imports. For this guide we use a navy, a claret and a warm stone with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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