Kiton Brand Guidelines: The Naples Tailor Named After a Greek Tunic

A fabric family and a tunic.

Kiton dates itself to 1968, when Ciro Paone began work in a small workshop at Arzano, on the outskirts of Naples; Il Sole 24 Ore and FashionUnited give the same year. The business behind it is older. MR Magazine said in 2021 that Paone started his own tailored clothing company in 1956, which evolved into Kiton in 1968, and Milano Finanza also gave 1956 in December 2024; Il Sole 24 Ore said in 2018 that he had been making clothing since 1958. Gentleman’s Gazette calls the earlier company CiPa, from his name. Italian Wikipedia names Antonio Carola as a co-founder in 1968 and says the Biella wool industrialist Carlo Barbera supported the firm from the start.

Paone came to tailoring through cloth. He told la Repubblica in 2005 that he was a fabric man, the son of fabric merchants from Secondigliano in Naples, whose family had a shop on Piazza Mercato. MR Magazine described him as descended from many generations of fabric makers. Milano Finanza says he gathered about a dozen master tailors and at first made only overcoats, adding jackets and suits later.

The name is a reference to the ancient Greek chiton. Il Sole 24 Ore says Paone chose it at the end of the 1960s, thinking of the ceremonial tunic the Greeks wore to pray to the gods of Olympus. The company’s own account stresses the garment’s plainness: “the apparent simplicity of a white cloth, expertly stitched with a single seam.”

The motto came from Paone too. In Italian it is “Il meglio del meglio più uno”; the company writes it in English as “The best of the best +1.” His nephew told Milano Finanza that Paone taught the family to look at quality “at 360 degrees, plus one.” Kiton says the workshop began with 50 garments a day and grew within 20 years into a factory of about 36,000 square feet with 150 employees.

Needle, thread and scissors.

Kiton says all of its production is handmade, using only “needle, thread, and scissors.” Outside accounts give some measure of it. La Repubblica’s 2005 visit found hundreds of tailors at Arzano and pressing done the old way with a damp cloth, in a company then making 22,000 garments a year. Italian Wikipedia gives 18,000 suits a year, each handled by at least 45 tailors, and about 50 hours for the K-50 model; QuiFinanza said in November 2025 that a jacket takes 25 hours. MR Magazine singled out the “Neapolitan shoulder,” in which a sleevehead wider than the armhole is stitched in by hand.

Accounts of the headquarters dwell on its colour. La Repubblica described a villa of pink marble among palm trees; a former Saks brand manager recalled it in MR Magazine as the “Pink Palazzo.”

To keep those skills in the company, Kiton set up a tailoring school at Arzano, dated 2000 by English Wikipedia and 2001 by Il Sole 24 Ore. English Wikipedia describes a three-year course for people aged 16 to 21. Chief executive Antonio De Matteis told QuiFinanza that Neapolitan tailors once guarded their methods, so that apprentices had to learn by watching in secret.

Kiton also bought its way back up the supply chain. The Carlo Barbera mill in Biella, founded in 1949 according to English Wikipedia, had long supplied the company. Il Sole 24 Ore said in 2018 that Kiton acquired it in 2010; English Wikipedia’s history section gives 2009, and MR Magazine called it a controlling stake in 2021. Kiton says it also acquired an outerwear company in Parma and a knitwear factory in Fidenza. English Wikipedia lists five company factories, at Arzano, Collecchio, Fidenza, Marcianise and Biella, and De Matteis told Milano Finanza in 2024 that all its products come from companies it owns.

Paone also bought tailoring history. At Arzano in 2005, la Repubblica saw 15 garments that had belonged to the Duke of Windsor, which Paone said he had bought at Sotheby’s in London as a single lot, among them a golf outfit and a kilt. Italian Wikipedia says they were shown in Florence during Pitti Uomo.

Chalk, patterns and fabric books.

Tailoring houses have an unusual advantage in presenting themselves: the work itself is graphic. A bespoke order follows a set sequence. The customer and tailor choose fabrics, linings and details, the tailor takes measurements and drafts a pattern from scratch, and the cloth is chalked out and cut with shears before being basted for a fitting. Chalk marks on cloth, paper patterns on hooks and a cutter working at the board are the working tools of that sequence, and they also make natural pictures for a house’s windows, pages and packaging.

The street matters too. Savile Row in Mayfair, London, is known principally for bespoke men’s tailoring, and tailors have traded there since at least 1803. Its windows can be a statement in themselves: when Nutters of Savile Row opened in 1969, it used bold displays created by the then unknown Simon Doonan. In Italy the home town often takes the street’s place, and a house can put a place name at the front of its story, as Zegna does with its mill in the Biellese Alps.

Cloth carries the identity as well. Fabrics and linings are chosen at the start of an order, which puts the fabric book in the customer’s hands early. Mills keep their own record of that work: the Zegna archive at Trivero holds sample books alongside technical drawings.

The words matter as much as the images. A bespoke garment starts from a new pattern, made to measure adjusts an existing one, and ready-to-wear comes in standard sizes. In June 2008 Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority ruled that an advertisement calling a suit cut and sewn by machine “bespoke” did not breach its code, and the term has stayed contested since.

A family company, with the stock market left open.

Kiton has stayed with its founding family. FashionUnited described Ciro Paone S.p.A. in 2023 as the holding company of the group and said Paone’s nephew Antonio De Matteis began at Kiton in 1986, bought a 10 percent stake in 1996 and became managing director in 2007. He is also creative director of menswear, and in 2023 he became president of Pitti Immagine, the Florence organiser of the Pitti trade fairs. Paone’s daughter Maria Giovanna Paone is president and leads womenswear, and his nephew Antonio Paone runs Kiton USA, according to English Wikipedia. Kiton says the second generation took up the founder’s legacy in 2021.

Asked by Il Sole 24 Ore in 2023 whether the family still thought about the stock exchange, De Matteis said it was not ruled out, but that for now they were enjoying their independence. He said six members of the third generation were already in the company. Two of them, the twins Mariano and Walter De Matteis, are behind KNT, or Kiton New Textures, a collection begun in 2018.

Womenswear arrived in 1995 according to English Wikipedia, which credits Maria Giovanna Paone; MR Magazine dated a luxury women’s collection to 2005. In 2013 Kiton bought the Milan building on Via Pontaccio that had been home to Gianfranco Ferré, and Milano Finanza described Palazzo Kiton in 2024 as a gallery of contemporary art as well as a company base.

Public honours have followed the founder and the company. President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi made Paone a Cavaliere del Lavoro in 1999, Il Sole 24 Ore says. English Wikipedia records a Pitti Immagine career award for him in 2017 and a Premio Leonardo Qualità Italia for Kiton, presented by President Sergio Mattarella, in 2018. It also says that Kiton began dressing Tottenham Hotspur’s team for official events in July 2023.

For a design guide, Kiton shows how a name and a motto can carry a tailoring house: a single plain garment from antiquity, and a line that keeps adding one. Compare Brioni, the Roman tailor that also trains its own staff, and Loro Piana, another Italian name closely tied to cloth. For this guide we use a bay navy and a palazzo pink with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Kiton’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.