IWS with Luca Rubinacci: Watches and tailoring

Interviews

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DATE

25 April 2021

L’intervista

AC: Hi guys, welcome back to IWS! I’m Andrea, and today, we are joined by Luca Rubinacci.

LR: Luca, here I am, hello everyone.

AC: Thank you for being here with us. If I were to describe you briefly, in just a few words, I would say that Luca is a tailor… but I think there’s much more to that and it’s a bit reductive in a sense. So, for those who don’t know you, in your own short words, who is Luca?

LR: Luca is a lover of beauty, first of all, beauty done with a lot of common sense and with great creativity. The third generation of a Neapolitan tailor business, which invented the Neapolitan jacket in the 1930s, and made it famous around the world between the 80s and 90s, and since the year 2000, is under my direction.

AC: Wow! Speaking of family, despite, having something incredible but also very significant behind me: this autograph from Pavarotti, it is quite intimidating. But, how cool is it to be in touch with and know so many of these people…

LR: Look, it’s quite peculiar that Pavarotti’s picture is there, because if you look at all the other photos, they are of my family. That autograph, obviously, is dedicated “To Mariano”, my father. I have but one memory of Pavarotti: that I’m sure that he loved our clothes, otherwise he wouldn’t have written that note, but I was too little. Actually, I do have another: I remember I was 7/8 years old, and when I came to the store and saw him, he would say “Luca, get the measuring tape, get the measuring tape!”, so I would get the measuring tape, “measure my waist!”. I tried to measure his waist, but the tape wouldn’t go all the way around.

AC: He was rather large…

LR: And so, he would say “it’s your father, your father, he owns a faulty measuring tape, that’s no good, no good… let’s go see your father”. I would say “dad, dad, the measuring tape is broken, it won’t work, look: the ends don’t meet!”. Everyone laughed, but I was too young to get it. It took me 10 years to understand that the measuring tapes only go up to a certain length, and that was the waist… I saw it more of as a game, and that it was quite amusing, because at the end of the day, spending your childhood in this “laboratory” always had its benefits.
I have another anecdote: I would go around the tailor’s and – being the son of the boss, I’m pretty sure I got away with a lot of things – I would be wearing my jeans, and I would gather all the trimmings and scrap pieces of fabric and cloth that fell to the floor as the tailors would work. I would gather them and say “oh, this is nice, this is cool”, and the tailors would go “okay okay, let’s do this then: let’s take your pants”, they would remove the pocket lining, and they would patch it up with those scraps. I would go to school with these pants with suit jacket materials for the lining and I would love it because it was like my own super-personalised thing.

AC: You unknowingly started a circular economy at the end of the day, you don’t throw anything away, with creativity.

LR: Quite possibly, yes, of patchwork if anything!

AC: But, with all these stories, how important is it for you, seeing as you’re quite a traditionalist – after all, you’re maintaining a very old family business – how important is family, for you, and the family bonds?

LR: I believe that family businesses have their pros and their cons, obviously, but, having grown up in this family business, I don’t really have other experiences to validate it against, first of all. But growing up within a family business definitely strengthens your relationship with your brothers and sisters. Now, at the age of 39, my right-hand-man is my sister, Chiara, who manages everything that I am not able to, and so, in a sense, we compliment each other. I also have my two other sisters, Marcella and Alessandra, which in many other ways help me and my sister Chiara. So, I am very happy to be in a family business. Then, naturally, there’s the “big boss”, my father Mariano, who, in true patriarch fashion, says “it’s (the business) all yours, but I’m in charge”, but that’s just one of those things with family businesses.

AC: We see him, in fact, from time to time in your videos

LR: Absolutely! Back then, in my own little world, having my father around was like being accompanied by a beautiful woman. It was like he was the “Pope” of the tailor, arriving to bless everyone in the shop. During the fitting sessions, he would come into the room, and the client would always say “yes”, no matter what. Then, when they left, “Luca, let’s shorten the sleeve a little bit”. I would say “eh, you could have said that before…” “but your father was there, far away from me” …..
“yes but then you won’t like it”

AC: And then it’s your problem…

LR: Yes, but that’s part of the beauty of the whole thing

AC: You previously mentioned your family’s role in the creation of the Neapolitan blazer, and abroad, too: but what is your relationship with the outside world? I mean, right now, we are in a complicated situation.

LR: This past year I travelled far less, but I think as soon as the situation eases itself, we will resume travelling straight away. I normally travel to the United States – New York, Los Angeles, Miami. I travel to Spain – Madrid, to France – in Paris. I also go to Kazakhstan, Singapore… we travel quite a lot. Not to mention the store in London, which is managed by my sister Chiara: let’s just say that our strongholds are Naples, which is our hometown, our store here in Milan, where we are now, in this beautiful club, which is nothing more than a dressing room, really… so we can say that it’s to pamper our clients.

AC: Yes, I can confirm!

LR: Usually, the wives, girlfriends or fiancées of our clients sit in your armchair, and from there command the situation as my father did in the ‘80s: “Luca, I don’t like this, I like this”, let’s just say that you are sat in a very powerful armchair.

AC: Quite the responsibility!

LR: That’s what the business is looking like now.

AC: Wow, you’re pretty much everywhere! And, between traditionalism and a whole series of cultural exchanges through your travels, you know that our business is watches: how do you perceive “the wristwatch”? What does a watch mean to you? I imagine that through travelling you must have come across different cultures which perhaps have different perceptions of timepieces.

LR: I am, or, at least I think I am a “very small” lover of watches, I don’t know as much as you: let’s say that you know watches like I know fabrics…

AC: I should hope so!

LR: It is not my world: I approach it as an amateur, a student who is slowly but surely emancipating himself. But, I think that the wristwatch is an accessory. Nowadays, there is really no need for watches because we have our smartphones… so the watch is purely an accessory. Having said this, I have family heirloom watches, I have new watches, but I really like to “play around” with them more so than “owning” them.
As I said before, because it’s an accessory, if I’m in the mood, I’ll wear it, but there are also times when I don’t.

AC: Are you also of the opinion that it (the wristwatch) is the only piece of jewellery for men aside from cufflinks? Or do you think differently?

LR: Well, I don’t actually own jewellery, in the sense that I use cufflinks very rarely. I think the cufflinks… they are quite classic and elegant, but I would only use them in very formal contexts: with a tuxedo, wedding attire… I could wear them with a double-breasted suit, but I certainly don’t use them every day. Quite the opposite: as many may know, my cuffs are always unbuttoned. And, for those who tell me “you can’t wear your cuffs unbuttoned because they will pop out of the sleeves too much”… I have mine made to measure, so I take this into account. So these are the small exceptions, no? Small habits and peculiarities that you can get from your tailor. In terms of men’s jewellery, I have bracelets: I don’t know if they can be considered as jewellery, I see them more as accessories. So, more so than jewellery we have men’s accessories: and there are many of them. I wouldn’t call it jewellery, but I don’t think that watches are the only accessories that men can wear.

AC: A lot of people think that, too…

LR: I myself wear this button, which could under some circumstances be considered jewellery, because it’s made from onyx and coral. But coral is more of a Neapolitan tradition. Here we have a little horn, here’s a gobbino, and this is the button. Is it jewellery? No. Is it an accessory? Absolutely yes.

AC: In fact, as I can see from the watch you have on right now, in the end, as you said, you are a creative and you like to “play around” with stuff. In fact, you seem to be the only one… I remember when we did a watch-spotting post with this piece, so many people told us “no, it’s the old GMT”, “but it’s the old GMT”, to which we said “no, actually, look, and you’ll see it’s not the old one”… because you are the only person who wears it without the metal bracelet!

LR: Yes, I am, I believe, a fairly discreet person, perhaps because I sometimes wear clothes which are a bit too multi-coloured, but I do enjoy buying new watches. I’m not one of those people who are like “no, for me, only vintage”. I own vintage pieces just as I do for new ones. I like to make my vintage pieces look new, and my new pieces to look a bit antique. Everyone has their own thing I guess.

AC: And why not?! In fact, I quite like that trend! So, what was your first watch?

LR: My first experience with watches was quite funny, actually, because, when I was 23 years old, so, a long time ago, my father said to me “it is time that we buy…” – my father is a huge lover and collector of fine art, just like my grandfather, and he loves going to auctions. So there was this big Christie’s auction in New York, with all these watches. “Pick one that you like and we’ll see if we can make it ours”. I was 23, and I chose this Vacheron Constantin: a chronograph, pink dial, yellow gold. I remember that it was estimated to auction for $30,000 USD, so I said to him: “dad, this seems a bit expensive”. He told me “yes, but, all you need to do is raise your hand…”. That was all there was to it: “let’s have fun”. So, I went to this auction, with my father, obviously, and bid for 30… we got to 28 and my father told me “you bid until 30”, and we managed to make it ours for 30, because, as sometimes happens in these auctions it’s likely that somebody in that moment didn’t want to bid for the watch anymore… like paintings.

AC: It depends on who’s in the room, of course

LR: I remember, in fact, a while later (and I’m speaking as someone who is not a connoisseur, so purely on feeling I bought this watch… well, it was gifted to me by my father), I remember that the following lot was a Paul Newman, right? So, presently as someone “in the know”, yes, but at the time, as someone who wasn’t, I had no idea what was going on. Then, a couple of years ago, when there was that (Paul Newman Daytona) boom, I said to my dad, “you know, I think I recall that … hold on let me get that book”. Because Christie’s gave us this beautiful book which contained all of the watches from that auction. I had a look and said “I actually remember that it was this watch here”. I took a look at the estimate and value….
But I don’t buy watches to then sell them, I buy them so that “tomorrow” I can gift them to my children, as a sort of shared passion… but you know, it makes you think, no? Perhaps my watch is not worth as much as a Paul Newman…

AC: In fact, I can only imagine your dad’s face when you told him

LR: He, well, he – on the contrary – he told me, “I didn’t like it back then, and I don’t like it now, either”, so he really did not care at all. Given his age, he’s still very much of the philosophy of “I buy it because I like it”, not because it’s valuable or it can perhaps be sold down the line… It’s a different attitude for buying objects.

AC: Absolutely, yes. And very few people remain with that sort of attitude, because nowadays when you buy a watch, many (nearly everyone it seems) also look at the financial side of things: will it hold its value. So, it actually makes me really happy to hear that you buy simply because you like to wear them.

LR: Definitely, yes!

AC: Look, I’ve been following you for a long time now, and… let’s just say you are kind of “the face” of the mythical “sprezzatura” – a term which actually gets overused right now – anyway, a whimsical style. But, as we’ve established, you also “know the rules”. What do you think of these rule-breaking trends like pairing a metal bracelet watch with a tuxedo? And others?

LR: First of all, I think a lot of people use the term “sprezzatura” without knowing what it even means. Why do you say that? What is sprezzatura? I see Americans “ah, the sprezzatura! The sprezzatura”… what are you saying, sprezzatura? You just can’t dress properly! And it’s not really done tastefully…. Sprezzatura is the art of combining certain contrasting garments, which, on their own, would not pair well, but overall, one way or another, actually work out.

AC: And in this, you are quite the master, from what I’ve seen.

LR: But what actually lies in this art? Confidence, knowledge, and knowing how to rock it. So, a photo alone can’t tell me “sprezzatura”.
So, here, can you pair a metal bracelet with a tuxedo… that’s fine, it could work, it’s no good. I mean, no, it’s not good: that is what you have taught me.

AC: Theoretically, no, you shouldn’t.

LR: With a tuxedo, a classic and formal outfit, you should wear a thin watch, with a bracelet or strap as anonymous as possible, but still elegant. At most, an alligator… but, you see, this watch that you have on right now, no? A Cartier with a green crocodile strap. This is very peculiar because it’s green, but it should be black. But, you wear a green one as a statement. But, if you go on to put a GMT with a metal bracelet… okay… maybe it could be sprezzatura, but I have to look at the whole ensemble. I need to look at how you carry yourself, how you wear it, how nonchalant you are: then, yes, good. But you must always know what you are doing and do it with purpose.
So, the minute you, as a connoisseur, you come to me and say “but Luca, you’ve put a metal bracelet with your tuxedo!”, and I reply with “yeah, it’s a force of habit”. Then, yes, you understand and think “okay, this guy knows what we’re talking about”. On the other hand, if you don’t, you react like “ah, no, but, you know…”, which makes you look like you’ve either made terrible or great impression, but you don’t know, because you’re not in the know.
So I’ve always thought that, even there, like when it comes to how one dresses themselves, it’s all based on good taste, and being aware of what you are doing.

AC: On being aware, and confidence, as you said

LR: And on common sense, well, that never hurts

AC: And that’s a little bit lacking in general

LR: Well, let’s say that that’s the main thing, which somehow is always missing, but…

AC: Well, we do it all the same. So, look, speaking of… we have, as you know, a very young audience, and I noticed that, especially during quarantine, with your live sessions with Thomas on the other side of the world, that, you gave an unprecedented, new, push for tailoring in the broader public. Now, when I talk to our young followers, they always mention you, they talk about Fabio, or Alessandro, whatever it may be, it’s always you three.

How active are you on social media?

LR: The world of social media, to me, is like a gardener, tending to his garden, no? He plants the seeds to then grow beautiful plants. So, if you look at social media like an opportunity, where, you give something, you will very likely get something in return in the long term… I have had the enormous privilege of being born into a family business where I’ve had my back covered, and the great fortune of having had excellent mentors such as Sergio Loro Piana, who was a great mentor f mine. I have been lucky to have worked in Saville Row, one of the most prestigious and important English tailoring schools of our time. I was “given” all of this because I was “my father’s son”, so, I don’t pretend to be “I came from nothing, I’m self-made”, no: I have been blessed. So, social media for me is my way of expressing my gratitude for this good fortune, by sharing all of my knowledge with the world. After all, Instagram is the world – social media platforms are the world. So, I put my knowledge out there to you, or your friends/followers so that you/they say “ah, I have learned quite a bit from that guy Luca”, or, “ah, Luca has given me a load of tips”… why has Luca given you these tips? For one, I truly enjoy giving them, and also because, I’m sure that, if it is welcomed and acted upon, it may come back to me in my favour.

AC: Absolutely, yes. In fact, speaking of “giving us tips”, every time I am preparing for a black-tie party, I have your video on “how to tie a bowtie” saved, so it’s always me, the mirror, and Luca, and I tie the bowtie. So, yeah, I totally understand. I asked mainly because, as you know with the situation (COVID), everything is becoming digitalised.

Given that you, by many accounts, are a “symbol” of luxury, or better, customer service: how has this changed the way do business? Is having that real contact with the customer that important? The seeing each other, speaking face to face, forgetting the social media side of things?

LR: Well, the tangible customer relationship will never not be needed. In a way, social media is a different form of contact with the customer, because regardless, if we didn’t know each other, and you never came to the shop, we would go on not knowing each other. Today, instead, someone who has never set foot here and is on the other side of the world can “know” me. They can “know” me by buying something from our online shop, because they saw me on a social media platform. So, this is a quote-unquote way of being in contact with the client. Then, the post-purchase service: the replying, the customer service, a videocall, wherever it is possible to “humanise” that aspect, I welcome it.
But the stores are open, eh, we’re not saying that the stores will no longer be there, the stores will never not be there. Luca will never stop travelling around the world to provide a 1-to-1 service for his customers in their homes to get that contact. I mean, just think, before the 1990s, you would buy things straight off a newspaper advert, something static

AC: But nowadays at least you see much more….

LR: Today, you can still buy like that, from a “shoppable” post on a social media platform, but it’s much more interactive. It’s likely followed by a video of someone (wearing): it’s all much more interactive, and even more immediate.

AC: There’s word of mouth, there’s video, sure, you can even see what the product looks like when it’s worn

LR: I’m not saying… you don’t actually touch the client, but you’re not far off.

AC: Perfect… No, well, it’s nice to see you so enthusiastic about it. Look, a question that we have received so many times from our followers and friends wanted us to ask: what advice would you give to a young person who wants to enter the world of tailoring? You don’t work in the watch industry so we can’t expect you to give advice on that, but I would think that on tailoring… you’re the best example.

LR: But when you say in the tailoring world, do you mean tailoring as a customer or as an entrepreneur?

AC: As an entrepreneur. As a customer I think all you need to do is get up and go and say hello to Luca

LR: Yes, as a customer, yes, and I would say don’t be shy! Because a lot of clients, particularly younger ones, are afraid to enter our stores….

AC: How come?

LR: Because they think “ah, I can’t afford it”, or, “ah, I’m not dressed well enough”… I mean, for example, one thing that I’ve noticed amongst younger people which I love is that, after they enter our stores they go “ah, but I had no idea that it was this laid back and harmonious”, and most of all, “I didn’t realise Luca would be in the store”. Luca is always in the store, and is happy to introduce you to this cool world. You don’t necessarily have to come into our store to buy anything: you can come to merely see what there is to see. You don’t necessarily have to come to Rubinacci in a suit and tie, either: you can come in a tracksuit and we’ll still let you in!
On the other hand, entering the world of tailoring as an entrepreneur, or even just as a tailor, is much more difficult, because the world of tailoring is not like a start-up… it’s a long and arduous world, especially if you want to be a tailor, there is a big food chain. And, if you don’t want to be a tailor but want to be an entrepreneur, so, having tailors work for you, you need to know (a lot of people), so in both cases, it’s a difficult task.
Selling a blazer is easy, but knowing everything that went into it is something entirely different.