Style Meets Speed

They give him a call, and only then are you allowed to enter the mahogany elevator, which goes directly to his penthouse.

It’s 8:30 a.m. on Friday morning in Milan, not far from Quadrilatero d’Oro, the famous, upscale fashion district. Guglielmo Miani greets us in a dark-blue velvet bathrobe with stitched satin lapel. For the photo shoot, the owner of the elegant Larusmiani brand is wearing the Clark Gable model from his own collection. “Buon giorno, I’m Guglielmo,” he says warmly. “Would you like some coffee?” Shortly afterwards, a cup of the finest espresso is placed on the living room table.

Miani turns his attention back to the photographer, leans against the terrace door, and takes a seat on the spotless Honda Four parked in the living room. A glance around his penthouse on the seventh floor reveals a view of Milan in its entirety. If you step onto the terrace outside, you see the cathedral spires to the right and the towers of the financial district to the left.

Miani makes no secret of his fondness for horsepower and a certain dandiness, whether in his apartment or on his brand’s Instagram channel, which he maintains himself. He takes a seat on his dark-green velvet sofa, reaches for his leather tobacco case with company logo, and rolls a cigarette.

“I don’t do fashion,” clarifies the 46-year-old right away. “I’m not interested in trends.” For Larusmiani, it’s all about providing discerning clientele with “beautiful, well-thought-out products.” He goes on to say that both the men’s clothing and the accessories are “fatto a mano,” which means “handmade,” and represent style rather than extravagance. And the only extreme thing about him, he says, is his “craziness for quality.”

He inherited that from his grandfather, with whom he shares his name. It was Guglielmo Miani senior who developed the Larusmiani brand some 100 years ago. At the age of 17, he packed his cardboard suitcase in Apulia in southern Italy and moved up north to try his luck. With just a few lire in his pocket, he was determined to make something of himself. In 1922, he opened a tailor shop in a courtyard on Via Manzoni in Milan and called it “Larus,” which is Latin for “seagull,” because it sounded like freedom to him. 

And luck was with his grandfather. Before long, he was tailoring fine suits for illustrious customers and would eventually meet his future wife on Via Manzoni. He also had a good sense for business. Because the finest fabrics came from England at that time, he began doing business with the English and became Italy’s largest importer of British fabrics.

“My grandfather worked until 7 p.m. every day,” says Miani. “Then he’d go to the Camparino bar.” At that time, politicians, writers, and journalists would gather at this Milanese institution and salon, right at the entrance to the world-famous Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, the glass-domed, premiere shopping center. And what did Miani senior do when he had the opportunity? He purchased it from the Campari family – and from there did “what is now referred to as PR work,” says Miani junior.

He wants to take us to the headquarters later on, so he can show us what has become of his grandfather’s ideas. Miani gets changed, choosing a nougat-brown polo shirt with white slacks, a dark-blue sporty jacket, and black velvet slippers. In this outfit, he’d be right at home on any yacht.

To raise awareness of his fabrics, Miani senior came up with new advertising promotions on a regular basis. In 1968, he had an English phone booth shipped to Milan’s Piazza del Duomo for Christmas to promote his British fabrics. Children could use the phone to talk to Santa Claus. Another time, he had two living vicuñas brought into one of his shops to show how fine their wool is. The newspapers had a heyday with the story. Apparently, he knew even then what the shop windows of Milan still are to this day: spectacles, dreams, and temptations. “He was a true marketing man!” says his grandson, laughing.

He always kept his finger on the pulse. “Anyone who wanted a suit before the 1950s had to go to a tailor,” says Miani. “Then ready-to-wear suits took off.” His grandfather, too, began producing ready-to-wear collections – by hand, of course. Larusmiani continues to do the same to this day. All of the clothing is manufactured at the in-house ­workshop in Tuscany, which employs 40 tailors.

Upon his return from his studies in the US, Guglielmo Miani junior got involved in the company too, overseeing the fabric business for more than 15 years before taking over management of the company as a whole. What direction has he developed the brand in since then? Miani says he has increased the share of summer fabrics in the collection, for example.

He has also more clearly developed the clothing brand and the associated lifestyle, which in some ways is his own. He only produces items he would wear or use himself, he says. He’d never permit sandals in his home, for example, and wouldn’t even wear them “under threat of torture.” He much prefers the colorful, handsewn “furlane” shoes in the ­collection, the velvet slippers that go with everything, from swimming trunks to tuxedos. “Men’s clothing requires fine-tuning,” says Miani. And that brings us back to the language of motor vehicles.

Besides, it’s time for a joyride through his hometown, whose creativity and dynamism he so loves. We drive past the Giardini Indro Montanelli, one of the parks downtown, along Via Manzoni, where it all began, and on to Bulgari Hotel, where Miani likes to go for lunch.