Anna Matuozzo

Camiceria Matuozzo works from Viale Antonio Gramsci 26, in Chiaia, and makes one thing. Shirts, for men, cut and finished by hand to the individual measurement, ordered at the atelier or through remote consultation, with periodic trunk shows away from Naples. The house dates its work to 1970 and still trades under the family name as a partnership. Naples supports an unusual concentration of shirtmakers, and what separates one from another is not design but the proportion of the garment worked by hand rather than by machine — collar, shoulder, armhole, side seams, buttonholes — a distinction invisible in a photograph and legible mainly to people already inside the trade. A visitor would not find this without being told. Viale Gramsci is a residential avenue set back from the shopping streets, the atelier runs on appointments rather than passing footfall, and the product gives nothing away from the pavement, a hand-sewn shirt being, at a glance, a shirt. The house has no shopfront logic to catch anyone. It works from a client list and from the small international audience that follows Neapolitan shirtmaking closely enough to know which door to knock on.