Why it belongs in ORBIS
The tiny Riviera di Chiaia shop tying the world's most famous seven-fold ties since 1914 — presidents dressed here. Original shop is 20 m². In the 1980s Italian president Francesco Cossiga presented boxes of five Marinella ties to visiting heads of state.
Eugenio Marinella opened his small shop on Naples' Riviera di Chiaia in 1914 with a specific ambition: to bring English gentleman's style to Naples, better made. The house became famous for one object — the seven-fold-quality tie, cut generously from English-printed silks in small-scale patterns, hand-finished in Naples — and its client list grew to include presidents, royals, and statesmen who order by the dozen. The shop itself is tiny and largely unchanged, opening early in the Neapolitan tradition, with the espresso offered to morning customers part of the ritual. Ties remain the core: the silks are selected in England, made up by hand in Naples, and the house's proportions — slightly wider, unmistakably its own — have resisted every trend. A Marinella tie is Naples' most exportable object: a century of one family doing one thing at the highest level.
Arrive early in the morning as Neapolitans do; the small shop rewards the quiet hour, and the seasonal printed silks sell through quickly.