Qua a San Francisco

The be-slippered Neapolitan trousermaker Salvatore Ambrosi is visiting clients in San Francisco and New York this week.

Most trousers are made by sewing machine these days, and there is little wrong with that on the long straight seams. But hand sewing helps trousers to curve better over the, ahem, buttocks, and, for those of us who like these things, makes them more elegant generally. It costs, of course, though Sr. Ambrosi  somehow manages to incorporate more handwork than any bespoke tailor of my acquaintance, and does so at a better price.

None of this is useful without fit, and here is where it apparently helps to have been working as a trousermaker since one was twelve years old. Salvatore is perhaps not quite able to measure a man entirely by eye as he says his trousermaker father can but he is awfully good. The first order he made for me was copied from a pair I sent him. They fit beautifully when they arrived, in the shoe-top brushing style that Luciano Barbera calls mid-Atlantic and he has never had a tape measure on me through three subsequent orders.

For more information, contact Ambrosi on Facebook.