Guilherme Franco
Master tailor and founder of Sartoria San Paolo
The craft
Guilherme Franco founded Sartoria San Paolo in 2016, in Itaim Bibi, on a simple conviction: a suit is only well made when it grows from a pattern that did not exist before the body wearing it.
Trained in the Neapolitan tradition, he cuts every individual pattern in the atelier himself and runs the fittings — two to three per garment, across the four to eight weeks a bespoke suit demands. Each jacket takes over 80 hours of handwork, from setting the lightweight canvas to hand-sewing the spalla camicia and finishing the buttonholes.
He works with more than 3,000 fabrics from Italian and British mills — Loro Piana, Ermenegildo Zegna, Vitale Barberis Canonico, Holland & Sherry — choosing each one for its hand, its drape, and the way it ages.
O Avesso
He writes O Avesso, the house journal: long-form essays on construction, fabrics, the history of tailoring, and the culture of dressing well. What is written there is what is practised in the atelier — by the person who cuts, fits, and delivers every garment.
- Mariano Rubinacci — The Man Who Dressed Naples for the World · 6 min read
- The Rolling Lapel · 6 min read
- The Skeleton of the Jacket · 6 min read
- The Invisible Soul of the Jacket · 5 min read
- The Suit That Improves with Time · 6 min read
- Pitti Uomo — What Happens in Florence Twice a Year · 6 min read
- The Pattern That Does Not Exist Before You · 6 min read
- Tailoring Is Not for Special Occasions · 5 min read
- Why Neapolitans Wear Wool in the Heat · 7 min read
- The Neapolitan Shoulder: Why Less Is More · 6 min read
- The Piece That Starts Everything · 6 min read
