The “Made in italy” Treatment in las Vegas

In February of 1951, a Florentine antiques and art dealer named Giovanni Battista Giorgini took it upon himself to make Italian clothing fashionable—and exportable—by inviting buyers from the biggest North American companies to swing by his Florence villa after the annual Paris runway season. As part of the soirée, Giorgini mounted Italy’s very first fashion show, featuring, among others, the designs of a local marchese named Emilio Pucci. The gamble paid off, orders poured in to local ateliers, and “Made in Italy” became all the rage. In 1952, the event moved into the Pitti Palace, where the Roman fashion house Brioni hosted another first: a men’s fashion show. Since then, Florence’s annual fashion parade has introduced such designers as Valentino and Armani to the world, and today’s Pitti Immagine calendar includes half a dozen annual fashion shows in Florence’s Renaissance-era Fortezza del Basso. But fans no longer have to make the pilgrimage to Italy to get a bespoke Brioni Su Misura suit like the one Daniel Craig wore in Casino Royale. The Brioni boutique at Wynn is the only one in the US to offer the brand’s Miror technology, a kind of virtual closet in which a computerized 3-D tailoring system allows clients to choose from among 1,500 fabrics and 8 million styling combinations. While the suits may take shape in Vegas, this is still a “Made in Italy” experience: All Brioni master tailors are trained at the company’s own tailoring school in the Abruzzo mountains, where they study no fewer than 220 steps of workmanship, from drawing and cutting to the proper way to iron.