Italy’s Isaia moves into Wright building on Maiden Lane.
One of San Francisco’s architectural gems is now home to an Italian sartorial treasure. Isaia, the luxury menswear line from Naples, has moved into the Frank Lloyd Wright building on Maiden Lane, where no alterations are allowed to its historic interiors. Who’d take on that challenge? Gianluca Isaia, the thirdgeneration CEO of the family business, who was looking for a space matching the eccentricity and uniqueness of the brand. Isaia (EESeye-EE-yah) is known as much for
its lushly soft cashmere blazers, whisper-thin wool sweaters and wool suits as its fine tailoring — 90 percent of the garments are made by hand. The interiors feature built-in cabinets from the original V.C. Morris gift shop in 1948, as well as antiques from gallery Esprit Nouveau in Naples: a pea-colored velvet couch downstairs, and a bar for sipping Campari upstairs at the top of a swirling, two-story ramp. A display nook with the CEO’s private cell phone collection, a record player for clients to DJ their own music and a red lacquer piano for anyone to play make the store not just a place to shop, but to linger. Prices range from $225 for a tie to $3,950 for crocodile tennies to $10,000 for a wool suit that’s soft as silk. Isaia flew in for the opening-night party that spilled into Maiden Lane with a string trio, caviar and Aperol spritzes. He wore a white tux jacket (with the brand’s signature coral pin on the lapel), a patterned T-shirt, jeans and white leather flip-flops — emblematic of the studied nonchalance, or sprezzatura, that the house embodies. Isaia, he said, “is interesting for people who love life and are passionate about everything they do.”