Archive note: This newly written account revisits Rocco Ciccarelli, a tailor featured in Grandpa Style’s earlier history. It draws on a workshop visit, a published interview and contemporary reporting. The original Grandpa Style article and its photography have not been recovered.
Inside the Queens workroom
Rocco Ciccarelli’s work offers a way into the making of tailored clothes beyond the finished silhouette. In an April 2008 visit published by A Continuous Lean, Michael Williams accompanied a friend to a fitting at Ciccarelli’s operation in Long Island City, Queens.
Williams described garments moving between tailors across the room, following a route that differed from the straightforward production line he had expected. His account and accompanying captions record cutting patterns, worktables and garments at different stages. The emphasis is on the people and decisions behind the clothing: a suit takes shape through a sequence of contributions.
Craft meeting an unfamiliar proportion
Ciccarelli’s collaboration with Thom Browne shows how that experience could serve a distinctive design idea. In a 2017 interview with Surface, Browne recalled meeting him through a fabric representative in New York’s Garment District.
Browne valued Ciccarelli’s grounding in Roman tailoring and his ability to make finely worked clothes. He also emphasized something less tangible: a willingness to respond to a different proportion and sensibility. Despite initial skepticism, Ciccarelli understood the direction Browne wanted to take. Browne credited their work together as fundamental to his beginnings.
Making as part of the presentation
A July 2015 report in Interview placed Ciccarelli within Browne’s expanded in-house made-to-measure operation. Reporting from a studio preview, Teddy Tinson connected the presentation of cropped grey suits with Browne’s interest in showing how the clothes were made. This describes that particular moment in the business, rather than a current service or appointment arrangement.
Looking at a suit as a whole
Our reading of these accounts is that making and design develop together. For the wearer, they also suggest a useful approach to looking at tailoring: consider the whole outfit before isolating a detail. A shorter jacket changes the relationship between its hem, the torso and the trousers. Sleeve length contributes to that balance, while movement remains part of judging the result. A distinctive silhouette can be studied without treating it as a rule for every body.
Continue with Kris Van Assche’s approach to tailoring and sportswear, or browse the Grandpa Style Archive.