A History of the ISAIA Sartorial Family

During the first half of the 14th century, Italy's oldest existing tailoring association, Confraternita dell'arte dei Giubbonai e Cositori, or the Brotherhood of the Jacket Makers and of the Tailors, was born in Naples. This institution gave way to the establishment of the region's wool and silk weaving trades. During the renaissance, the Brotherhood's innovations sparked the inception of the great Neapolitan artisan tradition of tailoring. Neapolitan tailors were the first to commercially produce luxury garments fulfilling the requests of European royalty and aristocracy alike.

Building on that tradition, Enrico Isaia opened small draper's shop in Naples in 1920, where he sold fabric for the production of men's garments. Each fabric was carefully selected from the best Italian and English mills for the Neapolitan tailors to use in their clothing production.

In the 1957, in an effort to fully immerse himself in the Neapolitan tailoring tradition, Isaia relocated his business to the storied tailoring town of Casalnuovo, just outside of Naples. Isaia knew there was no other town like it in Italy, where more than half of its 15,000 inhabitants listed their profession as tailors. Along with sons Enrico, Corrado and Rosario, he started a small workshop next to his draper's store, employing a few of the town's very skilled, hand-selected artisans. And thus, a tailoring company was born, ISAIA, one that would life the craft of Neapolitan sartorial to new heights.

Combining old world artisan care in tailoring with simple yet groundbreaking technologies, ISAIA began to manufacture beautiful made-to-measure suits. During the 1950s and ‘60s, ISAIA grew to become one of the most respected tailoring companies in Naples, manufacturing privately for the top Italian stores.

Over the next two decades, brothers Enrico, Corrado, and Rosario began to develop their own identity by creating the ISAIA signature label for domestic Italian distribution.

In 1989, ISAIA began exporting their collection to Germany, in 1990 to Japan and by 1992, they had expanded to the U.S. The brand continues to grow internationally with the ISAIA collection now carried by the finest retailers and most prestigious specialty store throughout Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa and the Americas.