Lanificio Vitale Barberis Canonico S.P.A.

Vitaile Barberis Canonico, a joint-stock company since 1971, now makes worsteds for men which are among the best in the world, classic textiles revisited, almost relived, according to the sensibilities, the dress sense, the tastes of today. In these thirty years, the factory has grown a lot: it has three completely new parts, totaling 4o,ooo square metres. The plant in all sections has been reinvented. It works 3,ooo kilos of wool a day. In I994, 3.5 million metres of cloth flowed from its looms. It has more than 250 workers (in some sections work goes on twenty-four hours in twenty-four; in others, sixteen), and it can boast of never having sacked anyone. The turnover is L.80 billion p.a. (£31 million; $46 million), more than three times that in 1970 by today's values. Dry statistics communicate little, but touch a textile from Vitale Barberis Canonico and you are tempted to caress it, to wrap yourself in it. It is exquisitely soft. It looks perfect. It seems to converse with, to play with the light, to absorb it with elegance. It breathes. You get a true aesthetic thrill from it. It calls to mind an anecdote from the Hollywood of the Forties. Clark Gable meets Cary Grant in the drawing room of that famous gossip, Elsa Maxwell. Clark and Gary were rivals in elegance and set the tone for the whole movie world. They went to the temples of London's Savile Row: Cary dressed at the classic Kilgour; Clarke with the great Henry Poole.