Angelico is a younger house than most of the Biella names on our shelf, and that is not a criticism. Giuseppe Angelico started a weaving operation at Ronco Biellese in 1959 and built it into an industrial mill turning out something in the order of four million metres a year. What we buy it for is consistency at a sensible level: cloth that behaves the way Italian suiting is supposed to behave, in a book wide enough to cover most of what a customer walks in asking for.
Ronco Biellese, 1959
Lanificio Angelico was founded in 1959 at Ronco Biellese, in the same district that produced Vitale Barberis Canonico, Reda, Cerruti and most of the rest of our Italian shelf. It began as an artisan weaving operation under Giuseppe Angelico and grew into one of the larger industrial concerns representing Biella abroad.
The house is unusual in that it did not stop at cloth. Angelico also produces finished menswear under its own name, with a clear focus on tailoring. A mill that makes suits as well as suiting tends to understand what a tailor needs from a cloth, because it has to solve the same problems in its own workrooms.
What the book covers
Angelico is a working mill rather than a boutique one, and its book reflects that. Around four million metres a year buys a wide range: the plain navies and charcoals that most suits are actually cut from, the classic pattern vocabulary, and the lighter constructions that matter to us here.
For our purposes the useful part is the mid and lighter weights. Angelico is not the house we open for a customer chasing a name on a selvedge. It is the house we open for a customer who wants two or three good working suits, wants them to look and behave properly, and would rather spend the difference on having them cut and fitted well.
When we put you in Angelico
Angelico sits in a bracket that matters more than people admit. Most men do not need the finest cloth in the room. They need a suit that presses well, holds its colour, survives the way it is actually worn, and does not embarrass them in a photograph five years from now.
That is what this cloth does. For a first commission, or for the second and third suits that turn one good suit into a working wardrobe, Angelico is a sound choice and we say so without apology.
Angelico cloth is available to order through us. Put it in your hand next to something from the top of the Italian market and you will feel the difference. Then decide whether that difference is worth it for the suit you are actually commissioning, because sometimes it is and often it is not.