Stylbiella is younger than most of the names on this shelf and it came into the world from the other direction. Piero Perino, born in Biella in 1900, was a cloth merchant who sold fine Biellese wool to Italian tailors and later worked as a designer inside the mills. His son Giorgio set up Stylbiella at the end of 1974, after a spell working in Spain for Cerruti, and at first put the weaving out to specialists around the Biella district. He and his brother Giancarlo built their own plant at Valdengo in 1984. So the design instinct came first and the looms came second, and you can see that in the book.
The Perino family, and a house founded at the end of 1974
Before there was a company there was Piero Perino, born in Biella on 4 December 1900. He sold fine Biellese wool to Italian tailors as a cloth merchant, then went to work as a designer in the mills of the district. That is an unusual career path, and it produced sons who understood both ends of the trade: what a mill can make, and what a tailor actually wants to be handed.
Giorgio Perino founded Stylbiella at the end of 1974, having worked in Spain for Cerruti beforehand. In the early years the company designed and sold cloth while the weaving itself was put out to specialist firms across the Biella district, which is a normal and respectable way to start in that valley.
One note, since you may read otherwise elsewhere. Stylbiella is sometimes given a founding date of 1663. That date belongs to Vitale Barberis Canonico. Stylbiella is a 1970s house, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Valdengo, 1984, and owning the looms
In 1984 Giorgio and Giancarlo put their money into a production plant of their own at Valdengo, a quiet place surrounded by trees and corn fields a short way from Biella. Spinning, warping, weaving and finishing all moved in-house.
That is the step that changed what the company is. A design house that commissions cloth can only ask for what its suppliers already know how to make. A design house with its own looms and its own finishing can chase an idea until the cloth actually does what was drawn. Chenille is the obvious example: a cotton yarn made to imitate corduroy and velvet but with a smoother touch and a fluid, opaque look. You do not develop something like that by sending a sketch to somebody else's mill.
The work has gone into serious clothing. Over the years Stylbiella has supplied Versace, Ermenegildo Zegna, Hugo Boss, Etro and Missoni, along with German makers including Regent, Windsor and Schildt. Today the house works entirely towards made-to-measure and bespoke, which is how it reaches a counter like ours.
Fancy jacketing, ceremony cloth and the Black Watch
Stylbiella is strongest where a plain navy worsted is weakest. Their reputation rests on fancy fabrics for jackets and trousers, on ceremony collections in silk and wool, and on Scottish patterns, above all the Black Watch, the deep blue and green tartan they have made a signature of.
The current book runs across pure wool in a four-ply construction, wool with alpaca and cashmere, wool with silk and cotton, and wool with silk, in Prince of Wales checks, glencheck, three-dimensional herringbones and flamed weaves. The four-ply cloths are worth asking about for trousers. Folding the yarn that many times gives you a firm, dry fabric that resists creasing and takes hard wear, which matters more in Chennai than almost any other property.
The ceremony collections in silk and wool are the other Chennai-relevant part. Silk brings lustre and wool brings the drape and the press, and together they give you a reception jacket or a bandhgala that catches evening light without the weight and stickiness of a heavy pure-silk brocade.
Where Stylbiella fits at our counter
We use Stylbiella for the garment with a pattern in it. A jacket in a glencheck or a Prince of Wales, a Black Watch dinner jacket for a December function, a silk and wool piece for a wedding, a four-ply trouser to wear with three different jackets.
We will be blunt about the rest. The chenille and the heavier fancy jacketings are cold-weather cloths, and a Chennai customer buying one should be buying it for travel or for the short cool spell, not for June. If you want a plain business suit, Biella has mills that do nothing else and do it better.
Stylbiella cloth is available to order through us. It is a good shelf to open when you have said the words "something a bit different" and want an answer that is still made in Italy and still cuts like tailoring cloth should.