"This is not just a jacket!" Domenico Vacca declares in his assured but lyrical way, in a voice that is much like the clothes he designs: confident, colorful, unmistakably Italian. He is referring to the soft-shouldered, high-notched, trumped-sleeved, rolled three-button article he's now wearing in his Midtown Manhattan atelier. It is subtly striped, distinctive, and, in fact, just a jacket. But the point is clear: His clothes aren't just made well, they're made for living well.
Handmade suits, cashmere sweaters, and custom shoes are the draw at Vacca's six stores (three in New York, and one each in Beverly Hills, Bal Harbour, and Palm Beach). But he's preaching about more than just fine fabrics and some tricks up the high-armholed sleeve of a Neapolitan tailor. It's an outlook, a worldview, that holds that dressing should be a pleasure and that style and educated elegance will always trump fashion. Vacca—whose grandmother was a well-known seamstress—grew up in Bari on the Adriatic coast, part of a culture that regarded the crafting and accumulation of clothing as a kind of participatory art form. "My father was one of the best-dressed men in the south of Italy," he says. "We get up in the morning and we say, 'Wow, another day that I have a chance to get dressed!' "
He's pleased to see this excitement shared by so many of his customers today. "Ninety percent of my clients are collectors," Vacca says. "They collect wine, watches, cars. So now they are collecting clothes. You can have two shirts that are handmade and will last for years, instead of a bunch of machine-made shirts that will fall apart the first time you send them to the laundry."
What Domenico collects are ardent followers. "It's like a club that's expanding," he says of his customers, who are interested not just in the right fit but in a lifelong conversation about clothes. Membership is now booming among a Hollywood elite too discerning to accept whatever disposable tuxedos are sent to them for red carpet appearances. Denzel Washington and Jeremy Piven have become Vacca fans, as have Jack Black and Dustin Ho… Dustin Hoffman? "We did the wardrobe for Stranger Than Fiction," Vacca says. "One day we went to Dustin's house and he asked, 'What is our plan about me in this movie?' I said, 'With all due respect, I'd like to make you look a little more sharp, give you some Italian flavor.' He looks at me and says, 'Are you going to make me look like Marcello Mastroianni?' I said, 'We are going to try.' He looked fantastic. The next day he came to the store for himself and we spent three hours together."
