Brioni

The tailor Nazareno Fonticoli and the entrepreneur Gaetano Savini founded Brioni in Rome in 1945, naming it after the Brijuni islands, then a fashionable Adriatic resort. In 1952 it staged what is often called the first men's runway show, at Florence's Palazzo Pitti, and its suits went on to dress Clark Gable, Cary Grant and, from the mid-1990s, James Bond. Kering has owned Brioni since 2011, and the suits are still made in Penne, in Abruzzo, where the house has run its own tailoring school since 1985.