Last week saw Italian menswear brand Caruso open their first 4500sq metre flagship store in New York City.

Playful yet chic Italian brand, owned by Umberto Angeloni, Caruso is hitting up NYC. Having dressed both Piers Brosnan and Daniel Craig as James Bond, Angeloni’s visions are for anyone who wants to be dressed to kill. At its core, Caruso has been a suit maker since 1958 but in store you can find everything you need to complete your look from shirts to scarves. The company’s ethos has been condensed into six characters, visually represented in mannequins, that the brand imagines to be their typical customers, or perhaps what their customers should aspire to be as we’ve never actually met any men quite fabulous or suave enough to compare. Maybe we should move to Italy.

Head to 45 East 58th Street, between Madison and Park Avenues, for an authentic piece of Italian decadence in the middle of Manhattan. The clothes are all made by Caruso’s 600 seamstresses from start to finish in Italy and are housed in the Big Apple in a space previously owned by the renowned Spanierman art gallery. Paying homage to the last owners, Caruso commissioned Giuseppe Amato to create a classical wooden intarsia piece all’italiana.

Not only are all the clothes made in Italy, every material used in the store’s design was sourced from the brand’s home country too. A maze of airy spaces and cosy rooms, the store itself has been dressed in embossed wallpaper and Carrara marble. Inspired by the Milanese opera house, Teatro alla Scala, the special clients’ room is full of nostalgic mementos including posters and manuscripts from the theatre and amongst the vintage carpets, silks and mirrors, a pair of original curtains from a box at the opera house complete the room.

The flagship is a lesson in luxury. We can learn from their SS15 slogan jumper too, “In menswear do as Italians do”.

Words: Lily Walker