Stefano Canali, president and CEO of the 91-year-old Italian luxury clothing company, was in India recently to showcase the brand’s Fall-Winter 2025 collection. Known for promoting the values of Made in Italy excellence through its artisanal know-how, Canali creates sartorial masterpieces of exceptional wearability and comfort. The brand has eight stores across New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
As consumer preferences evolve in a post-Covid-19 world, where geopolitical tensions and economic uncertainties are influencing luxury spending, Canali has reinvented itself, once again, to become a luxury lifestyle brand, and not just a men’s clothing brand. Forbes India caught up with the third-generation member of the founding family to learn how the brand is staying relevant, how online sales (which form high single-digit percentage of total revenue) will always be complementary to the store experience, and how Canali remains immune to the current situation of “luxury shame”. Edited excerpts:
Q. How would you describe the perfect suit?
Wow. How many days do we have? The perfect suit is a suit that is well conceived, well designed and very well crafted. So, everything starts with the pattern designer team which is supposed to create the shape that ultimately will affect the fit and the comfort that a consumer will receive while wearing the suit. You have to select the highest quality of materials and fabrics out there, and then you have to make sure that the ideas of the pattern designers and the selected materials are properly and skilfully stitched, one to the other. That’s the most important phase of the manufacturing process. It’s where artisans take centre stage; they are ultimately able to stitch together two two-dimensional pieces that become a three-dimensional piece, which is a jacket.
It takes a lot of skills, and lot of knowledge to make sure that these pieces are stitched together in a very asymmetrical way. And it’s easier said than done, of course. Because you are supposed to know how to push a piece of fabric on the right side or on the left side, just to create the volume that is ultimately required in the jacket.
The most effective way to craft the jacket is the sartorial way. It means we use a canvas as a backbone of the jacket; it means that you use high-quality fabrics and that you stitch everything together. This ensures that you provide the comfort that it is meant to provide and allow for alterations during the lifetime of the jacket.
Q. How has the suit itself evolved? The context in which it was first made and worn is different from the context of current times.
The suit has evolved dramatically in the past decades, and the reason that it is still alive and evolving is linked to the idea that a man looks his best while wearing a suit. This is because of the shape itself, the proportions and construction techniques, and the materials.
To make a long story short of what happened, over the last 15 years, everything has got much lighter, much more deconstructed. As a matter of fact, that jacket that I am wearing now is complicated to manufacture. It’s still 100 percent sartorial, it’s hand stitched, it’s empty. I could keep on describing this for hours, but if you have to feel it yourself [proceeds to take his jacket off and show its various parts.] It’s empty, because you see there is no lining, there is no shoulder pad. You can do this [rolls up the jacket into a bundle] when you are flying and put it in the overhead compartment and when you take it down [opens up the jacket again] you see no creases. This is the hidden secret of a superior jacket. There are a lot of skills that allow this product to be a masterpiece.
Also Read: The men's suit has changed dramatically: Stefano Canali
Q. In a post-Covid-19 world, where geopolitical tensions, economic uncertainties and the enormous rise of online shopping are coming together, how can luxury brands navigate these factors?
For a luxury brand, it is always important to have a direct relationship with the final consumer; online [sales] will be a complementary distribution channel to the physical, brick-and-mortar stores. Whenever you welcome a customer within your store, you have a chance to interact, give knowledgeable advice, and listen to his needs and understand them.
It allows you to make sure that your consumer will leave with a full experience of the brand. Because you’re not just talking about a product, you’re talking about the store that showcases the product, the salespeople who represent the brand in that specific moment. So, there is an overwhelming and complete conversation between the brand and the final consumer. It is something that cannot happen online; online is effective in making sure that whatever you search for, if available, will be swiftly delivered to you.
As far as brand evolution is concerned, if you want it to last over time, you must on one hand listen to your consumers, and understand their needs are evolving over time. And then you have to consider the right way for you to evolve, according to the evolution of your consumer’s needs. The right way is to be consistent with your own DNA; you must be sure that whatever you do and whatever your evolution implies will be perceived as authentic and credible.
For a 91-year-old company it might look difficult to evolve and change, [there could be] the risk to be complacent and stand still. We see our heritage as a foundation upon which we are supposed to keep on building.
To give an example, right before the pandemic, we revised our strategy in order to embrace a lifestyle collection that would allow us to grow beyond specific product categories, and towards a collection that fully embodies the Italian lifestyle interpreted by Canali. The collection encompasses what was called before “formal wear” to what was called before “sports wear”. As a matter of fact, this distinction doesn’t exist more; it’s just one collection, with one colour palette and with many pieces belonging to specific categories that are skilfully blended together, which can be easily mixed and matched to meet a consumer’s needs throughout the whole week. So, it’s important for any brand to define a specific, visible identity that represents the brand itself. That’s what a luxury brand that wants to keep on living for 100 years is supposed to do.
Q. Do millennials and Gen Z like wearing suits? How are you marketing your products for them?
I would not be obsessed with the younger generations, because I believe you cannot be a brand for anyone. You must be focussed on a credible message, a credible offering. As an example, some years ago, we came up with a specific piece of clothing that was meant to dress younger generations. The same piece was sold in the same New York City store, one day to a 60-something and the following day to a 20-something. Does it mean we are dressing Gen Y as well as boomers? Yes and no. We are dressing a consumer who has specific attitudes, regardless of how old they are.
Q. Canali is a family-owned venture. What are the advantages and disadvantages of being family-owned?
Well, of course, there are pros and cons. Being entirely family-owned means I am free to take decisions that I deem appropriate, when I deem appropriate. So, you have no pressure from anyone out there. If you are a public company… if you have other shareholders, most importantly and specifically financial investors, they usually are very much interested in short-term results.
On the other hand, one of the cons might be the lack of finance to properly fund your expansion, or a lack of perspective. Because if you involve a different person outside the family, you might benefit from a different perspective, which might be effective in broadening your horizons and you can end up with a more effective strategy.
As far as we are concerned, Canali does not lack the finance, and we believe we are in a position to involve advisors from outside the family, without turning them into shareholders. They can be instrumental in widening our perspective, and to make sure the company is in a position to seize opportunities available out here, and evolve in a suitable way.
Q. What have the challenges been for your family to keep the business running for 91 years?
We went through three major turning points in our history. The first was World War II, which forced the second generation of the family to reinvest whatever was left after the disaster of the war into a new venture which was about overcoats. These were made out of cotton, and they became the market leader in some years. They also had a brilliant idea to team up with companies that were developing the first water-proof fabrics. So, they managed to turn the overcoats into raincoats.
After becoming successful, by the end of the 19060s, they realised that that business was going out fashion. Then came the second turning point: They decided to reinvest whatever they had accrued until then into what we used to make at the beginning of our history, which is men’s clothing. And they embraced that with the highest quality of men’s clothing out there.
They became successful there as well, devoted a lot of energies into exports. We first entered the US market in the 70s, at the beginning of 80s, and that soon became our largest market. It still is.
The third turning point was the pandemic. And it accelerated the evolution of the brand. We had already devised a new strategy in 2019, and after the pandemic hit, we refined that strategy. It implies a 360-degree vision of changing from whatever we were doing to becoming a lifestyle brand. It is a turning point because Canali is changing quite swiftly, and in the right way, in an incredible way. If you compare what we are doing today to what we were doing before the pandemic, you might think that these are two different companies. But it’s the same company, the same people; what is being changed are some pieces of the organisation. The company itself, the DNA, the values, and the ultimate goals are exactly the same.
Q. The leader of another luxury brand had recently said that there is a ‘consumption crisis’ in the luxury segment. What do you think is going on?
I believe there is some sort of a ‘luxury shame’ that has emerged for different reasons in different countries. For instance, in China, this sort of luxury shame is politics driven. So, the Chinese government decided to make sure that Chinese consumers buy local brands and locally. In North American markets, and some other counties, this luxury shame is primarily driven by ethics. Many consumers, no matter how rich they are, felt there was no point in buying overpriced articles; they believed that some price points have become insane, and they could not associate the price to the value they were receiving.
At Canali, we always strive to put the right price tag on our products, and many wholesale accounts of ours believe that this is our time, and this is our moment to get the most out of the current situation. For a lot of other luxury brands, it might be a problem to introduce new prices or new products with lower prices, but thank God that is not the case with Canali.
First Published: Dec 29, 2025, 14:36
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