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"  There is that song on The Killers debut album called &amp;quot;Mr. Brightside&amp;quot; \u2014 an anthem that reminds me of less-than-classy years spent drinking Mickey&amp;#039;s malt liquor in Chicago. Nice memories of youth, sure, but not the song I expect to hear blaring through the speakers at Brioni&amp;#039;s East 52nd Street emporium, a promised land of made-to-measure tailoring where Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan, and, okay, Donald Trump, have passed through to be fitted for new, $5,000-plus suits. All marble and super 200s wool, this is a hallowed ground where you expect to hear Chopin, or at least some pianist hidden with his Steinway in the corner. Then, a slight Italian man (no larger than Brandon Flowers himself, but certainly better-dressed) strides out from the tailoring room in the back of the store and it comes together, as if he chose the music himself to match his swagger-loaded version of a glen-plaid suit, skinny-tie&amp;#039;d-out and all. This is Angelo Di Febo, the man to see today, and the reason made-to-measure appointments are booked solid on this cold and rainy, trench-coat-necessary Tuesday. When he was 27, Di Febo became Brioni&amp;#039;s youngest-ever Master Tailor, a distinction that&amp;#039;s currently held by four men worldwide, all of whom live just outside Rome, where the brand was founded in 1945. Since then, the company has become synonymous with a certain type of Italian luxury offered to men of wealth worldwide, all stemming from a tradition of hand-making suits for executives, politicians, athletes, celebrities, and other moguls to whom a Brioni label is a prize awarded for decades of hard work; of course, this line has outfitted James Bond for movies, and was once once criticized for selling a $43,000 suit in the depths of a recession. Formerly a family-run company, Brioni was an establishment that you&amp;#039;d never expect to hire an affable young man \u2014 a kid, nearly, at the cusp of thirty \u2014 to travel from New York, to Dubai, to Moscow, even once to LeBron James&amp;#039;s mansion in Florida to fit clients for made-to-measure tailoring, a category that represents a full quarter of the suits they produce annually. But not only has Di Febo become Brioni&amp;#039;s official man on the road \u2014 in newspapers in Kuala Lumpur, for instance, his arrival is announced like that of a dignitary \u2014 he&amp;#039;s also the guy the brand&amp;#039;s expecting to attract a new generation of rich young clients, men who are almost 30 themselves but haven&amp;#039;t yet gotten into custom clothing. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s nice to have someone that&amp;#039;s younger, closer to the age of guys getting into their first suit,&amp;quot; one employee tells me. &amp;quot;A lot of the master tailors are older, so they have a different interpretation of it.&amp;quot; Di Febo&amp;#039;s process starts by sizing new customers up, observing the outfit worn to the appointment, their gait, and the lack of symmetry with which we all contend. &amp;quot;I can look at you, and I tell how you like things,&amp;quot; he says. Which, at least in my case, comes with the sort of directional advice I never expected from a tailor who regularly deals with an older clientele. For younger guys, Di Febo would lose the cuffs, and shorten the rise (the distance between waistband and crotch) of the trousers; peak lapels would be kept intact, but the shoulders and chest would be moved in much tighter, as to create a better line when he made the sleeves far narrower. Throughout, there&amp;#039;s pulling and pining and lots of gesticulation, as Di Febo explains, &amp;quot;So you have this effect&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;how about this effect?&amp;quot; (All of these effects, though, have their own geographic leanings: &amp;quot;In Russia, they&amp;#039;re very particular, and they like long sleeves,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;In the Far East: a very light jacket, without the shoulder pads, because the temperature is a little higher.&amp;quot;) Back in Penne, Italy, where Di Febo was born in 1983, Brioni runs a factory where more than 1,000 tailors spend about 20 hours per jacket, including the fifteen minutes per button-hole that Di Febo&amp;#039;s own mother once sewed. Near that factory is Brioni&amp;#039;s own school, where this young tailor spent four years learning his craft. There, it was the three maestros who run the program that sensed a special quality in him, according to North American CEO Todd Barrato. &amp;quot;He was pushed through the program as quickly as possible.&amp;quot; Which brings us to this moment, when a young expert and some rock music from the Aughts are testing the limits of what Brioni means for a new era. Earlier this year, PPR \u2014 the parent company of Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, and other lines \u2014 bought the brand in hopes of expanding their foothold by owning an established men&amp;#039;s label, one that happens to be doing particularly well in China. Di Febo travels there often, helping young executives fit the part in a country that values uniform dressing. And, hopefully, that wave will soon spread West, to America. &amp;quot;The industry here needs to push it, to educate young people,&amp;quot; Barrato says, before suggesting something else: &amp;quot;Hey, Angelo, when are you moving to the USA?&amp;quot; The answer, it seems: Not soon enough. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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