Ever since the luxury Italian menswear house Corneliani was founded by Alfredo Corneliani in the 1930s, it has created high-quality suits and coats, initially for a professional clientele, but more recently for what it describes as the “modern metropolitan nomad” – men who travel, and who have reasonable need for a versatile jacket to take with them. Corneliani calls this a travel jacket.
But Corneliani doesn’t just make travel jackets. It has also inaugurated an art project of the same name, commissioning photographers around the world to shoot a Corneliani jacket on themselves or a friend in their natural environment. The idea is a series of travel photographs that interpret the brand through different lenses in different places and now covers 25 projects over five continents.
The jacket itself changes with the seasons. Winter projects photographed the now-20-year-old identity jacket, a hybrid between a jacket and a cardigan with a detachable, built-in vest, originally designed to keep commuters feeling warm without sacrificing polish. For spring, the focus switches to overshirts that function like jackets: unlined, made from twill linen or technical wool, and crease-resistant enough to survive a transatlantic carry-on.
The latest chapter, pictured here, landed in Madrid and in the hands of local photographer and videographer Alberto Saguar. He describes his work, which has been featured in the likes of Forbes, Vogue Business, and Esquire, as having a “strong cinematic sensibility,” which he was able to play around with during a golden-hour shoot at Madrid’s Royal Palace – a place Saguar returns to instinctively.
“I like unexpected photos – ones that capture movement, where the setting and atmosphere feel like important characters that tell a story,” he says. “The Royal Palace of Madrid is an area I always come back to for walks and to watch the sunset… After sunset, everything changes, and it becomes a very peaceful place.” The jacket, Saguar found, was comfortable, lightweight, and versatile – the qualities that have made Corneliani outerwear a wardrobe mainstay for generations.
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