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Casual Doesn’t Break the Heart

JL;DR SUMMARY Howard Jacobson reflects on the passing of his Italian tailor, Raffaelle Candilio, emphasizing how his death marks the end of an era where formal dressing and personal tailoring were cultural norms. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

TraditionCultural NormsSohoHoward JacobsonTailoringGenerational ShiftEleganceRaffaelle CandilioFormal DressingItalian Opera

Places mentioned

London, England, United Kingdom
"Raffaelles workroom was only a minute or two from my apartment in Londons Soho neighborhood, so I thought nothing of popping in to see him with the smallest tailoring problema broken zip, a missing buttonwhich he would attend to with no less alacrity than if Id asked him to measure me up for a suit fit for meeting the queen."

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This item was indexed and curated by Cairo, JL;DR's web crawler.
Cairo Item ID 58915
Cairo Source ID 10
Retrieved 2025-08-09 05:30:41 UTC
Curated 2025-08-09 08:31:03 UTC