There’s a pool of blood on the footpath outside our hotel in Naples. Or is it red wine from last night’s street party? It’s hard to tell. In Naples, where passion for life ebbs and flows between measured elegance and utter chaos, both have been spilt over centuries in equal measure.

We’re here to visit Camiceria Sannino, M.J. Bale’s new ‘Made in Napoli’ shirtmaker. Founded by Antonio Sannino, Camiceria Sannino is one of the few ateliers with the skill to continue the centuries-old legacy of Neapolitan shirt-making – shirts as light as a zephyr, stitched using extensive handwork.

Our appointment is well timed, and not just because that evening SSC Napoli would play their final game of the season to take home the Serie A.This morning the Sannino workshop will tailor our ‘Caravaggio’ shirts, which are made from premium cotton cloth woven by Thomas Mason in Bergamo. Limited to just 160 pieces each in white and sky-blue, and named after the tempestuous Italian painter who created his ‘Neapolitan masterpieces’, our Caravaggio shirts, we hope, will live up to their calling.

Antonio Sannino felt his own calling in the early 90s, when he decided to set up his own workshop. “It began with passion, really,” Antonio explains. “As a boy, I loved shirts. A shirt always gave that elegant, refined, gentlemanly feel — a little something more than a t-shirt. My family has always worked in textiles, so there’s this innate understanding of seeing fabric and transforming it into a suit, a shirt, trousers. From that, my shirt company was born.”

Besides fit, materials and finishing touches, what sets Camiceria Sannino apart, says Antonio, is their attention to “inner quality” – the things that cannot be seen, only felt. Observing our Caravaggio shirts, tailored by a team of eighteen craftspeople, this inner quality relates to characteristics like fabrics cut manually with scissors and collars constructed from two pieces of fabric sewn together with inner lining – not glued or ‘fused’ like most men’s shirts. It’s also the precision of the four-piece split yoke: four pieces of fabric sewn together connecting collar, sleeves and back to create superior range of motion.

The Caravaggio’s greatest unseen details, however, are hand-stitched elements: the armholes, buttonholes, and bar tacks of the cuffs. Antonio gestures us towards a bench where Rosa, his primo shirt-maker, uses needle and thread to stitch our shirt’s cuffs. “It is very difficult to find a person who makes this,” observes Antonio, as Rosa makes what looks like scores of tiny stitches microscopically close to each other. “It is very time-consuming and precise work for a single person.”

“Brava,” I say to Rosa. “He is the maestro,” she replies in Italian, nodding toward Antonio, who is now sitting with another tailor explaining a detail. “He is the soul of the company.”

Antonio smiles when I relate what Rosa said. “I just know I put my soul into what I do. They see me involved — not someone who just watches others work, but someone who participates daily with my collaborators. It’s like a family: my youngest employee has been with me for 25 years, and one woman has worked with me exclusively for 34 years. Once someone joins my family, they rarely leave. That’s really it.

And your new M.J. Bale family? “M.J. Bale is a great addition to my tailoring world,” Antonio says. “You’re blending our craftsmanship with your creativity and taste. These are two worlds that are coming together, both culturally and professionally. As people, we need to connect, and you do too. What you produce is right — beautiful and important — from workmanship to fabrics and all the detailing: mother-of-pearl buttons, fine stitching, and various hand-finishing touches that are part of our Neapolitan tradition. I truly hope we continue this collaboration with M.J. Bale, because you fully embrace our… I can’t think of the word… our mission. Yes, our mission. You align very well with our mission.”

Later, as we take our leave, I mention to Antonio the surreal nature of being here at his workshop and seeing our Aussie sheep logo being woven into shirts by his Neapolitan artisans. “We’re really happy to have had you here,” he smiles. “For us, that already feels like a success. To start from a small artisan dream and reach all the way to Australia, to see you appreciate our product, means we’ve made it. That’s the real soul of it — to move people with the product.”