Filippo de Laurentiis | Luxury Men’s Cotton Tees, Polos & Fine Wool Knitwear at Forte dei Marmi
Filippo de Laurentiis is a high-quality men's basic clothing brand I discovered while organizing the various brands featured at Andreas Murkudis .
The brand's founder, Filippo Ferrante De Laurentiis, comes from an Italian wool textile family. The family brand Ferrante began engaging in wool textile production as early as the 1970s. He grew up in the family's wool factory, majored in management engineering at university, and after graduation returned to the family business. In 2013, he established the eponymous brand Filippo de Laurentiis in Pescara, Abruzzo, Italy.
The brand initially focused on menswear and didn't launch womenswear until 2022. In 2024, the majority stake of the brand was acquired by Made in Italy Fund II, jointly established by Pambianco Strategie d'Impresa and Quadrivio Group, marking the brand's expansion into offline retail markets. That same year, they opened an offline summer store in Forte dei Marmi.
Like Filippo de Laurentiis, many Italian niche brands are independent brands founded by "second-generation factory owners." For example, Mauro Ottaviani also started with men's knitwear manufacturing and has been operating their own brand for several years, while That's Alyki is an even more emerging brand.
Filippo de Laurentiis initially focused on men's knitwear pieces, but now their product line encompasses various cotton items. Summer representative categories include T-shirts, polo shirts, and dress shirts, with some styles also using linen fabrics. Fall and winter collections primarily feature lightweight crew neck and turtleneck sweaters made from high-count (120s, 140s, 180s) worsted wool. For womenswear, they currently still emphasize thicker wool and cashmere knitted pieces, with limited categories.
Filippo de Laurentiis has only one store in Italy, located on the beach in Forte dei Marmi. Due to the nature of this summer vacation destination, the store only opens during summer months and remains closed the rest of the year.
Forte dei Marmi is a popular summer vacation destination for Italian wealthy individuals and billionaires, which is why it features not only high-end shopping streets filled with luxury brands like Dior, Louis Vuitton, and Gucci, but also some quality-focused niche mid-range brands, such as Forte dei Marmi itself.
The previously mentioned wool knitwear brand Drumohr also has a store in Forte dei Marmi and has collaborated with local restaurants on co-branded projects. When vacationing in Forte dei Marmi, you can conveniently visit both Filippo de Laurentiis and Drumohr, as both are reasonably priced and decent basic knitwear brands.
From an overall positioning perspective, Filippo de Laurentiis sits between Drumohr and Mauro Ottaviani. Its fabrics have more luster and texture compared to Drumohr, while falling short of Mauro Ottaviani in terms of the richness and quality of autumn and winter cashmere. Both perform similarly in spring and summer seasons, with diverse cotton categories, though Mauro Ottaviani's summer collection also incorporates materials like mulberry silk.
Forte dei Marmi itself, due to its status as a "wealthy vacation destination," is filled with private villas with pools and high-end hotels, some overlooking the mountains behind and others directly facing the sea, creating an elegant and leisurely Italian seaside landscape.
After all, with Italian production and Italian quality, targeting wealthy vacation clientele, Filippo de Laurentiis naturally maintains higher overall quality than mass-market pure cotton menswear brands like James Perse. Only a very few high-priced styles from the latter can approach the average quality level of Filippo de Laurentiis. However, some Italian brands still tend toward conservative and traditional aesthetics, so when making selections, I recommend prioritizing their simple, solid-colored basic pieces, which integrate more easily into daily wardrobes.
The following section will provide detailed introductions to different types of pure cotton basics in Filippo de Laurentiis menswear, as well as wool and cashmere knitted pieces for both men's and women's autumn and winter collections.
01
Simple comparison of prices and quality among Filippo de Laurentiis cotton varieties and several knitting methods: Sea Island Cotton > Crepe Cotton > Superlight Cotton > Jersey Cotton > Piquet Cotton
Price and quality of cotton from different origins: Sea Island Cotton > Giza (premium Egyptian long-staple cotton) > Supima > ordinary Egyptian long-staple cotton
Crepe Cotton
Filippo de Laurentiis's Crepe Cotton - any fabric with added crepe becomes denser, more resilient, and more drapey, appearing particularly smooth visually, whether it's viscose, polyester, wool, or cotton.
Many mid-to-low-end minimalist brands that don't prioritize quality and fabrics will use crepe viscose for garments. The most typical example is CO, previously discussed in "If You Like Toteme, You Can Also Buy These 5 High-Quality Minimalist Brands." Brands at this tier use low-cost but attractive crepe polyester and viscose for dresses, suits, and trousers, while premium brands use wool and cashmere.
Crepe will be discussed in detail in the next article about six subdivisions of European and American mulberry silk fabrics. Crepe crinkle is created by twisted yarns, making it resilient and dense.
Filippo de Laurentiis offers crepe cotton fabric in four silhouettes: the classic three-button polo shirt and skipper polo shirt.
There's also an overshirt that can be worn as a light jacket and T-shirts. The distinctive texture achieved through crepe weaving techniques is particularly evident in this overshirt.
Filippo de Laurentiis uses crepe cotton most frequently for T-shirts. Basic crew-neck T-shirts in different colors all feature this fabric. T-shirts made with crepe cotton are smoother and more compact.
Superlight Cotton
Even without considering origin, superlight cotton is more expensive than ordinary cotton. James Perse's most expensive lotus jersey is also made from soft, lightweight superlight cotton, but uses jersey knitting for added softness. Filippo de Laurentiis uses ordinary plain knitting, making it slightly firmer than jersey.
However, Filippo de Laurentiis's advantage lies in cotton variety - not unknown ordinary cotton, but Giza cotton, the finest Egyptian long-staple cotton, second in quality only to Sea Island cotton.
Besides basic polo shirts, they also offer skipper polo shirts, this one called basketweave Panama weave.
Filippo de Laurentiis's short-sleeve and long-sleeve shirts in superlight use ordinary Egyptian long-staple cotton. Compared to the premium Giza Egyptian long-staple cotton mentioned above, the latter shows superior luster and softness.
Regardless of origin, superlight cotton technology produces better quality than ordinary cotton, superior to piquet cotton, and comparable to jersey.
Supima Jersey Cotton
Supima cotton jersey knit was first mentioned in Mauro Ottaviani, while James Perse's most expensive lotus jersey is made from ordinary lightweight cotton.
A dedicated article on various pure cotton fabric types will follow; here we'll introduce them according to Filippo de Laurentiis's classification.
Filippo de Laurentiis's Supima cotton adds luster to jersey's inherently soft foundation.
Filippo de Laurentiis offers Supima and jersey only in short-sleeve categories.
Piquet Cotton
Filippo de Laurentiis's least expensive cotton is this ordinary honeycomb-shaped cotton, lacking luster, more durable but rougher. Sunspel also calls it piqué, while Mauro Ottaviani calls it piquet.
Linen
Since Filippo de Laurentiis primarily produces pure cotton, their linen and cashmere fabrics use the most basic, entry-level materials with poor luster and inferior smoothness and fineness. This can be compared with various grades of linen listed in the light linen section of "10 Special Linen Techniques, 5 Types of Hemp Differences."
They offer T-shirts with 97% linen and polo shirts with 73% linen. For linen purchases, men can choose pure linen, while women should opt for linen-silk blends. Filippo de Laurentiis's linen and the piquet cotton mentioned above are not recommended.
Sea Island Cotton
The crepe, superlight, jersey, and piquet mentioned above are classified by knitting techniques, combined with ordinary Egyptian long-staple cotton, Giza premium Egyptian long-staple cotton, or Supima cotton.
Sea Island Cotton, as premium cotton native to the Caribbean region, is specifically labeled by major brands because it represents the most expensive cotton quality. Considering just the raw cotton material without subsequent processing, Sea Island cotton offers the best quality, which is why Sunspel's Sea Island cotton costs twice as much as ordinary cotton.
This quality of cotton is superior to ordinary linen and mulberry silk, so wealthy individuals who prefer cotton in summer should choose this variety.
Filippo de Laurentiis's most expensive polo shirt is made from Sea Island cotton.
The left image shows superlight Giza cotton, the right shows Supima cotton. The right side clearly demonstrates superior smoothness and luster.
02
Filippo de Laurentiis is more recommended for men's pure cotton and worsted pure wool. For women, there's no cotton or summer wear, and the categories aren't as extensive as men's - mostly ordinary quality wool and cashmere sweaters. The cashmere has dull colors, low purity, and lacks fineness.
The left two are cashmere, the right two are wool sweaters.
Slightly better quality would be the 120s high-count superfine merino wool below, though for women, high-quality cashmere and silk are still more recommended, as their skin tends to be more sensitive.
Although Filippo de Laurentiis's fabrics are average, you can tell their knitting techniques are decent, having operated wool knitting factories for decades.
Men's cashmere and wool pieces are all crew neck and turtleneck long-sleeve knits, generally thin overall. As a menswear brand, they produce more categories than women's, with greater attention to detail, texture, and classic fundamentals.
120s superfine merino wool:
There's also 180s merino wool that's even lighter and more refined:
The 70% 140s merino wool, 20% silk, and 10% cashmere blend sweater is also cheaper than the 180s pure wool:
Men's cashmere sweaters are the 70% cashmere and 30% mulberry silk blend below:
Epilogue
After this review, I've discovered that even for pure cotton, Italian quality is excellent - much better than Sunspel and the lower-end mass-market James Perse, with most pure cotton being much smoother.
Looking at the comparison of these pure cotton short sleeves below, you can see the difference between good cotton and inferior cotton. Luster, drape, and smooth fineness gradually decrease from left to right. Good mulberry silk, linen, and cashmere also follow these three key criteria.
From left to right: Sunspel's finest Sea Island cotton, Filippo de Laurentiis's Giza Superlight, James Perse's Japanese-made Luxe Lotus Jersey, British mass menswear brand Aspesi's ordinary pure cotton, and Japanese pure cotton brand Aton.
This is why I complained at the end of the Andreas Murkudis article that I generally don't look at or write about Japanese brands - even wealthy Japanese people prefer to buy Italian and British brands.
Eddy's piece in the article has quality slightly better than Aspesi, after all it has 10% mulberry silk added. It was bought for outdoor backpacking - he wouldn't dare wear good clothes to the park as they're not durable. The James Perse Luxe Lotus Jersey he bought before is only worn occasionally for grocery shopping, which means every time he wears good clothes I don't see it and can't take photos. Come weekends, it's always this durable outfit again.
