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"  We&amp;#039;re calling it right now: Eidos is going to be big. The label \u2014 not exactly new, but newly reinvigorated \u2014 may be under the umbrella of high-end Neapolitan tailoring house Isaia, but it isn&amp;#039;t a diffusion line so much as a younger brother: rougher around the edges, easier in both appearance and attitude, but still as steeped in the tradition of quality as its elder sibling. And it&amp;#039;s perfectly poised to capitalize on the current mood in men&amp;#039;s-wear. Dressed-up, but not fussy, easygoing, but still impeccably put-together, it&amp;#039;s the kind of stuff you&amp;#039;re going to want to wear. Like, all the damn time. And though that&amp;#039;ll be the case from this fall&amp;#039;s outset onward, it&amp;#039;ll be even more apparent once the influence of newly appointed creative director Antonio Ciongoli \u2014 brought on to helm the operation after three years working with Michael Basitan \u2014 starts to shine through next spring. We caught up with the man himself at the brand&amp;#039;s showroom to talk Greek philosophy, arced lapels, and where he sees Eidos going in seasons to come. Esquire.com: So, what are we looking at here? Antonio Ciongoli: This is fall &amp;#039;13. It&amp;#039;s a great start, but it was done before me. There are going to be some substantial changes just on branding aspect of things for spring &amp;#039;14. And I think for the most part the spring collection is going to be the same \u2014 kind of a younger brother to Isaia \u2014 but where it&amp;#039;s heading is a little less polished, a little more rugged, a little more broken-down and patina-ed than the Isaia main line. A little bit easier, is where it&amp;#039;s going.  ESQ: Do you see it as the same guy wearing them?  AC: No. I think it&amp;#039;s a younger guy. When I started the conversation with [Isaia president] Jim Shay about this idea, it was a really about the bigger picture of who the Isaia guy in America is. Because it&amp;#039;s a relatively young brand. They have a good idea and a huge clientele, but they&amp;#039;re still trying to figure out who exactly this guy is. And what you&amp;#039;re seeing in men&amp;#039;s-wear is young guys who are getting more into tailored clothing and becoming more interested in it. So we wanted to try and do something to target these younger guys so they can grow into the Isaia customer, but we still wanted to do it the Isaia way and offer a tremendous value for tremendous product. We can do that because we own two factories: one in Naples that produces the Isaia main line, and another called Michelangelo, halfway between Rome and Naples, which is producing Eidos. We can make a fully canvassed suit or sport coat out of that factory for tremendous value, so we can reach a broader audience at a value that no one else can even come close to. Our suiting, our full-canvas suiting, starts at $1,295 for some insane fabric.  ESQ: Wow. That&amp;#039;s really fantastic.  AC: And jackets start at $895 for some beautiful, absolutely stunning stuff.    ESQ: Is this a full lifestyle offering, or are you trying to appeal to a certain part of a guy&amp;#039;s life? The office, the weekend, a night out... AC: Just a lifestyle. Starting next spring we won&amp;#039;t be doing an entire sportswear collection, but we&amp;#039;ll be doing a lot more sportswear \u2014 pants, outerwear, shirts, shorts \u2014 so you&amp;#039;ll be able to get a much better sense of who the Eidos guy is. And come fall &amp;#039;14 you&amp;#039;ll have everything. We&amp;#039;ll be able to take the guy from a beach vacation all the way to a tuxedo, to formalwear. It&amp;#039;s really going to be it&amp;#039;s own thing. The idea was very much, &amp;quot;We don&amp;#039;t want this to be an Isaia diffusion line.&amp;quot; Nobody needs that. That&amp;#039;s one of the reasons why Jim thought it would be good to bring me in with my background \u2014 so we can create a lifestyle and a brand that are different. Something that&amp;#039;s separate, but feels, as I was saying, like a younger brother.  ESQ: What&amp;#039;s the biggest change moving forward versus now? Roughing it up?  AC: That&amp;#039;s part of it. But some other things are changing. We changed the lapel. We have our basic model, the Balthazar, and we&amp;#039;re going to to stick to something very similar, but it&amp;#039;s going to feel a little bit more Neopolitan. Most lapels have a belly \u2014 they curve out. But a Neopolitan jacket, at a certain level, has an arced lapel. And you can&amp;#039;t buy that jacket for less than $3,000 right now. So that&amp;#039;s something I&amp;#039;m going to be incorporating in here, and I&amp;#039;m going to slim it up a little so it&amp;#039;s a little easier for the younger guy to wear. I wish every guy was up for wearing a big lapel, but... [laughs]. So the lapel will change, and the shoulder will have a little more of a rope to it, but it&amp;#039;s all still natural-shoulder clothing.     I&amp;#039;m just going to make the whole thing feel a little bit more organic. For instance, the label now: it&amp;#039;s satin, it&amp;#039;s a little bit slick. We&amp;#039;re going to print it on heavy canvas, to make it a little bit easier. We&amp;#039;re also going to develop a slightly different lapel pin. Right now, it&amp;#039;s like a blue version of Isaia&amp;#039;s red coral pin. So again, we&amp;#039;re going to change it to something a little more organic. The idea actually came from a signet ring. So it&amp;#039;ll be debossed, and you could actually seal an envelope with it. It looks like it came from an antique fair.  ESQ: Tell me a little bit about the name. AC: The name Eidos is from Greek philosophy. Roughly translated, it means &amp;quot;the essence of something, what something really is.&amp;quot; So in Plato&amp;#039;s allegory, &amp;quot;The Cave&amp;quot; \u2014 and Southern Italians love a story, right? \u2014 the Eidos of something is the absolute truth, what it really is. And humans can only see a reflection of that. So I was thinking of this idea of reflection and how that applies itself to style and clothing, and I thought of herringbone. Well, herringbone is obviously a reflection of itself, and it&amp;#039;ll be an element that runs through the design going forward. We&amp;#039;re developing this custom herringbone for use in sportswear jackets, stuff like that.  ESQ: How much is your past work with Bastian informing what you&amp;#039;re doing here?  AC: Working with Michael for three years was a tremendous experience. He&amp;#039;s a great designer. And nobody can style like he can. I think his biggest strength is how he puts things together. Nobody puts things together in a cool, young way like he does. And that would be a nice thing to incorporate here \u2014 putting things together in a cooler, younger way, but obviously more rooted in Naples and the Neopolitan tradition. But it&amp;#039;s impossible to work with that guy for three years and not gain a ton. He&amp;#039;s a tremendously talented guy.  ESQ: When you look past next season, to two or three seasons from now, what gets you most excited?  AC: I&amp;#039;m excited that there&amp;#039;s an option like this for guys like me. I always joke that designers become designers because they want to wear the clothing they can&amp;#039;t find. I&amp;#039;m an Italian kid from Vermont, right? I love the Neopolitan aesthetic, but I want it to be a little bit easier. Obviously, I&amp;#039;m a younger guy and I&amp;#039;m not at the level right now where I can afford Isaia, and I love the idea of having something like this exist in a full lifestyle that is accessible. That&amp;#039;s what I&amp;#039;m most excited about: reaching a broad demographic with a product that&amp;#039;s fun, colorful, easy to wear, sophisticated, accessible, made really well, and available at a decent price that&amp;#039;s actually attainable. That&amp;#039;s something that&amp;#039;s been missing, and something that we&amp;#039;re providing.    "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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