Every coat starts on the same table in Biella: a long slab of pale beech, worn soft at the edge where forty years of elbows have rested on it.

On it, always: tailor’s chalk in three colours, a pair of shears older than the building, and a bone folder for pressing seams open without a crease.

“The table decides more than the pattern does.”

And two things nobody expects: a jar of rice to weigh down silk while it is cut, and a small brass bell that rings when a coat is finished.