If Italian cities could be personified, Milan would be a bejewelled grand dame and Florence a dandy cycling along the Arno in a linen suit. But Rome? The capital is too vast, ancient and complex to distil into one stereotype. The city has exerted its gravitational pull on the world for millennia. It has been a melting pot since the days of the Roman Empire, when every road was said to lead there.

The Eternal City has also been captured on screen by the maestri of Italian cinema, who used its Cinecittà film studio as a base in the mid-20th century. Directors including Michelangelo Antonioni, Bernardo Bertolucci, Federico Fellini, Roberto Rossellini and, more recently, Paolo Sorrentino have captured Rome on film in a seductive light, with leading men prowling the streets at night in tailored suits and tilted hats while their love interests dance at rooftop bars or splash around the Trevi Fountain (please don’t try this). Today, Romans navigating cobblestone streets in formal footwear or zooming past on Vespas stand out from the backpack-toting tourists. There’s a sharpness to Romans’ presentation and also in how they move through their city.

“Roman style is more sober compared to somewhere more eccentric such as Naples,” says master tailor Gaetano Aloisio when Monocle meets him at his atelier behind the Spanish Steps. Aloisio has dressed heads of state and royalty from around the world, receiving a knighthood from the president of the Italian republic in 2011 for his contributions to the country’s fashion industry. “I seek sophistication in every detail,” he says. “My aim is to craft suits that inspire strength and command respect.” One sartorial detail that Aloisio abhors is the shoulder pad. He prefers the fluid lines of Italian tailoring over the more military style associated with London’s Savile Row. And this soft shoulder has soft-power credentials – many city tailors and shoemakers rely on a moneyed global clientele from the US, the Middle East and France but rarely Italy. We hear similar stories at tailoring atelier Sartoria Ripense and shoemaker Bocache & Salvucci, where orders are more often placed from outside the Bel Paese.

But a younger generation is poised to take up the mantle of la bella figura. Throughout the day we spot students dressed for their graduation ceremonies, donning traditional Roman crowns of laurels instead of tasselled caps. In the afternoon we stop by Piazza de’ Ricci to meet the team behind Le Tre Sarte, a fashion brand spinning a modern take on formal womenswear and menswear. In its atelier, vests, dresses and jackets are crafted using end-of-roll materials – wool, linen, silk and velvet – from Italian factories. Customers can choose to dial up or down the saturation from a palette ranging from forest green and deep burgundy to light pinks, blues and a zesty yellow.

“In Rome, we’re surrounded by beauty,” says Camilla Voci, who co-founded Le Tre Sarte with Niccolo di Leonardis in 2021. “If you’re always surrounded by materials that are high quality – bricks, marble – it translates into how you dress and your taste in design.” Di Leonardis agrees. “There’s a heritage of bespoke,” he says, “and tailors are passed down through families.” Exceptionally well-turned-out Romans who wouldn’t go near flip-flops with a barge pole assure us that the city’s style can be described as somewhere between “relaxed and elegant”.

But perhaps Roman style isn’t something that can be bought or replicated so easily. It’s an attitude, the way that a jacket might be nonchalantly slung over one shoulder while strolling down the street, its owner holding a loud conversation on their phone. It’s the proud upward tilt of a chin, paired best with an aquiline nose. A fearless commitment to navigating cobblestones in heels rather than trainers. It’s thinking that a tailored suit paired with calf-leather brogues and a carmine red silk tie is a “sober, simple look”.

As the sun sets, we make our way to the Rhinoceros hotel and art space foundation for our final appointment. We meet Alda Fendi and her sizeable entourage in the gallery. The last Fendi shareholder of the namesake luxury fashion house (now majority owned by LVMH) is wearing head-to-toe yellow and spiky sunglasses that echo her energetically coiffed blonde hair. As she reclines in a La Mamma armchair by Gaetano Pesce, we ask the doyenne of the city’s fashion scene how she would describe Roman style. “How people dress here reflects the city when it scintillates at night,” says Fendi with a smile. “It’s romantic and mysterious. It’s poetry.”