The story of IDEM is a story of freedom — a journey of truth and beauty spanning 150 years, culminating in the project created by Marietta and Ciccio Tramontano, children of Aldo, at the end of the 1990s.

IDEM is a creative and style atelier, an experience of exploration and discovery characterized by diversity, where the founders’ multifaceted experience and the rich Neapolitan cultural and artisanal heritage find space and expression.

Already in its name, IDEM follows the path of the family artisan tradition of the “Maison Tramontano,” distinguished by the pursuit of authenticity, freedom from conditioning, and the desire to introduce an innovative shift with every generational passage.

IDEM, the same as always: an extraordinarily contemporary, innovative, and versatile project that reclaims memory and personal, family, and collective identity, not in a nostalgic way, but through the recovery and reinterpretation of the values most useful to our unresolved present.

It all began in the mid-19th century, in the heart of Naples, cradle and port of the Mediterranean, a crossroads of cultures teeming with life. During one of the rare afternoons of leave, while walking through the narrow streets of the historic center, Gaspare Tramontano, a young cadet of the Royal Military Academy Nunziatella of Naples, was forever enchanted by the sincere gaze of the young Amalia Procida.

An irresistible gaze that, within a few weeks, led Gaspare to abandon his military career in order to marry Amalia and join her in managing the trimmings shop on Via Guantai Nuovi in Medina: a treasure chest of precious fabrics, luxury lace, buttons, and cords, used “for beauty” in clothing or interior decoration for the wealthiest lives of the time.

Among the most illustrious clients were the royal families of the House of Savoy and the Bourbons, the Piscitelli, the Filiasi, the Actons, and the Carafas: a cultured world, aware of its own history and uniqueness, aristocratic and unconcerned with bourgeois conventions, always in search of wonder.

A nonconformism that eventually influenced young Francesco Tramontano, son of Gaspare and Amalia, who in 1910 inherited the reins of the family business, always nourished by an uncommon dedication to truth and to the beauty of manual skill.

A spirit of research that, within a few years, led Francesco’s third son, Aldo, to constantly and profitably frequent the workshops of wood turners, the caves of Spirito Santo and Sanità, and carpentry shops, studying every gesture, from the thinning of hides to the final stitching, while cultivating a deeply personal interest in the art of tanning and leather craftsmanship, once among the finest expressions of Neapolitan artisan tradition (still remembered in city place names such as Via Concerie al Mercato and Porta della Conceria).

Thus, the renowned trimmings and silk shop, moved from Via Guantai Nuovi to the prestigious Via Chiaia, was entrusted to his brothers Gaspare and Guido Tramontano, while Aldo, in a Naples occupied by Allied forces after the extraordinary popular uprising of late September (the famous “Four Days of Naples”), became the new driving force of the company, which in 1945 was relocated to Palazzo Cellammare, a magnificent 16th-century residence, stage of historic events and home to illustrious artists such as Caravaggio, Tasso, and Goethe.