MILAN, Dec 10, 2002/ – Though decidedly Italian in person, Ennio Capasa, the gentlemanly creative director and founder of Costume National, looks more like a character out of Charles Dickens with his gaunt looks, swept-back Edwardian hair, bushy eyebrows and lean, dark silhouette.

And judging from his career, Capasa's rise into fashion had the same peripatetic quality of Dickensian strivers like Oliver Twist, even if Ennio's youth was not one of deprivation, unlike many of Dickens' characters. Capasa was born into a prosperous family in Puglia, Italy's southern heel, before taking the young hopefuls' typical route into fashion design -- a long ride north in his late teens to study sculpture in Milan's Brera Fine Arts Academy back in 1979.

"Eventually, la moda brought me back to my origins. You see, my family was born in fashion and my parents were both molto trendy!" smiles Capasa, recalling over tea in Paris' Hotel Costes that his parents owned a hip boutique called Smart in the '50s.

Two decades after leaving his hometown, Capasa is now the guiding hand behind a $50 million business. Last week he opened his latest boutique, paying more in "key money" to buy out the lease than most people earn in a year. Next month he launches his first sunglass line with a major party in Milan, the hometown of Costume National, a collection which luminaries like Nicole Kidman, Asia Argento, Cameron Diaz, Tom Cruise and Mick Jagger actually buy retail, not pick up for free.

But if it's a long trek from the blinding sun of his baroque hometown Lecce to the gray fog of Lombardy, Capasa's second formative move was a far greater step after he won a position in the studio of Japanese design great Yohji Yamamoto.

"I lived my infancy between Mary Quant and Yves Saint Laurent, going on trips with my folks as an adolescent to London. I was born a good consumer. My first seduction was to buy things, not to design them! But later I was interested in Zen and the writings of Mishima, and my papa gave me a ticket to go to Japan. So I spent three weeks traveling around Japan solo aged 18, just for pleasure. I wandered around Kyoto, Nara, and ancient Japan."

On graduating from Brera Academy, a friend sent a few of Capasa's illustrations to Yohji's attention and the designer invited him to join his house in 1983, a job that kept him in Tokyo for 30 months.

"I was the only foreigner. It was a great moment, and I learned all my techniques there," he stresses, remembering the warm welcome he received from Yamamoto and his family. When Ennio couldn't find a place to stay, Yohji's mother Fumi invited him to stay for several months in her house.

His stay in Japan still influences his designs for Costume National today and set him apart from his fellow designers in Italy, whose fashion federation refused requests by Japanese designers to show in Milan in the early '80s, permanently losing masters like Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo to Paris.

"In Japan you either become Japanese, change your culture totally, or you leave. So I left. I returned without being certain I would be a designer. But Yohji said 'Why not continue -- you have talent'."

Back in Italy, Ennio hooked up with his brother Carlo, already an acclaimed fashion honcho who had seen considerable success as the young partner of Romeo Gigli and consultant to Dawn Mello at Gucci.

"I didn't want to name the business after myself. I was too young and I wanted some mystery," he explained. The brothers finally got the name for the house from a book of French military uniforms, and opened a tiny atelier in Navigli, the old canal-dissected neighborhood in south Milan. "It was a wrecked old neighborhood full of artisans, very beautiful. Today it's completely changed. Now there's Armani, Romeo and lots of trendy bourgeois and the young artists have left. It's lost a certain charm."

Success, however, did not come overnight. "We couldn't get anyone to come to our shows. We showed in a beautiful old space, L'Umanitaria, a wonderful room with designs by Leonardo Da Vinci, and life musicians, and still only 30 people came to the show! In those days Versace, Armani and these "Made in Italy" designers sewed up Milan. So in 1991 we said, 'Let's go to Paris, there are young people, cheap hotels and ideas.' So we came here, and boy was it different!"

"I was obsessed with idea of street couture, by my idea of underground chic. I loved Yohji's world, but I came from southern Italy where I felt the need for the body, of sensuality, of sexy, not vulgar. So I returned to the body and tailoring, but with a street couture that was not too design, not too much, but something that you could wear everyday that was intriguing."

Capasa began his women's collection in 1986. His goal - reducing things to the max with a silhouette close to the body - was initially brushed off by critics in Milan, one of whom even termed the collection "baby clothes." Capasa concedes that his silhouette was "hard to understand," but once he began showing in Paris in 1991 business rapidly took off.

Though commercial success didn't happen overnight, respect from his peers came quickly. Ann Demeulemeester, Martine Sitbon and Martin Margiela attended his Paris debut in a Roman bathhouse in St Germain. The next season 400 people turned up for his show.

Two years later, Capasa, a self-confessed "vintage addict" started a men's collection, in part because he could never find exactly the pieces that he wanted. "So I told Carlo, why don't we create our own men's wear and we did a strong and beautiful show with a massive sculpture and a 30-yard carpet of painted garbage, plus a huge barrel of oil in flames and weird crosses in Navigili and we were off to a great start."

Unlike most designers, one hears a lot more of "we" than "I" in conversation with Ennio, for whom the family has been fundamental for his success.

"It's typical Italian style, a system that works perfectly in start-ups, because in the most difficult moment, the beginning, you have to have a lot of force and energy and the support of a family makes it so much easier. To build a business you need real confrontation - honest, but tough discussions - and you can only do this sanely as you have trust in each other." Capasa's interview, which took place in the same week that news of John Bartlett was closing his business, only serves to underline how important the "famiglia" remains for Italy's fashion business.

The men's launch ushered in a remarkable seven-year streak of rapid growth that lasted until 2001. Although sales cooled last year the company began growing again this spring. Throughout this period, the Capasas re-invested furiously. In 1996, Costume purchased new headquarters in an old tile factory in Navigli, allowing clients to fully grasp the label's philosophy. Since then, they have opened stores in Tokyo, Milan, Rome, New York and, finally, Paris, between Chanel and Paris' hippest retailer Maria Luisa on rue Cambon. And least anyone tells you that the French economy is weak, sources told FWD that Costume paid $3 million to buy out the previous tenant right to the lease.

"Our philosophy is long-term, it's a family way of doing business," explains Ennio. Costume also controls their own shoe factory in Padua, an apparel plant near Vicenza and a leather treatment company in Lecce, making a total payroll of 400 full-time staff.

"When you are an independent designer, if you don't have control of what you produce, you cannot grow," says Ennio.

In terms of footwear, Costume is now probably the biggest selling independent fashion house. Shoes represent one third of all sales, close to 100,000 pair a year.

With success and time, Capasa's style has become less rigorous, and more open to decoration. "It's more understandable and maybe more adult," he allows.

In a sense, Capasa has reinvented classicism with his strict tailoring, edgy finish, sexy sense and unique feeling for tough chic. Ask any major department store fashion director which labels have the best sell-through, and the name Costume National keeps popping up. His clothes appeal equally well to hipsters at Barneys, establishment trustafarians at Bergdorf Goodman or to rock legends like Mick Jagger, for whom Ennio created a coat of paillette covered with diamond dust.

The house style also suits Ennio's roving existence. He logs thousands of frequent flier miles visiting pretty much every territory for the launch of his scent, a conceptually novel roller ball fragrance made with Japanese cosmetics giant Kanebo.

Explaining the unusual choice, Capasa comments: "When I used to go out with a gang of pals - girls and guys - someone would always spray a shot of scent in the taxi, which I detested! I was too embarrassed to say that, but I promised myself if ever I made a perfume I'd make a roller!" In typically minimalist manner, he named the fragrance Scent. A second Scent Intense has followed, a third called Sheer is due out next March and a men's cologne will emerge in 2004.

Capasa is mulling a diffusion line, but his next big play will be a party to launch his eyewear collection in January. The line will include three looks for women, three for men "and lots of unisex," says Ennio, who ever the innovator has registered a special paint on the metal stems of the glasses that alters color with changes in the temperature. "At 25 degrees the glasses change from black to gray pearl," he explains.

"One of the keys to our success is our authenticity. Every product we put out I design alone. There's an excess of marketing today and maybe consumers can really feel intuitively where the designer is putting their hands. I esteem a designer when he creates his own history. If I recognize a designer's jacket in a department store, then I really respect him."