Maria Giovanna Paone

Maria Giovanna Paone is President and CEO of Ciro Paone S.p.A. and the creative director of Kiton womenswear. The daughter of founder Ciro Paone, she entered the family business in the 1980s and became the central figure behind the house’s women’s line, formally associated with Kiton’s first womenswear collection in 1995.

Her role has been to translate a house built on masculine Neapolitan tailoring into a women’s wardrobe without turning Kiton into a trend-led fashion brand. Under her direction, womenswear has developed through jackets, coats, knitwear, dresses, accessories and soft tailoring that retain the material authority of the parent house while allowing more fluidity, movement and intimacy of proportion.

In 2025 she was appointed Cavaliere del Lavoro, a public recognition of her work in expanding the company while preserving its craft identity. Her page should therefore read as both a creative and executive profile: not only the designer of Kiton Donna, but one of the principal stewards of the post-founder Kiton system.

Paone’s womenswear ethos begins with the same fabric discipline that defines Kiton menswear. Fine wool, cashmere, silk, linen, leather and proprietary textiles are used to create garments that feel precise without becoming rigid. The construction is often quieter than the material: softened jackets, coats, trousers, dresses and accessories carry the authority of tailoring while avoiding masculine literalism.

Her work is strongest when it treats femininity as ease, not decoration. The womenswear line uses Kiton’s codes of handwork, touch and longevity to build a wardrobe of refined daily authority: clothes that can move between work, travel, private life and occasion without needing theatrical fashion gestures to justify themselves.