Mario Di Leone has had the same job since he was 23.
But on March 15, when his eponymous Cherry Creek store closes, it’ll mark the end of a nearly 50-year-run for the purveyor of designer Italian threads at 280 Detroit St.
“I always wanted to move back home to Italy, and this has just become the right time,” the 70-year-old told BusinessDen. “I think the fat lady sang.”
For the next several weeks, high-end brands like Agnona, Malo and Colombo will be on sale at Di Leone’s store. He described his inventory as “sophisticated” and said he has mostly sport coats and outerwear available for men and sweaters available for women.
Most of those items retail for between $2,000 and $5,000, but Di Leone said almost everything is on sale for between 30% and 65% off.
“We’re one of the top, top, top clothiers in America. Not in Denver, in America. We’re the only ones carrying those (brands),” he said. “This is not a huge store, but even the limited inventory is the most luxurious there is.”
Along with his age – and his wife’s desire for him to retire – Di Leone also said reasons for closing include that business hasn’t been the same since the pandemic started, when homebound consumers traded in their suits for sweats. Di Leone said his high-end retail market hasn’t rebounded and business has been down 50%.
“I sell to a mature age group. The merchandise is expensive, classic, sophisticated, and people don’t really dress that way nowadays. It’s very casual,” he said. “And that’s not my forte. After 46 years, I’m not going to start selling sweatpants or sweatshirts.”
Di Leone opened his shop, then called the Gentleman’s Quarter, in 1979 as a side hustle during his time as a student at the University of Colorado Boulder. He went to go shopping for clothing but “couldn’t find anything I liked,” so he began importing high-end Italian brands himself.
“Business then took off big time and I decided to hell with architecture,” he said, noting that’s what he studied at CU.
How he ended up in Colorado is a tale as colorful as his merchandise.
He moved to the United States from Italy in the mid-1970s because a friend was going to school in Kansas. After that was “too boring,” he moved onto Louisiana State University.
But the muggy bayou climate wasn’t for him – and his long-gone Afro, he said, which blew up daily from the humidity.
He ended up in Boulder.
“I was a crazy, crazy guy and Boulder was a crazy, crazy place,” he laughed.
He made his mark during the 1980s and ’90s, when Italian fashion was booming across the country. Di Leone was the Colorado-exclusive seller for Gianni Versace and Gianfranco Ferré, he said, and his store attracted “heavy hitters” across the Front Range.
“I used to dress Pat Bowlen head to toe in Versace,” Di Leone said, noting that the late-former Denver Broncos owner was among his biggest customers.
In 1981, Di Leone added a second store in Cherry Creek at 250 Fillmore St. and changed his shop’s name to Uomo Elegante, which means “elegant man” in Italian. In 1985, he started selling women’s clothes, leading to the store’s final name change to Mario Di Leone in 2001 to avoid confusion on inventory.
By that time, his store in Boulder had closed and he was selling men’s and women’s clothes out of a new Cherry Creek store at 2820 E. Third Ave., where Dana Monfort’s Town Pump Provisions opened last year. In 2006, he added the storefront at 280 Detroit St. and separated the men’s and women’s lines.
But two years later, after the Great Recession, business turned for the worse in Denver. That’s why he opened a Mario Di Leone in Aspen, which lasted until 2020 when retail went “in the tubes” as a result of the pandemic. In the interim, he consolidated Denver operations into the 280 Detroit St. store, where he’s been solely operating the past five years.
“After the market crashed in 2008, the Denver market became very difficult and was the reason we moved to Aspen,” he said. “Aspen was unbelievable, fantastic. But then when COVID happened, people started wearing the tracksuits and walking around with sneakers and jogging pants. When COVID happened, everything changed. Period. The end.”
Once the doors close in March, he and his wife are going to move to Milan. He said the move isn’t permanent.
“We are going to reopen in Aspen. The year? I don’t really know,” he said. “But we are going to reopen and carry on because I do still have some masterpieces in my collection.”
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