Category: Suits

This summer there were several launch events at Pitti Uomo. Kenji opened up in Florence again, with his new Tie Your Tie store (small but lovely); Benedikt had his Shibumi showroom with new tailoring; it was effectivel...

It's hard not to feel that the future of the suit lies in more practical cloths than the fine worsteds of the past 30 years. We may move towards a situation where these cloths will be reserved for formal wear, while eve...

This week, Thursday June 1st to Saturday 3rd, both Agyesh of Stoffa and Marcus Malmborg for Eidos will be back in London. I’ve written previously about the wonderful colours and design sense of Stoffa, but not abo...

Last night was the (soft) opening of Anglo-Italian, the new shop in London being run by ex-Armoury buddies Jake Grantham and Alex Pirounis. It’s been a long time coming. Various events have slowed things down, and...

The Style Guide has been wonderfully received so far - at the launch events in London and New York, but also online and through personal messages. Thank you all. There are a few things I realise I haven't emphasised so...

Of all the tailors we visited in Japan last year, Ciccio was the one I was excited about seeing. I'd seen and tried on examples of his work on friends, and more importantly heard good things about his attitude to style ...

This is the corduroy suit I featured the fitting of last October - at the E. Marinella store in London. Although labelled as Marinella, it was made by Nunzio Pirozzi - a Neapolitan tailor with a wonderful moustache and...

It seems to be the month for notices and happenings. This latest one is to note that the tailoring book I originally wrote back in 2011 has been republished. I've had lots of enquiries over the past year about this boo...

I was quite intrigued to see Ethan Newton’s Bryceland's store in Tokyo when we visited a few weeks ago. In particular, how he is presenting his view on tailoring and how that mixes with the more casual americana s...

Last month we talked about how small changes in the proportions of a double-breasted jacket can have a radical effect on its style - and therefore on the people or situations it suits. This week I've used five of my ow...

In the sixteenth century, a man commissioning a suit would largely do so through an agent, who would interact with several parties - of which the tailor was just one. They would talk to the cloth merchant, the button me...

This is the fourth article in a series presenting a guide to buying tailoring. Following on from the previous articles on single and double-breasted suits, we turn our attention to body shape, and how different styles a...

I've always found cotton very appealing for summer suits, but historically haven't had much luck with them. I had a navy one made by Choppin & Lodge, but the make was really too English and structured for the materi...

I wore this linen suit from Dege & Skinner for the first time while in Florence. The weather was hot, and airless, and for the past two days I had been wearing unstructured Neapolitan tailoring. The contrast was im...

Bespoke double-breasted jacket by Dege & Skinner This is the third in a series of articles intended to create an in-depth guide to buying tailoring. Some of these areas have been covered before on the site, but no...

I was pleasantly surprised by the fit of this bespoke suit from Dalcuore in Naples, given I was a new customer and they were happy with just a single fitting. The jacket was a great fit straight off - clean through the...

Following our tour around Savile Row tailor Dege & Skinner a few weeks ago, I decided to commission a suit from cutter Nicholas De’ath - a tobacco number in W Bill’s 11-ounce linen. This is the second fi...

Fitting on a single-breasted jacket at Hardy Amies This is the second in a series of articles intended to create an in-depth guide to buying tailoring. Some of these areas have been covered before on the site, but not i...

Dege & Skinner have never been ones to blow their own trumpet. But in the past couple of years there have been small signs of the 150-year-old, family-run tailor stepping out. In 2012 they took over the workrooms un...

Bryan Manning (above) is a cutter who trained at Kilgour French & Stanbury, before running his own workshop in various forms for much of the 1970s and 1980s. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of his career, howe...

Bespoke suit, Anderson & Sheppard This is the first in a series of articles that will, overall, create an in-depth guide to buying tailoring. Some of these areas have been covered before on the site, but not in ...

Earlier this year I started a bespoke summer suit with tailors Manning & Manning. They are a small operation comprising old Row cutter Bryan Manning (above) and his son, with the making outsourced to various coatm...

A reader commented to me recently that one of the things he likes about Permanent Style is the fact I work in an office, just like him. It hadn’t really occurred to me before, but the fact that I work in a moder...

So, how shall we tackle this one then? Look at house styles in turn, or body shapes? I suggest we should look at each major house style, and consider the effects that each has on the body – accentuating one aspe...

Air force blue is a beautiful colour. Better than the bright, tonic blues that are so popular these days – so much deeper, so much more subtle. Also known as RAF blue, the colour refers to the uniforms issued t...

Back in October there was a lot of interest around my post on the bespoke service at Whitcomb & Shaftesbury. Their ‘classic bespoke’ service, which involves cutting the suit in London (by a very experi...

*London trunk show details: February 18-20 info@sartoriadalcuore.com +393458404232 32 Royal Crescent, London W11, UK* It’s been interesting to watch in recent years how more and more small tailors have come to p...

Apparently people are becoming more casual. There are now such things as luxury jogging bottoms. But I’ll put my money on the fact that – even as the fashion wheel turns – the suit will remain the fo...

My apologies to Philip, who wrote recently that he’s been waiting for my review of this Camps de Luca suit. And to anyone else. The suit was completed a few months ago and we managed to take some photographs las...

This is the last instalment in our series on looking after suits at home. The first showed how to brush and generally maintain suits, and the second how to press a jacket. You can see them at those links. It’s b...

  This is the first in a series of videos – made in conjunction with Richard Anderson – on maintaining, brushing and pressing a suit. [It’s worth enlarging to full screen if you want to watch it a...

Few readers will be surprised to hear that I like a nice green suit. Green is a wonderfully versatile colour, going with every autumnal colour you can think of, plus really strong browns, purples and oranges that few ...

A couple of weeks ago when we showed the pictures from our Tailoring Symposium at Pitti, a reader asked if there were any images of Wei Koh’s suit. I had mentioned that the founder of The Rake was wearing a Rubi...

A few weeks ago a reader asked about tips on having a suit altered. As often happens, this came up in the comments to a post – some of the best information is in there! I always recommend having a suit altered o...

At our Tailoring Symposium next week in Florence, we have six of the greatest tailors in the world presenting their styles to the audience of press and buyers: Panico, Cifonelli, Edward Sexton, Richard Anderson, Liver...

Not everyone can afford a bespoke suit, or even a top-end ready-to-wear one. But there are many things you can do on any budget to improve the look of your tailoring. 1. Buy conservative If a suit isn’t of the gr...

My apologies to readers that have been waiting for these shots of the Edward Sexton suit. Books, corrupted photos and other things seemed to consistently get in the way. I’ve always wanted a double-breasted mid...

My interview with Jonathan Clay last week went down well with readers – perhaps because he’s not the kind of person that would normally be interviewed. As the supplier of Italian ready-made suits, he sees a...

Last week was the official launch of the Permanent Style book, with an event in Milan hosted by Vitale Barberis Canonico and A Caraceni. I was interviewed by the fashion editor of La Repubblica, Simone Marchetti, abou...

  Jonathan Clay runs a suit-making facility in Italy, supplying high-end English and foreign retailers. His father did too – d’Avenza – and here Jonathan explains that story: how Italians learnt ma...

In my review of Spanish tailor Reillo’s cotton suit last week, there proved to be only room to analyse the fit and make. Yet a reader rightly pointed out that green cotton-gabardine is hardly an everyday cloth op...

This suit is from Jose Maria Reilo, the second of the three Spanish tailors I commissioned from in 2014. The make is good, although there are one or two issues with the fit that I’ll come to in a moment. The suit...

Some close-up details here on the linen suit from Sastreria Langa that we featured earlier in the week. You can see a few of the tailoring idiosyncrasies, as well as the cloth and work itself in more detail. Langa incl...

Tobacco brown’s a nice colour, isn’t it? Definitely informal – due to its lightness and saturation – yet with a quiet sophistication. Colonial, particularly in linen, but without the baggage of ...

The process of commissioning a bespoke suit is a nerve-wracking and, of course, expensive one. Permanent Style has provided extensive advice on this process over the years, particularly in posts covering suits from mor...

I’m getting pretty excited about this Camps de Luca suit now. Not only will it be one of the most beautifully made suits I own – coming from a Parisian tailor – but also one of the most versatile. In ...

I’ve known the De Luca family for a while now – particularly since Julien rejoined the business a few years ago. Julien was English-educated and worked in the City before going back to join Camps de Luca, and...

Since I wrote a post at the beginning of the month urging readers to comment and ask questions on Permanent Style, quite a few have asked about different ready-to-wear and made-to-measure brands. I’d like to explai...

Dear Simon, In a couple of months time I will be 21. This is clearly an important time in one’s life, in my case particularly as I will also be undertaking the purchase of my first bespoke suit. As a regular reader...

A colleague recently asked me for advice on buying a suit – probably navy, certainly single-breasted, possibly three-button. It’s the kind of everyday question that I get asked a lot, and probably concerns fa...