I know shirtmaker Simone Abbarchi has a lot of PS customers in London and New York. They might like to know - and see - where their shirts are made.  It’s a little workshop about 10 minutes drive outside of Florence. Simone arrives every morning a...

  When I brought my shirt from Simone Abbarchi back to him in June (or rather his assistant, Gianluca) we ended up making quite a few changes. This may be a cause for concern, though I will reserve judgment. I had had one fitting originally, in a ...

  It’s probably worth saying this once more. These images are merely indicative. They are intended to give a general impression of the shirt (a lovely grey from Simone Abbarchi). They are not intended to be the basis of an assessment of the fit.T...

  Simone Abbarchi is a Florence-based shirtmaker that has made for my friend Tommaso Capozzoli for a long time. He has always said that they have a very good relationship between price and quality, and he's right. Simone's made-to-measure shirts s...

“It was really eerie, Simon, with all the tourists gone." “I know that was the same everywhere," says Simone Abbarchi (above), "but seeing the Piazza della Signoria empty made it feel like we’d gone back in time. Like the Medici could just step...

  Last week’s explanation of how I put an outfit together seemed to be popular, so let’s try that again.This outfit is simpler than last week’s. There are fewer colours, there’s no tie to worry about, the handkerchief is plain. But still, t...

Three years ago, I wrote a post called ‘The tailors I have known'. The idea was to provide a single reference point for anyone to get a run down on everyone I had tried - and links to more detail.  A reader recently commented that it would be nice...

   Florence is best known as a tourist destination in the summer - the Uffizi, the Duomo, the Ponte Vecchio - and a menswear hub in January and June, when it plays host to the men’s trade show Pitti Uomo.  But it has enough unique shops to mak...

I wasn’t going to do a ‘high summer’ version of our seasonal Top 10. After all, the spring edition back in April included such things as panama hats and boat shoes.  But everyone’s stock has been arriving so late that the intervening months ...

  There are many ways in which you can make a sartorial outfit look younger or more modern. Extremes are always wrong: very short jackets, big puffy shoulders. They just look trendy, for a bit. But aside from the extremes, I would argue proportion...

There is a certain preponderance among men to order bespoke shirts in loud checks.  This must be the case, because most patterned materials offered for bespoke are bright and loud. Even though the ones available in a mill’s full collection - offer...

  When we published our recent article on the types and styles of shirt collars, a reader requested a follow-up piece on the precise dimensions of what I wear.  In fact, this has come up a few times over the years, particularly...

Patrick Dawson is a retired news correspondent, now living in London. During his career he worked for ABC, CNN and NBC and covered the Balkans War from Kosovo, the Gulf War from Kuwait, and was the first NBC correspondent on the ground during 9/11. H...

This jacket from Ferdinando Caraceni has become one of my real favourites in the past couple of years, and I think it’s worth exploring why. It says something about where tailoring is today, at least for me.  It was made in 2021 by Nicoletta Carac...

 D'Avino is a small Neapolitan outfit run by cutter Fiorenzo Auricchio (above). He has no website, an abandoned blog, and little used social media. Email is the best contact option.But he visits London regularly, usually twice a year at least, and f...

I recently went to see Wil Whiting's studio for the first time. Wil and I have chatted many times in recent years, but this was the first time I'd been to see where he works.  Wil has proved himself a talented shirtmaker, despite only four years sin...

There are many reasons to commission a bespoke piece of clothing. I think the decision I made earlier in the year to order a bespoke shirt at Charvet, however, was the first time I have done so out of pure curiosity.I used to have shirts made by T...

I recently took delivery of a set of linen shirts from D'Avino in Naples (it's been a good quarter...) and I thought the colour selection I ended up with was interesting.  I'm increasingly moving away from the more corporate colours of white and li...

My shirt collars over the years have generally been one of two styles: spread or button-down. Both can work with or without a tie (and have been tweaked consistently to make that easier) but I generally prefer the spread with a tie, the button-down ...

Our ‘complete capsule’ article last month went down particularly well with readers. Setting out a concentrated, versatile wardrobe, I think it provided both a good starting point for new readers and a way for older ones to realise gaps in their...

I’ve known Ben for a long time now. He worked round the corner from me during my journalism days, and we were both customers of visiting artisans like Elia Caliendo and Simone Abbarchi. We even did a shoot together for Elia years ago. Ben and I hav...

  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, about my history and views on cont...

Today we launch something rather different on Permanent Style: a live Trunk Show Calendar.The calendar is a central, coordinated listing of bespoke menswear trunk shows around the world. It lists, month by month, who is visiting which city, when, an...

Good trunk shows pick good locations. Not necessarily fancy, but convenient and in a space that shows the product in a good light. This is particularly true with ready-made or made-to-measure brands, where customers are more likely to compare them ...

You don’t see many hand-knitted sweaters from luxury brands. In general, their knitwear is sold on the quality and rarity of the fibre, rather than the manufacture. And when you do - as at Ralph Lauren Purple Label for instance - they’re very ex...