This cashmere coat from Cifonelli, which I've had now for nine years, is similar in many ways to the two coats we’ve covered previously in this series - from Ciardi and from Liverano. There are some technical differences, however, which makes the...

One topic I thought it would be good to cover during Dry January was giving away clothes that you found - for whatever reason - no longer worked for you. Finding good homes for good things, essentially.  A good example of this is the suede jacket th...

Cifonelli is one of the three best-known tailors in Paris - the others being Camps de Luca and Smalto. (Though Smalto’s influence has rather waned in recent years, as the others’ has waxed.) It is best known for the style of its shoulder, and fo...

This is a guest post from the friends of Permanent Style, parisiangentleman.com Legendary tailors Cifonelli have an exceptional story to tell. Unlike most of their peers around the world, the house was founded in 1880 yet remains entirely in the han...

Cifonelli Parisian tailors tend to be located on the first floor of big mansion blocks. Savile Row tailors are more likely to be on the ground floor of a terraced house, with workrooms underneath. Though certainly a generalisation, this is not an emp...

This is a guest post from the friends of Permanent Style, parisiangentleman.comIn 2003, you and your cousin Massimo took control of the family business after starting in the workshop in 1993. Have your customers changed over the years? Of course. Whe...

This article concerns two things.  First, the pluses and minuses of the Cifonelli 6x1 style, as this is the first jacket I’ve had from them in their well-known cut.  And second, the benefits of a velvet jacket without silk facings - and how it ca...

  For the reader who commented that my pieces on Cifonelli tend towards the emotional, I apologise in advance. This is a beautiful, beautiful coat, and one of the finest things I have ever worn.Right, that's over. Down to details. This is the navy...

I’ve been looking at a lot of old Ralph Lauren imagery in recent months. Because of the 50th anniversary, but also because of the Ivy Style talk we did in New York, where everyone admitted some kind of debt to Ralph, and reading In His Own Fashion ...

 A reader recently asked me how an overcoat should fit – around the armholes, in the shoulder width – and given that I already had a post planned on this fitting on a Cifonelli overcoat, I thought I would combine the two.The central problem with...

  This finished suede jacket from Cifonelli shows the beautiful breadth of what bespoke tailoring can do. Bespoke is not just for business suits; it is not just for casual jackets; it is for anything that benefits from hand-cut line and structure...

  One area that fascinates me – perhaps more than any other – in my writing is the overlap between formal tailoring and more casual dress.If it is possible to retain the beautiful craft aspects of bespoke tailoring in casual clothing, as well a...

Lorenzo Cifonelli made me this beautiful suit at the beginning of the year, and I've meaning to write about it ever since.  He has cut two jackets for me in the past, a pale-grey cashmere DB and a green tweed SB. I gave details about both of them a...

No visit to Paris would be complete without dropping in on Lorenzo Cifonelli and seeing what weird and wonderful things his mind has inflicted on tailoring recently.First up was the yak jacket. I wrote about this back in February on The Rake, but I h...

I was in Paris last week visiting Cifonelli for an article to appear in The Rake. It was good to spend some more time with Lorenzo hearing about the history of the firm and his grandfather’s move to Paris (below). But what impresses me every time I...

 Everything seems to be happening at once at the moment. Next week the Permanent Style magazines should be here, which is probably the most exciting thing. On Monday we held our first Gathering dinner, which everyone seemed to really enjoy. And we'...

I’m seriously impressed with this tweed jacket from Cifonelli. The style is nice, with a mix of traditional and original detailing. But having put that together with Lorenzo, it was what I expected. Perhaps more surprising, and certainly more impre...

Cifonelli of Paris makes some of the most beautiful tailoring I've ever seen. I thought a post, therefore, on the details of a jacket rather than me rambling on about the technical stuff. Above, the broad lapel of the double-breasted, with gorgeous d...

I love Lorenzo Cifonelli's constant innovation in his menswear designs. Some I like more than others, but I love the embroidery of the Japanese symbol for love on the lapel of this grey jacket. I'd go for a bit of subtle embroidery on a sports jacket...

As you might have sensed in a recent post on Parisian tailors Cifonelli, I was rather taken with Lorenzo's stylistic details. That led to a commission for a Harris tweed jacket including his slash pockets, five-button front up to the throat, suede un...

A reader asked what I was wearing at the dinner of Parisian Gentlemen last week. Fortunately, a profile photo was taken that day at the intellectual property conference I was speaking at - the reason I was in Paris in the first place.  In the pictu...

Dinner with Lorenzo Cifonelli on Monday was a highlight of this week’s trip to Paris. So conscientious, so grounded yet creative: Lorenzo in many ways has the perfect character for a tailor. And he has good taste in restaurants. I was having two j...

  Several readers asked what I was wearing in the video we produced recently for Begg & Co scarves. So here they are, one by one. In the jacket shots, above:Navy cashmere jacket by Solito.Not a great level of finish, but one of the most usefu...

The attraction of denim for the modern, sartorial man is easy to understand.  In an age when clothing is increasingly casual, making tailoring less formal by using a casual cloth is attractive.  It retains the benefits of tailoring - the elegant...

Read my one-day guide to bespoke operators in Paris in the latest article for Essence Lifestyle. Pictured, Pierre Corthay in typically playful mood.