This is Andy. A long-time reader and customer, Andy had led, shall we say, an interesting life. Currently a hydrographic surveyor, he has also been a pilot, a mountaineer, and dabbles as a model (fashion and life).  He is passionate about clothing, ...

It’s that time of year again. The TV adverts that started a month ago should have been a warning. Below is my Christmas gift list for 2019. It is not a comprehensive list of the best menswear gifts right now. It’s certainly not related in any ...

How do you make sure your best cutter doesn’t leave, taking customers with him?  Simple: never let him meet the customers.  I’ve always been aware that Smalto, the Parisian tailor, had an unusual system in its cutting room. Unlike most tailorin...

  Yoshimi Hasegawa recently sent me her beautiful book Savile Row: A Glimpse into the World of English Tailoring. It is largely in Japanese, but each tailor’s chapter includes a section in English and there is also a short English introduction. In...

   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...

One young tailor I’ve been meaning to cover for a while is Kotaro Miyahira of Sartoria Corcos, in Florence.Kotaro is not taking on new clients at the moment, having just had his first child and not wanting to expand the workload of him and his wife...

  Chinos from tailors never feel like chinos. Why is this?  I used to think I knew the answer: the fabrics they used were too fine - dress cottons, made with fine fibres, finished for a sleek look and good drape.  Chinos, eve...

By Manish Puri In part one of this guide, I provided a brief history of chambray and why it became the de facto choice for work shirts, before turning my focus to shirts on the market that are reproductions of traditional US work shirt models. In thi...

   New York is a strange town for menswear. It’s a bit of a Wild West, without the same traditions of Europe and with bespoke largely undermined by visitors from Savile Row. If there is a tradition, it is for value: low-priced sack suits that ar...

If the last chinos we reviewed in this series were a little more unusual (from Casatlantic) then today we’re back with a very good, very everyday pair.  Similar in that respect to the first brand we covered - Rubato - just more on the workwear en...

Last year, while in Japan at Bryceland's, Salvatore Ambrosi offered me two pairs of his new ready-to-wear trousers to try. Regular readers will remember that the bespoke trousers I had from Ambrosi the previous year suffered from consistency issues....

There is no shortage of Japanese artisans in Florence. But one that hasn’t garnered much attention yet is Hiroyuki Murata, who goes by the brand name SAIC Firenze. Hiroyuki-san and his wife have a small workshop outside Florence. It’s on a love...

Best shop in the US: The Armoury Runner-up: Sid Mashburn Some of the Permanent Style awards this year were close. The award for best US store was not: The Armoury romped home. To a certain extent, that’s not surprising. It stocks all the things ...

This post was originally written in 2012: a breakdown of all the tailors I have tried personally (rather than just written about), split into different countries. It was updated in 2016, and I have updated it again now in 2020, adding a further 1...

In the realm of classic menswear, silk is usually restricted to discussions of ties and handkerchiefs. There is the occasional silk facing, and silk-mix jacketing, but it rarely features alone in clothing.  It was fascinating while in Japan last y...

Last week the weather in London turned from 12 degrees to 22 in a couple of days. It seems that what passes for the English Spring is finally here. Of course, with most shops and brands Spring/Summer collections arrived in February, and went on sale ...

Men’s style appears to be a hot topic over at Broadcasting House. The BBC recently showed its second menswear-related series in as many months, with the original series on Savile Row being followed up by one called British Style Genius.The overlap ...

This column in Japanese magazine Free & Easy is the result of the photo shoot I posted about before Christmas. I have no idea what the Japanese text says, but hopefully it faithfully reports my opinions on shoes and shoe collecting, and describes the...

 The crossover between denim and tailoring is an interesting one. The appeal is perfectly understandable: like tight fits, short jackets or bracelets, it reflects a desire to undermine the conservative preconceptions of suiting. The execution, howev...

Enzo Bonafé is one of only two men’s shoe factories left in the area around Bologna, Italy. The other is Testoni, and when Enzo left Testoni to set up his own factory, in 1963, there were more than 40 factories in the region. It has been a rap...

I finally got around to putting together a Christmas gift guide for this year, which I know many readers have asked about (and like forwarding directly to their wives). I have deliberately not included either Permanent Style products here, or those ...

It was freezing in London last week. Temperatures below zero consistently; more snow than we’ve had in a decade. Of course, it’s nothing compared to the US east coast - or Scandinavia - but it was rather a shock. I had an odd feeling on the s...

Australia might not be the first country anyone associates with tailoring and classic menswear, but Melbourne has a greater range than most of the rest of the country. This is partly due to the fact that it has clear seasons, with a few weeks where...

A reader commented on the last instalment of this list that it shaped his whole season’s shopping. No pressure then. Many of the ranges will feature in other coverage later in the year - particularly the ones I’ve already bought myself. So th...

“Each coloured section of a blanket has natural variation. That’s the organic dyes: each yarn is slightly different.  “Then there’s the different types of dye. The weaver might deliberately mix together natural dyes like a cochineal red, wit...