*This article is part of a series that looks at the history of New York’s bespoke tailoring. You can see the first, introductory article, here* By Manish Puri “Ready-made men’s wear was never more varied. Nevertheless, an increasing number of ...

Ferdinando Caraceni is one of the world's best-regarded bespoke tailors, based in Milan. It has been run since his death in 2004 by Ferdinando's daughter, Nicoletta, and they have made me three jackets over the past 10 years. You can see them and oth...

Quite a lot has changed in the five years since we last updated this Paris shopping guide (and yes, I know just as much as changed elsewhere - we will also update the others!).  Kenjiro Suzuki has left, the Viaduc des Arts has drifted, and the ex...

Rather like Maglia, which we discussed earlier in the week, Merola is among the very best makers in its field – in this case, gloves. Both are also based in Rome and have a similarly stellar roster of private-label clients. There is more competitio...

I don’t generally like peak lapels on single-breasted suits. They aren’t necessarily wrong – although notch lapels are far more common, only the relatively inexperienced will tell you it is a ‘rule’ that SBs must have notch lapels (or indee...

From the Brunello Cucinelli Spring/Summer 2012 catalogue: “The color palette features pastel shades with slightly grayish, faded, and mélange tones: Lily, Plum, Chamomile, Geranium, Lime, Mint, Quartz, Antarctic White, Coral, Orange, and Eucalyptu...

After long gestation, The Rake magazine has finally launched its coffee-table book, Hand of the Artisan: The Soul of Italian Luxury. It is a tour through 17 different Italian manufacturers, heavily illustrated with handsome, technical and usually bla...

A recent trip to Vienna for a Central & Eastern Europe Finance Forum (don’t ask) was enlivened by the discovery of Wilhelm Jungmann und Neffe. A men’s outfitter of the first order, it has been supplying accessories, cloth and tailoring services t...

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...

Milan can easily be underrated by men who love classic style. Given the choice of Italian cities to visit, they would always pick Naples – the home of soft tailoring, that very distinctive shoulder and companies like E Marinella and Kiton (not to m...

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...

While in Dallas recently I managed to catch up with Chris Despos, which was fortunate – Chris operates in both Chicago and Dallas, with workshops in both but a shop front in Chicago.Chris is a bespoke tailor, but with a background that is more vari...

The next young tailor I wanted to highlight on Permanent Style is Ayres Goncalo, a Portuguese who worked at Gieves & Hawkes in London for four years, before returning to Porto to set up his own shop in 2011. I met Ayres over the summer while in ...

“The therapy I never knew I needed.” That was how one reader described our reader dinner at Huntsman last year, and this year’s was no different. Ten winning readers came to the event, with four flying in specially from Spain, Italy and German...

I think L'Étiquette is the best menswear magazine in the world at the moment. The main reason is its ability to cover bespoke tailoring and high-street casual - Caraceni and Converse - in a way that feels both easy and relevant. This applies to both...

Perhaps the most striking thing about Jean-Manuel Moreau’s operation in Paris is how long it’s been around. Most shops we cover track their origins back 10 or 12 years. It’s in this period that stores like Trunk, The Armoury, Anderson & She...

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 is something I’ve had questions about recently - I assume because fashion generally has taken a turn towards black and, combined with the general casualisation going, black shoes and jeans have become a more common styling choice. So the answe...

By André Larnyoh I’ve known Niyi for three or four years and he’s always someone I’ve learnt from. His style is eclectic: classic menswear brands alongside contemporary fashion, bursts of colour with subdued tones. Yet somehow he always finds ...

For the past 16 years I’ve never taken a holiday from publishing and replying to comments on Permanent Style. I normally take a break on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, but that’s about it.  You could call it dedication if you want, but I suspect ...

Wool/silk/linen blends have been a favourite for summer jackets for many years, although in the UK they only started to be offered about 10 years ago.  More recently, English mills have also started offering their own versions, sometimes without one...

Six years ago, we ran a really nice exercise on PS where readers became the interviewers, sending in questions they'd always wanted to ask. It sprung from a comment that at least one reader hadn't been very impressed with a recent interview with me. ...

Florence is a surprisingly good city for shopping, quite apart from any menswear shows that happen to be going on.  It’s always been a hub for craft, and even in the city centre you’ll often walk past a little workshop with someone restoring ant...

Please read part one of this article, here, before this one. Without that context, setting out my priorities, this summary will likely be misleading. Everyone is different, wants different things from bespoke, and simply gets on with people differen...

Baseball caps are, in many ways, the lazy option for headwear. They’re ubiquitous, they’re cheap and they go with everything. I completely understand those that fight the good fight for brimmed hats, and feel it necessary to attack ball caps in t...