Cities

Hong Kong

Hong Kong's tailors are famous for making suits fast, but quality ranges from genuinely fine custom work to 24-hour suits made elsewhere, all called bespoke.

Vienna

Vienna's small surviving tailoring trade makes jackets with high, built-up shoulders, a very close-fitting chest and unusually extensive hand sewing, with Knize its best-known…

Paris

Paris has a tiny, distinctive tailoring trade making jackets with rounded built-up shoulders and very clean chests, and it is home to shirtmaker Charvet.

Naples

Naples is today's most influential tailoring city, known for soft, light jackets with little padding, high armholes and gathered sleeves, made for hot weather.

Milan

Where Italian tailoring puts its jacket back on: cleaner, sharper and considerably more businesslike.

Florence

Florentine tailors make soft, rounded jackets with wide lapels, and the city also hosts Pitti Uomo, the menswear trade's twice-yearly gathering.

Rome

Roman tailors cut lightly built jackets that sit close to the body, landing between soft Neapolitan and more structured Milanese styles.

Biella

Biella is where much of the world's fine suit cloth is spun and woven, by mills like Loro Piana and Vitale Barberis Canonico.

Tokyo

Where European craft was studied to the letter, and in shoemaking arguably surpassed.

Seoul

Seoul's young custom tailors, mostly trained in Naples and Florence, make soft, light jackets cut for slimmer builds and became known through photos shared online.

Madrid

Madrid has a small, old tailoring trade making structured, formal clothes, with more court and ceremonial dress than anywhere else in Europe.

London

London's Savile Row holds the world's oldest still-trading tailoring houses, cutting jackets with a firm chest and defined shoulder, with shoemakers and shirtmakers close by.

Northampton

Northampton is the centre of English shoemaking, where Edward Green, Crockett & Jones, Church's and others make shoes in factories running for a century or more.

New York

New York has little custom tailoring of its own, but more foreign tailors visit for trunk shows there than anywhere, so you can order without travelling.