Florence ★

The Florentine cut

The Florentine coat is rounder than anything else in Italy. A wide lapel with a generous belly, a chest cut full and clean, a shoulder that is soft without being Neapolitan, and, the detail people fixate on, an absent or minimal front dart, so the coat's shape comes from the cut of the panels rather than from the darts.

Antonio Liverano, working in Florence since the 1950s, is the reason this style is internationally known. The house has trained or influenced a striking number of the Japanese and Korean tailors now working elsewhere, which is why the Florentine accent turns up in Tokyo and Seoul.

Leather and shoes

Florence has worked leather for centuries and still does, at every level from tourist goods to the very top. Stefano Bemer, founded in 1983 and continued after Bemer's death in 2012, is the best-known bespoke shoemaker; the Scuola del Cuoio, in the cloister of Santa Croce, has taught leatherwork since the 1950s.

The city's other institution is Pitti Immagine Uomo, the menswear trade fair held twice a year in the Fortezza da Basso. Pitti is where the international trade meets, and where a good deal of the photography that shaped the last fifteen years of menswear was taken, for better and worse.