City · South Korea
Seoul
서울
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.
Seoul's bespoke tailoring is young (most of it founded since 2010) and unusually coherent. The makers trained largely in Naples and Florence, and cut a soft, light coat adapted to a slimmer local build. The scene grew through photographs shared online, which is how most of its international clients found it.
Fifteen years of trade
Korea had a substantial made-to-measure business long before it had bespoke: tailors in the Gangnam and Jongno districts made suits for office workers for decades. What is new is a group of makers who trained in Italian workshops and came back to cut patterns themselves.
Their common problem was adapting an Italian method to a different body, generally slimmer, less deep through the chest, and the solutions they arrived at are what gives the Seoul trade its recognisable look: soft construction, close through the waist, a shorter coat, a narrower shoulder than the Neapolitan original.
Where the trade is
Gangnam holds most of the newer bespoke workshops; Jongno and the older commercial districts hold the long-established made-to-measure trade that served office workers for decades. The two are different businesses serving different customers.
Most of the bespoke workshops work by appointment and many take a substantial share of their orders abroad.
Commissioning in Seoul
Prices sit well below Italian equivalents for comparable hand work, which is the principal reason international customers travel or wait for a trunk show. Two to three fittings is normal and lead times are moderate.
The scene is young enough that the range of quality is wide. The established workshops are genuinely good; the newer ones vary, and the usual questions (is a pattern drafted, who makes the coat, how many fittings) are worth asking.
Images
Bespoke tailors in Seoul
All bespoke tailors →
The local idiom
Practical notes
Picture credits 3
- Cloth Shop "Olivethey" in Gangnam Seoul - DSC00435: Photograph · Daderot · Wikimedia Commons · CC0
- Seoul Eastern Gangnam-gu sunset seen from Jamsil Railway Bridge 20230921: Photograph · Ox1997cow · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
- An illustration of the house's recorded cut: soft shoulder, light canvas chest, soft, close and short. Not a photograph of the house's own work.: Original art · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale original art