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470 entries across tailoring, shoemaking, cloth and craft Reference publication: we sell nothing and rank nobody for payment Every figure carries its source and the date it was checked

Country · Asia

South Korea

Seoul has built a tailoring scene since about 2010, mostly young makers trained in Italy cutting soft, slim jackets that customers find through social media.

Seoul has developed a bespoke tailoring trade within about fifteen years, largely through young makers who trained in Italy and returned. The work tends towards a soft, Neapolitan-influenced cut adapted to a slimmer local build, and the scene is unusually connected to social media, which is how most of its customers found it.

South Korea, where a bespoke trade was built in fifteen years
Front view of Heungnyemun Gate in Gyeongbokgung Palace , Jongno District, Seoul , South Korea .

A trade built in a decade

There was tailoring in Korea before (a substantial made-to-measure trade served office workers for decades), but bespoke in the European sense is recent. Its founders are mostly men who went to Naples or Florence in their twenties, worked in workshops there, and came back to open their own.

The result is a scene with an unusually consistent aesthetic: soft shoulders, light construction, close through the body, cut for a build that is generally slimmer and less broad-chested than the Italian customer the method was developed for. Adapting a Neapolitan pattern to that build is the technical problem the Seoul trade has spent its short existence solving.

Visibility as a business model

Korean tailors were among the first anywhere to build a clientele primarily through photographs online. That has consequences worth naming: it favours houses whose work photographs well, it accelerated the spread of particular details, and it means a Seoul workshop can have an international waiting list before it has a reputation in its own city.

It also makes the scene unusually legible from outside. Where the practice of a Neapolitan workshop may be documented nowhere, a Seoul house's construction is often visible in detail.

At a glance

Principal centre
Seoul
Characteristic construction
Soft, Neapolitan-influenced, cut close for a slimmer build
Age of the bespoke trade
Roughly since 2010

Bespoke tailors in South Korea

All bespoke tailors →
  1. 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. B&Tailor Seoul

    The Seoul house that put Korean tailoring on the international map, largely through photographs.

Tailoring styles

All styles →
  1. A soft-shouldered jacket on a modern stand Contemporary Korean tailoring Seoul

    A Neapolitan method re-cut for a different body, by a trade that is barely fifteen years old.

Cities

  1. Seoul, home of the newest serious tailoring scene in the world 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.
Last reviewed: September 2026 Report an error on this page

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Tailoring styleContemporary Korean tailoring CitySeoul Bespoke tailorB&Tailor CountryJapan CountryChina CityHong Kong
Picture credits 4
  1. Front view of Heungnyemun Gate in Gyeongbokgung Palace Seoul South Korea: Photograph · Basile Morin · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
  2. 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
  3. A soft-shouldered jacket on a modern stand: Original art · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale original art
  4. Cloth Shop "Olivethey" in Gangnam Seoul - DSC00435: Photograph · Daderot · Wikimedia Commons · CC0

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