How we assess

The honest starting point

There is no measurement that determines which tailor is best. Fit is personal, taste is not arguable, and the qualities that separate excellent work from very good work (the set of a collar, the shape of a chest, how a garment looks after five years) resist scoring. Anyone presenting a numerically ranked list of the world's tailors is either selling something or has not thought about it.

So this site does two different things and keeps them apart. It records facts, which are sourced and dated. And it occasionally offers assessment, which is opinion, is labelled as such, and follows the method below.

What an assessment considers

• Construction. What is actually done by hand, what the canvas and chest are built from, how the garment is finished inside. Verifiable, and the closest thing to an objective factor.
• Consistency. Whether the house's output is uniform, or whether the result depends heavily on which cutter you get.
• The fitting process. How many fittings, at what stage, and whether the house will start again when something is wrong.
• Distinctiveness. Whether the house has a recognisable style of its own, and whether it can execute that style rather than merely describe it.
• Historical contribution. Whether the house or its cutters changed how clothes are made, which is a different question from whether its current work is the best available.
• Documented customer experience over time, weighted towards long-run accounts rather than a single commission.

Price is not a factor in assessment. It is recorded, prominently, so you can weigh it yourself.

What an assessment is not

Not a score. Not a claim that one house is better than another for you. Not a substitute for going, seeing the work, and talking to the cutter. And never influenced by whether the subject has cooperated with us: a house that declines to speak is not marked down for it, and one that gives generous access is not marked up.

Ordered lists

Where a page presents an ordered list, the ordering rule is stated at the top of the table and is a factual one: price, founding year, lead time, alphabetical. The site does not publish ordered lists of "best" makers, because the ordering would be fiction. A page titled "the best tailors in Naples" on this site is a guide to what is there and how the houses differ, not a league table.

Paid placement

None exists. If it ever does, it will be labelled in the body of the page and excluded from every comparison and list. See the editorial policy.