Departments · Tailoring, wardrobe, shoes
Style
Style is not fashion. Fashion changes every season; style is a navy suit that fits, shoes that get better with age and a shirt collar that sits where it should. This is the department for men who want to get dressed once and be done with it.
We do not do trends. We do fit, fabric and proportion, the three things that decide whether a man looks assembled or dressed. Most of it is learnable in an afternoon and pays off for decades.
Start with the Tailoring Guide if you have never been measured properly. Then read about the navy suit, the five-shoe rotation and the overcoat, in that order. Everything else is detail.
In this department
The latest in Style
Style · Tailoring
The Only Suit You Actually Need
Navy, single-breasted, mid-weight worsted, from someone who measured you. Everything else about buying a suit is detail. Here is the detail.
Style · Shoes
Five Pairs of Shoes, Twenty Years
A Goodyear-welted shoe rested every other day and resoled twice lasts two decades. Five pairs cover a life. Here is which five and how to keep them.
Style · Outerwear
The Overcoat Is the Whole Outfit
For five months of the year nobody sees your suit. They see your coat. Spend accordingly, and buy it in this order.
Style · Shirts
How a Shirt Should Fit
Collar, shoulder, chest, sleeve, length. Five measurements, none of them optional. Most shirts fail at least two.
The tool for this
Tailoring Guide
Height, weight, chest and waist. Out come your jacket size in three systems, the drop, the cut that suits your build and the fit points to check in the mirror.
Reader poll
Which do you fix first?
Questions we get asked
Do I need a bespoke suit?
Almost certainly not. Good made-to-measure with a competent fitter gets most men to ninety-five percent of bespoke for a third of the price. Bespoke is for unusual bodies, unusual patience and unusual budgets.
How many suits does a man need?
If you wear them to work, three: two navy, one grey, rotated. If you wear them occasionally, one navy suit, one grey, one dinner jacket over a lifetime.
Are sneakers ever acceptable with tailoring?
Clean white leather sneakers with an unstructured cotton or linen jacket, yes. With a worsted business suit, no, whatever the fashion pages say this year.
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