A few months ago, Brioni contacted me to ask if I would be interested in having a suit made, in order to review it.  Not knowing much about the Brioni product, I was a little unsure. Invitations to cover other big-brand made to measure have not alwa...

This Brioni jacket was made for me under their bespoke programme, using the London store on Bruton Street. We also made a pair of cotton trousers, which I cover lower down, and a shirt.  In our previous article, I made the case for Brioni as a bespo...

The most relied upon measures of luxury today are the materials used in a garment and how much manpower went into it. The second of those measurements might not be as straightforward as you think. True bespoke is done by one tailor, from scratch, to ...

By Manish Puri Whilst the recent sun in London has brought a sugar rush of excitement for the warmer days that lie ahead, it also brings a more troubling, recurring question: how do I usually dress for summer? It shouldn’t be difficult to answer. A...

By Manish Puri Whilst soft tailoring is hardly a new concept, there’s something about unstructured tailoring that feels particularly in sync with modern life: it’s indisputably more casual, reframes imperfections as characteristics, is lighter in...

The reason Milan became the centre of Italian fashion was Florence and Rome couldn't sort out a fight.  Italian clothing itself became successful abroad because people were tired of the 'haughty, arty' French.  Spurred by our recent discussion of A...

I’ve been a fan of Brioni co-CEO Andrea Perrone’s personal style ever since issue 2 of The Rake. Perrone was the cover star, part of a feature on Brioni and wearing a checked sportscoat with a dark cardigan, white shirt unbuttoned at the neck. Ev...

Jonathan Clay runs a suit-making facility in Italy, supplying high-end English and foreign retailers. His father did too – d’Avenza – and here Jonathan explains that story: how Italians learnt manufacturing from the English, and then ran with i...

Italian brands like Canali, Corneliani, Zegna and Pal Zileri all place a lot of emphasis upon the family ethic of their production and the hand-made nature of their suits. At least with the highest label, such as Zegna’s Couture or Sartoriale at Pa...

Timothy Everest is a beast of many parts. A tailor who began his career sketching designs for Tommy Nutter, lauded at one point as a saviour of Savile Row alongside Ozwald Boateng and Richard James, he now keeps a delightfully eccentric townhouse in ...

After long gestation, The Rake magazine has finally launched its coffee-table book, Hand of the Artisan: The Soul of Italian Luxury. It is a tour through 17 different Italian manufacturers, heavily illustrated with handsome, technical and usually bla...

This jacket from Sartoria Pirozzi doesn’t really need a normal review.  The point of it was to cover the tailor again because they are now coming to London frequently, having taken a share of a space in Shepherd Market.  And it was to check the q...

Although some of our collaborations have been rather esoteric (purple slippers, cashmere ascots), the most satisfying Permanent Style products have always been wardrobe staples. Our next - available exclusively in the Savile Row pop-up shop from to...

   Swedes may be the best-dressed men on earth. At their best, they combine the classicism of the English with the flair of the Italians - without the stuffiness of the former or showiness of the latter.  (Don't let it go to your head guys. Th...

The Rake is simply the best magazine for classic men's style out there. It is only three issues old, and already it has featured the history of Brioni, a technical explanation of the seven-fold tie and an analysis of the fit of both trousers and coat...

 My interview with Jonathan Clay last week went down well with readers - perhaps because he's not the kind of person that would normally be interviewed. As the supplier of Italian ready-made suits, he sees all sides of the industry, but rarely talks...

As anyone who has been fortunate enough to visit Milan will tell you, the city is not all fashion. There are several old and new stores worth the visit for those interested in classic menswear. By reputation, the city’s three stand-out establishmen...

Men wear fewer suits today, as we all know. But they retain the need for a jacket, if only to appear smart or professional. Two of my friends, a doctor and a teacher, are particular examples. Their jobs do not require them to wear a suit, yet a jacke...

By Manish Puri “That was the day I learned how dangerous a color can be. That a boy could be knocked off that shade and made to reckon his trespass. Even if color is nothing but what the light reveals, that nothing has laws, and a boy on a pink bik...

In the continuing vein of exploring sports shirts - casual, vintage-styled, often rayon or silk - I chatted a couple of months ago to my friend Jack Sepetjian, who runs Anto shirts in LA.  I first got to know Jack when he spoke at our Shirtmakers Sy...

There has been a fair amount of excitement in London at the opening of the new Aimé Leon Dore shop in Soho – their first outside the US. I can understand why. New menswear stores are rare at the moment, the dominant narrative being of stores closi...

It was nice to see Pitti back in some kind of working order recently, when I attended for the first time in two years.  Attendance was still down, with many brands absent and indeed an entire building empty. That was a little shocking to see - just ...

Please read part one of this article, here, before this one. Without that context, setting out my priorities, this summary will likely be misleading. Everyone is different, wants different things from bespoke, and simply gets on with people differen...

This bespoke jacket was made for me by Paolo Martorano, the tailor in New York I first covered in 2020.  It’s particularly significant because of the dearth of bespoke tailors in the US. Although many tailors travel to the US from the UK and Europ...

“The therapy I never knew I needed.” That was how one reader described our reader dinner at Huntsman last year, and this year’s was no different. Ten winning readers came to the event, with four flying in specially from Spain, Italy and German...