Luxury menswear trends move at a bewildering pace these days. The upsurge in bespoke tailoring has pulled made-to-measure menswear and accessories into its slipstream.
At just 28, Angelo Di Febo is the youngest chief master tailor at venerated Italian fashion house Brioni. Dressed in a sharp Brioni suit, Di Febo discusses the future with youthful enthusiasm.
'The future is made-to-measure. More and more people here are interested in it,' he says, during a visit to Hong Kong - the penultimate stop of his tour of Asian cities that has also included Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Dalian.
Di Febo says this interest is due to the demand for more exclusivity. The newly wealthy tend to look to bespoke clothes offered by Savile Row tailors and traditional English and American shoemakers as the route to class and sophistication. But Di Febo points out that the Savile Row style is not for everyone.
'Savile Row culture is more aristocratic than Italian style, which is more fashion orientated,' he says. 'In Italian tailoring, we look to the fashions of the moment, the new linings, the new colours.'
Di Febo explains the difference between bespoke and made-to-measure. The latter sits somewhere between bespoke clothing and ready-to-wear. The difference is that, in made-to-measure clothing the alterations are made to a standard block pattern. In bespoke, the garment or accessory is made entirely from scratch. 'The method, the pattern is always the same,' Di Febo says. 'You can change some details such as the lining the length of the jacket, if you like the narrow style or the pattern. But the starting place is always the same.'
