On the Wednesday night time of my latest journey to Seoul, there was a celebration to rejoice the anniversary of the native material company, Renovatio. The founder Sam Ahn invited everybody within the business, and over 200 individuals turned up.
I’ve by no means seen so many well-tailored males in a single place. They have been younger (on common), they have been fashionable (the occasional pink-shoed peacock aside) and so they have been all carrying fits and ties. It was fantastic.
Korea is just not an enormous market in comparison with the UK or Japan – and tiny in comparison with the US – but it helps a lot of tailors, from low-cost MTM to bespoke. Strolling round Seoul, you see extra tailoring-related retailers than in in all probability another metropolis, together with a number of alterations homes which have additionally expanded into making their very own issues.
That is significantly spectacular in a rustic the place (as I famous in our Seoul procuring information) few individuals put on fits. There is not the conservative workplace tradition of Japan, and most tailoring is worn by alternative.
Like Hong Kong, Seoul has all the time had a plethora of tailors, at a low degree. It’s fairly customary in a much less industrialised nation, and South Korea was poor for a very long time after the Korean Warfare ended. Prepared-to-wear style actually solely arrived strongly within the Nineteen Nineties.
But regardless of the next progress of style, bespoke or not less than personalised tailoring noticed an enormous resurgence round 10 years in the past. The pattern for craft and heritage hit onerous, and Seoul noticed many new tailor outlets arrange, in addition to larger consciousness of those who already existed.
B&Tailor was a part of that pattern. Head tailor Jung yul Park had been working his personal store since 1967, however it was when his sons caught the bug for tailoring that the model (and recognition) of the store was reworked. Chad particularly (above) confirmed he had a expertise for modernising bespoke model and for speaking it on-line.
The truth is two of the opposite robust tailors in Seoul, Assisi and Luca Museo, have members that labored at B&Tailor at one level. It’s nonetheless a small world, and inevitably one with intricate politics.
The primary foreign-trained tailor to arrange in Seoul, nevertheless, was Jeon Byeong-ha (above), who had educated in Naples with grasp Antonio Pascariello (a up to date of Noriyuki Ueki, now Sartoria Ciccio in Tokyo).
Jeon arrived again in Korea in 2013, and known as his atelier Sartoria Napoletana – a reputation which could appear generic to us, however makes good sense to explain what it does to Korean clients.
In recent times Jeon has added ready-to-wear to his providing, creating patterns for factory-made clothes which are offered in his atelier and in outlets resembling Parlour (below the label Sartoria Jun). This was largely a response to an issue discovering good apprentices, which has considerably restricted the quantity of bespoke he could make.
We visited the staff and noticed a number of the RTW, my favorite piece of which was a quilted jacket made in navy velvet (pictured prime). Designed to suit over tailoring, it was the proper size and sufficiently big within the shoulders to cowl my tweed jacket.
We additionally visited the brand new atelier of Assisi (above), the place I used to be having a last becoming on the light-grey summer season swimsuit (Ascot 4-ply from Drapers) we had began at Pitti.
Assisi are every thing that makes me enthusiastic about Korean tailoring. The usual of the work is sweet, the match (which I skilled right here) is extraordinarily good, and so they have actual model. Dabin is all the time carrying one thing I’d put on, which is freakishly unusual in bespoke.
It is smart if you see their atelier, as a result of every thing there’s fashionable. The lighting, the sound system, the furnishings. There’s the sort of style degree we’re extra used to seeing from MTM manufacturers resembling Saman Amel or Stoffa, however married handy craft.
Identical goes for Luca Museo (above). They’ve a beautiful, heat house simply off a significant procuring road within the south facet of Seoul. B&Tailor are close by, although Jun and Assisi are within the north (Assisi in a really wealthy residential space – the BTS home is up the road).
Luca began the enterprise after a few years at Sartoria Vanni, one of the established Korean tailors. The opposite two staff members are Chan, who began as a trouser maker at B&Tailor; and Ivano, who additionally began there however frolicked with Sartoria Raffaniello in Japan and Pirozzi in Italy.
I began the method of constructing a swimsuit with Luca Museo, so we’ll cowl that when it’s completed. They arrive to Pitti sometimes, together with in January, and that would be the mechanism for getting it achieved. They’re not travelling for trunk exhibits but, in contrast to B&Tailor and Assisi.
By way of model, Jun could be very Neapolitan however most others are a mixture of influences, together with some components of Florentine tailoring. Assisi is sort of beneficiant in its lower, as I famous in my evaluation, whereas Luca Museo has a penchant for roped shoulders (although they’re glad to melt them).
The one tailor that’s totally different in that regard is Donghyun Kim, aka Tranquil Home (above). Kim educated within the UK, finding out at London School of Vogue after which engaged on Savile Row.
Since returning to Korea he has proved standard as the one English-style tailor, and he’s helped manufacturers design patterns for his or her ready-to-wear as nicely. Kim has a beautiful house on the second flooring of a constructing in central Seoul, and once we have been there we noticed a number of the ready-to-wear shirts and trousers he now gives too.
Kim is especially dedicated to the thought of ‘rock of eye’ tailoring, the place some components of a buyer’s sample are drawn freehand. “I bear in mind how onerous it was to show that – to attract the oval form of an armhole as an example,” he informed us. “I used to go dwelling, swap out the lights, and draw 200 ovals on my espresso desk earlier than I went to mattress every night time. Ultimately I acquired it.”
Different notable tailors embrace Corallo Rosso, who studied at Istituto Secoli in Milan and labored as a tailor at Eduardo de Simone earlier than returning to Korea. He’s pursued extra of a tailoring academy enterprise and most of the present era of tailors in Korea have been college students.
There’s Hacheon, who I knew already from Sartoria Vestrucci in Florence as he had fitted me there up to now. He initially studied below Francesco Guida and solely got here again to Korea final yr. He’s presently organising his personal native tailor below the model title Ccalimala.
And at last there’s Lerici, which might be the perfect identified internationally (coated right here in Monocle) however just lately modified gear from a formal-wear store in an prosperous space of Seoul to a extra inventive outfit in a secluded home within the hills.
That they had an exhibition within the house once we visited, which was lovely. Seoul is surrounded by 4 mountains and also you rapidly stand up into the hills if you drive out. From the Lerici backyard you would look down on the previous city and see the broad Han river under.
The clothes we noticed was largely womenswear and non-formal tailoring, resembling quilted jackets. However a couture-like atelier behind glass panels was hand-sewing tailoring, and that was largely what was on the racks. It seems like Lerici is much less more likely to enchantment to PS readers, however it does exhibit the breadth of Korean tailoring at the moment.
I am going to go into extra element on every tailor when they’re coated in additional element sooner or later. I am going to additionally element issues like costs, though basically Korean tailors are at a reduction to European ones, even on trunk exhibits. See Assisi pricing right here for instance.
