A man’s armor. What you wear so you don’t have to decide what to wear. The uniform your boss demands. The suit is all these and none. It is menswear’s default item. The endlessly played on – and often played out – spine of every wardrobe and every new collection. Your first suit is a transition into adulthood. Your last, the final thing you’ll ever wear.

Yet still men mess it up. They sweat in winter wool when it’s 30 degrees out. They opt for peak lapels when their chest is already wide enough. And, worst of all, they buy suits that don’t fit. That sag in the shoulders and pinch in the seat. That puddle on pointy – always pointy – shoes. Why? Because a tailor, once a man’s confidant, is now somewhere he goes just to have a button sewed back on.

No surprise that so many suits are a mess. The ready-to-wear rail won’t mention, subtly, that a looser jacket might sit better over sir’s stomach. When you want something to wear for the rest of your life, you should go to someone who knows their way around a needle and thread.

Henry Poole & Co, 15 Savile Row

Best For: 200 Years Of Tradition

Savile Row is rightly lauded as the suit’s spiritual home. It was here (or hereabouts, at least) that Beau Brummell first commissioned a wardrobe that would change how society dressed forever – first in Britain, then around the world. For the ensuing two centuries, many of the same tailoring houses have continued that legacy, with none more storied than Henry Poole & Co.

Founded in 1806, the brand has some notable firsts, most famously the dinner jacket, which it invented in 1860 for the Prince of Wales (a friend of whom debuted his own at New York’s Tuxedo Club, 26 years later. The name stuck).

Its tailors have dressed European royalty, Far Eastern emperors (the Japanese for ‘suit’ is sabiro, a bastardization of ‘Savile Row’) and even military heroes – Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle are both in its pattern book.