This cotton suit from Luca Museo has been through a few ups and downs, and even now I don’t think it’s quite right. 

The first suit the Korean tailors made me, covered here, was a great fit and an interesting style, larger on the body than anything I’d had before. I’ve come to like it, while also feeling it’s not quite my core style. 

The guys said they could make something slimmer and less roomy, so we decided to try that last year. They certainly reduced the drape and fullness through the body, but took it a little too far. The shoulders remained fairly wide – as wide as any other tailor I’ve used – but the body was surprisingly close.

We had had one fitting as well, so I was going to cover the suit at that point, particularly as it was the tail end of summer. This was August 2025, and we shot it in Zurich at the beginning of September (below), when we were in the city for a reader event with Trunk. 

Most of the fit was not bad at all – the hard things like the balance and the collar fit were solid. Throughout, the Luca Museo team have been good at this, in common with other Korean tailors such as Assisi and B&Tailor. 

But style wise the suit was an odd combination, and the trousers were also a little too slim to be comfortable. 

We arranged another fitting in January this year, at Pitti, and I received the suit a couple of months later. While the jacket had been improved, the trousers were strange – let out a lot in the hem, but still tight in the fork and seat. I had to have them adjusted locally before they were wearable. 

My idea for the suit had been that it would be an update to the Elia Caliendo one I had made 10 years ago, and sadly no longer fits (above). Those lightweight cottons make for wonderful summer suits, particularly in earthy colours, and are a nice alternative to classic linen. 

While the style of Luca Museo would be rather different to the soft, rounded cut of Neapolitan Caliendo, I was hoping that the extended shoulder would add some elegance without sacrificing the lightweight feel. A little like a Roman suit, perhaps, with lightness suited to the heat but a little more classicism in the silhouette.

I think I was right in that this would have been a nice style, but the Luca Museo suit still feels like a slightly odd combination of cuts, and while I will wear it, I think it was a mistake to try and get the tailor to change their normal style. 

Of course this is a mistake I’ve made in the past and even written about to try and hammer home to myself – ‘Let the tailor cut his style’ – but here I wasn’t asking for anything radical, just a slightly slimmer fit than the distinctly large one of the first suit. 

Like many things with commissioning bespoke, the problem probably comes down to communication, and having a suit made that is the style you can see around you – hanging up, on the tailors themselves – is one form of communication: you see a style of suit, you get it made to your shape in a material you pick. 

Verbal communication becomes more important when you want to diverge from this, and here it was lacking. The language skills of the Luca Museo team aren’t bad, but they aren’t perfect, and communication is also not just about language but the willingness to ask questions, to make a situation awkward by double-checking things. 

General communication isn’t something the team have been great at either, for example in letting me know when a suit will be ready, or when they will be visiting. This isn’t helped by the fact that they are represented by Hong Kong shop Coller, and it’s not always clear who is in charge. (I asked for clarification on this and it’s detailed at the end.)

If the style of Luca Museo works for you, and you can get ready, consistent access, then they remain a great option. They’re reasonably priced and as I said, are great technically. 

Our colleague Manish had a great suit made for him (above), which certainly suits him, and he’s having another made currently. He covered his first suit (and compared it to mine) here. 

But otherwise I would proceed with caution. I have told all this to the Coller team, of course, as we always do – there is no desire to gazump anyone – and they seem to have understood. 

More than anything else, I hope we can help emerging tailors find the most effective way to become successful in the long term, because that’s how bespoke businesses are built. When bespoke is running well, it really is the most rewarding and beautiful way of buying clothing. But it’s not an easy business to establish.

Bespoke cotton suit from Korean tailors Luca Museo, via Hong Kong store Coller. Cloth: Holland & Sherry 9oz cotton, 276009. Price $3800.

Coller’s founder Jaden Chan is also the overseas director for Luca Museo, which can cause confusion. Coller is based in Hong Kong and also has its own tailoring lines, with production in Hong Kong, Korea and Japan. Luca Museo contributes the Korean part of that production. Coller tailoring is divided into Red and Black lines, with the red being more in-house and the black done directly by the artisans in those countries. 

Other clothes in the main outfit:

• White linen shirt by D’Avino
• Vintage tan leather belt
• PS boat shoes
• Ichizawa Hanpu tote, via Trunk
• EB Meyrowitz sunglasses