Celebrating its bicentennial this year, Savile Row's founding father still makes an exemplary bespoke suit, its elegant West End cut impeccably hand-drafted from scratch. Poole's expert tailors have over 2,000 fabrics at their fingertips—from Huddersfield high-spun worsteds to vicuña cashmeres—and often hop the pond for U.S. sales visits.

Henry Poole & Co., 15 Savile Row
London W1S 3PJ, England
011 44 20 7734 5985

The unlikely brainchild of the architect/restaurateur Taavo Somer, this suit collection is as hardy as its name suggests, stitched from 12– to 20–ounce vintage and military fabrics salvaged from old English mills. Somer's signature items include low-waisted, boot-cut trousers and short jackets and vests, each made to measure by the Brooklyn tailor (and Bill Clinton favorite) Martin Greenfield.

Freemans Sporting Club, 8 Rivington Street
New York, NY 10002
(212) 228-4080

A California native, Tapia favors a distinctly modern American approach to tailoring, albeit from his Paris headquarters, channeling the slim, clean lines of John F. Kennedy's signature suits. Pants are another specialty. Tapia spent years traveling the world researching the perfect pair, and his have a durable cotton lining and rest naturally at the waist.

Michael Tapia, 25, rue Meslay
75003 Paris, France
011 33 1 42 71 08 75

This new collection from the former men's fashion director at Bergdorf Goodman runs the gamut from topcoats to boxers and is equal parts form and function. Michael Bastian's suit jackets feature working cuffs, his shirts have hidden shoulder vents for free-arm movement, and he even has a scarf made of heavy T–shirt fabric that you can wear home from the gym.

Michael Bastian at Bergdorf Goodman, 745 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10019
(800) 558-1855

Carlo Brandelli has single-handedly modernized the nineteenth-century Savile Row tailor shop, removing all things fussy and fusty. Many Kilgour (pronounced kill-gar) jackets have only one button, an updated quirk meant to lengthen the torso. Other improvements on tradition include coats with half-linings to diminish their bulkiness and suit patterns that resemble pinstripes but are actually linear patterns of dots and dashes.

Kilgour, 8 Savile Row
London W1S 3PE, England
011 44 207 734 6905

With his trademark high-water trousers and short-cropped jackets, Browne evokes what he considers the heyday of American fashion: the preppy look of J. Press and Brooks Brothers during the fifties and sixties. Yet since he balances his collection with sophisticated touches like jacket cuffs fortified with grosgrain or lined with an Oxford stripe, these clothes never seem like outgrown items from the attic.

Thom Browne, 17 Little West Twelfth Street, Suite 115
New York, NY 10014
(212) 633-1197