Luca Museo navy three-piece suit: Review
Yeah, the collar on this shirt is kinda high. I remembered it as soon as I saw these images - it was one I tried with a higher collar in order to wear with my A&S tailoring, which always has a high collar itself. It looks nice with those pieces, but it’s really too much for everything else.
Don’t let that distract you from this suit from the Korean tailor Luca Museo. It is both excellently cut and rather interesting.
Interesting because the style is quite extreme but well hidden. It's probably the biggest jacket I've ever had. The shoulders measure seven inches along the seam, which is the same as my A&S (see our Tailor’s Style series) but a chunk of wadding in the sleeve head gives them an extra half inch. We even brought the shoulders in from their standard width, because I thought it looked too big.
Apart from that wadding at the end, the shoulder is only lightly padded, with nothing but canvas at the end nearest the neck. This makes everything lighter, but also means you sometimes get a fold halfway along the shoulder when you move or turn. That's shown a little bit in the image below.
There's also a lot of drape in the chest, and the armhole isn’t particularly small. The result is that while the top half of the jacket is both flattering and comfortable, it also moves as you move, riding up and off the neck a little.
I mentioned in my introductory article on Luca Museo that they have quite a few clients who are regular gym goers, and so are quite built. I can see this cut working well on them. There would be plenty of room for the pecs and traps and lats without the material being tight, and they’d look even bigger than they actually are.
None of this should take away from the execution of their particular style, which is excellent. The jacket is clean in the front and good on the back, with only a little drape under the blades (despite the actual volume there).
The lapels have a nice curve from the chest down to the buttoning point; the ‘barchetta’ breast pocket is subtle. The only issue I could find anywhere was on the waistcoat, which could do with being closer to the back of the neck.
Pleats are not an easy thing to fit on me, often splaying (and then staying splayed) by my hips and seat. But the backward-facing pleats on these trousers sit very cleanly (as did those from fellow Korean tailors Assisi).
The finishing is also good - as you can see in the close-up images above and below. Having spoken to a few customers of Korean tailoring while in Seoul, this seems to be the area tailors have improved most recently.
The only thing I don’t like about the finishing is the prominence of the pick stitching. There’s quite a bit of it and it is a little large. Almost like the machine stitching that some brands put on their ready-made suits, in order to make them look hand crafted.
That AMF machine (named after the original maker, American Machine and Foundry) has been so overused in recent decades that I wonder whether anyone gets the connection any more - that those decorative stitches are meant to replicate the functional handwork of a tailor.
I explained in my first article on Luca Museo that this suit was something they wanted to make for me, and so some of the choices were theirs.
This includes the waistcoat, which I wouldn’t normally have, and the purple lining. Actually, I just remembered today that my first ever bespoke navy suit had purple lining, from Graham Browne way back in 2010.
The waistcoat also necessitated high-waisted trousers - there’s nothing worse than trousers that leave a ‘muffin top’ of shirt material between their waistband and the bottom of a waistcoat. My trousers are not, of course, normally high waisted (true high rise, up above the hip bones). But it is nice to have this option in the wardrobe alongside my normal cut. There are a couple of shorter sweaters and such that could with the extra coverage.
I was interested in trying a navy suit, and I will use it for smarter occasions. Maybe not in such a City shirt-and-tie combination, but it is still fun to show those kinds of looks. A printed silk tie (often Hermes, like this) with a blue shirt and a navy suit used to be such a uniform.
The material is from Lessers, using Lumb’s Golden Bale wool. It’s light and fine, but also dry and with some nice texture. Four ply, 370g.
Unfortunately it's not currently available, but it does remind me that there are some lovely similar worsteds in the No.305 Lumbs Golden Bale collection, for anyone looking for a high-quality suiting without the sleek or shine of most superfines.
The shirt with the tall collar is from D’Avino, in a superfine grey/blue cotton. Here, the superfine fibre creates a massive amount of wrinkling, as partially visible above. I don’t mind this too much, as I know what comes as a result - that very light, very soft feeling. But it isn't what I'd recommend to most people, particularly given the accompanying high prices. More on superfine cotton shirtings here.
That shirt collar is actually only 0.5cm taller than my usual shirts, which are 4.5cm (measured on the back of the collar stand). It’s amazing that half a centimetre makes a difference, though I guess it is 11% bigger, so proportionally more.
Lower collars, like a lot of my workwear shirts, are often 4cm high. So the same decrease as this is an increase. The new Friday Polos have that, and again the difference is noticeable.
Luca Museo are producing some really good tailoring, at a fairly affordable price - $3800 for full bespoke, with other options going down to $2000 (see list below). They also have a lot of style, which is clear from their atelier in Seoul, and visit New York.
I’m not sure the cut of the jackets is one I'll want to pursue going forward, but I am having a Neapolitan-style pea coat made that we fitted at the same time, so it will be interesting to see how that turns out.
For more details on Luca Museo, see our introductory article here.
Luca Museo offer three levels of make: Blue, White and Black label.
- Black is the full bespoke, this suit
- White is bespoke cut and fitted, but with some work (eg chest padding) done by machine
- Blue is made to measure, largely machine made and outsourced
Starting prices for each level (for a two-piece suit) are $2,000, $2,500 and $3,800. Trunk shows are currently held in New York, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Bangkok and Taiwan. All Asian trunk shows are hosted by Coller (prices might vary there slightly).
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Simon Crompton, DMT.NEWS, DMT BeautySpot,
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