The 50 Greatest Menswear Brands of All Time

50 Greatest Mesnwear Brands of All Time

Founder: Nudie Cohn

Year Founded: 1947

Most Western wear is built for work, but not the Western wear of Nudie Cohn. Cohn was a Ukranian tailor who got his start in the 1940s making clothing for country and western singers out of Hollywood. His first customer was Tex Williams, and his business grew into the 1970s. He was known for almost absurdly ornate designs - rhinestones, insane embroidery and wild colors were his hallmarks. He even customized cars, adding longhorn steer horn hood ornaments, silver dollars and embroidered seats. For sheer hutzpah, no one in menswear has ever topped Nudie.

Founder: Loro Piana

Year Founded: 1924

Loro Piana originally began in 1924 as an Italian wool mill, but the family behind the company have been textile traders since 1812. Like Zegna, the company has long moved beyond just textile production, and is now a fully integrated business where they produce a full menswear (and womenswear) line. All aspects of production – textile fabrication, garment production, marketing, and retail is controlled under one house. In the 1970s, they developed Tasmanian wool, which was effectively the world's first branded cloth. Today, they are the single biggest producer of cashmere fabrics.

Founder: David T. Abercrombie & Ezra Fitch

Year Founded: 1892

Before Abercrombie & Fitch was a teenybopper's nightmare, it was the greatest sporting goods store in the world. For nearly a hundred years, it sold safari suits, sporting tweeds, walking sticks, elephant guns, canvas tents and other accoutrements of the gentleman adventurer. The brand closed its flagship in 1977, and while it was briefly revived as a catalog and mall operation, it was purchased by The Limited in 1988 and transformed into what it is today. In its heyday, it famously sold to pith helmeted men like Theodore Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway, and it helped inspire sellers like the original Banana Republic and J. Peterman. In 2015, A&F brought on new creative director Aaron Levine, who had a hand in a complete rebranding in 2016.

Founder: Josef Knize

Year Founded: 1858

Established in 1858 by a Czech tailor, Knize has championed traditional men's clothing for over 150 years. In that time, they've offered ready-to-wear clothing, their own signature fragrance, a line of toiletries, and a world-class level of bespoke tailoring. The last of which is defined by their signature silhouette – three button front, side vents, soft shoulders, and what Alan Flusser once described as a "rounded-off shape." Something similar to Anderson & Sheppard and Caraceni in its emphasis on softness. It's perhaps one of the first cases of a company successfully operating as both a menswear brand and traditional tailoring house.

Founder: Amos Sulka and Leon Wormser

Year Founded: 1895

"Nothing from Sulka ever goes out of style," wrote the New York Times' Anne-Marie Schiro in 1985, but sadly, Sulka closed its doors in 2001. The brand was originally founded as a shirtmaking operation for husky firefighters and policemen, but became one of the world's most renowned men's brands. Sulka was best known for producing the finest accessories in the world - customers like Henry Ford and Clark Gable wore its neckties. Its smoking jackets and loungewear were also among the best money could buy. Search eBay for Sulka dressing gowns and find that enthusiasts still pay hundreds of dollars for Sulka's silks. There are often rumors that the brand will be revived, and we'd love to see it.

Founder: Thom Browne

Year Founded: 2003

Few designers have changed the course of men's fashion as much as Thom Browne. When Browne won the CFDA Menswear Designer of the Year award in 2006, his aesthetic was widely mocked. His suits were a riff on the company man suits of the early 1960s. They were produced in simple, conservative fabrics and colors (often gray flannel), with narrow lapels and a slim body. Most remarkable, though, were the proportions. Browne's suits still feature comically short bodies and are typically show with absurdly short trousers. People laughed, then and now, but they also took note. Today's suits and pants are dramatically shorter in the body and pant than ever before, a trend which can be traced directly back to Browne, and the tendency towards a revived (now cheeky) men's conservatism has to be attributed in no small part to Browne as well.

Founder: Robert Knight

Year Founded: Founded 1851, Trademark Registered 1871

Simply put, no brand says "underwear" like Fruit of the Loom. We could have put Jockey on this list instead, but I've always liked that fruit logo. Over the years, Fruit of the Loom has had its ups and downs - it was purchased from bankruptcy by Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway in 2002, and later acquired the Russel Corporation. It's still one of the strongest brands in menswear.

Founder: Ascot Chang

Year Founded: 1953

Ascot Chang may not be as storied as Turnbull & Asser and Charvet, but they're exceptional in that they've built a global brand off high-end custom shirtmaking. American and European tourists first came into contact with Ascot Chang in the 1950s, when Mr. Chang had just opened his first shop in Hong Kong. They were so impressed with his work that they helped spread his reputation when they returned to their home countries. Today, the company has sixteen shops throughout the United States and Asia, through which they sell high-quality custom shirts and a full range of ready-to-wear clothing. That's on top of the tours they do throughout the US and Europe, and the budding ready-to-wear label they have for younger customers.

Founder: Salvatore Ferragamo

Year Founded: 1928

Salvatore Ferragamo began as a man. Ferragamo the man moved from Italy to the United States in the teens, and to Southern California shortly after arriving. In Southern California, he cultivated a reputation as shoemaker to the stars and attended the University of Southern California, where he studied anatomy to improve his shoemaking. In the late twenties, he moved back to Italy, to Florence, and began making shoes on a mass scale. By the 1950s, his team of 700 workers was making 350 pairs of shoes a day. When Salvatore died in 1960, he passed the family on to his children, and his family still controls the company today. Ferragamo defined designer shoes for the American consumer, both male and female. Before Ferragamo, the idea of the Italian shoe—stylish, sleek, distinctive—was largely unknown in the United States. Ask an Italian shoemaker (I have) and they'll tell you that Ferragamos have slipped badly in quality over the last twenty years or so, but the legacy remains.

Founder: Ermenegildo Zegna

Year Founded: 1910

Ermenegildo Zegna is arguably the most successful of the fully-integrated firms in menswear. The company started as a fabric producer in 1910, but when the company's founder, Mr. Zegna, died in 1966, he left the company to his sons. They decided to use the company's reputation to capitalize on the then growing market for high-end Italian suits. By the 1970s, the company developed into a full menswear line, including the production of knitwear, neckties, and sportswear. Today, it controls almost every aspect of production – from working with breeders to ensure its sourcing of high-end raw materials, to the fabrication of textiles, to the designing and production of garments, to the marketing and selling of products both inside its own brand shops and other retail outlets.

Founder: Ciro Paone

Year Founded: 1968

Walk into a high-end department store in the United States or Europe, and it's almost certain that the finest ready-to-wear clothing they sell is made by Kiton. Kiton's basic suits cost between five and ten thousand dollars at retail, more than most Savile Row bespoke. They're known for exceptional fabrics and copious handwork, and have acquired suppliers like Carlo Barbera mills in order to ensure that they'll always have access to the finest fabrics. They are, simply put, the pinnacle of ready-to-wear tailoring.

Founder: Milton S. Florsheim

Year Founded: 1892

America's most famous dress shoe brand is almost certainly Florsheim. For more than a hundred years, the company has made traditional dress shoes. Florsheim are paritcularly known for their longwings, a style once associated with grandpas in cardigans, but now favored by the hip set. While Florsheim shoes has slipped dramatically over the past forty years or so, they've recently taken up efforts to improve the situation, introducing Goodyear-welted shoes made in India and a continuing collaboration with the designer brand Duckie Brown.

Founder: John Charles Cording

Year Founded: 1839

Cordings originally stood outside the gates of the City of London, offering sporting clothes to merchants heading in and gentry headed out. They moved to #19 Picadilly in the late 19th century and have operated there ever since. Their originally signature was waterproofed clothing, but over the years they broadened into other country clothes. Among the brands' signature products are a broad range of boldly-colored trousers, in moleskin, corduroy and other country fabrics. Indeed, their commitment to bold designs has long made them a favorite of both tweedy upper-class types and outrageous rock and rollers. Cordings also offer the definitional covert coat, originally designed for horseback riding and other country pursuits, but now one of the most important pieces of classic outerwear. In 2003, Eric Clapton helped the shop's management buy the store, and he remains their most famous booster.

Founder: Bill Blass

Year Founded: 1946

Bill Blass (began fashion career in 1946; created his own label in 1970) Bill Blass was often photographed wearing his cool glen plaid suits or casual American sportswear, and almost always had a sophisticated, New York, female socialite or two on his arms. He was arguably the first designer to wed his suave persona to the clothes he made. His designs were celebrated as being a distinctly American view of sporty sophistication and casual glamour. The kind of clothing a man would wear in his upstate home's den or downtown corporate boardroom. Eventually, he became as much of a brand as his clothing company, and so he began licensing this name like Pierre Cardin to anyone who would purchase it. Eventually, there were upwards of 56 licensed products, including Bill Blass window shades. Over extension and lack of a design successor meant a rather ignoble end for his company once he died of cancer, but his legacy is still highly respected by those familiar with it.

Founder: Hugo Boss

Year Founded: 1923

The German apparel company Hugo Boss started in 1923, but it wasn't until the mid-50s that they started making men's suits. Before that, they specialized in manufacturing workwear and Nazi uniforms (an affiliation that eventually led to their censure after the war). Sometime in the 1970s and '80s, they entered the high-end, men's fashion market, and soon their suits and jackets became popular through their association with actors such as Sylvester Stallone and shows such as Miami Vice. Unfortunately, in 1997, it was revealed that their Nazi uniform manufacturing factories used slave labor during the war (most likely concentration camp prisoners) – a fact that has since forced every writer describing Hugo Boss to mention this sad truth.

Founder: Tom Ford

Year Founded: 2004

There have been few more influential fashion designers in the last 25 years than Tom Ford. While much of his influence has been felt in womenswear, he's always made menswear a priority. In the 1990s, he helped save the brands Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent with inspired collections, and he's continued to succeed with his own brand since 2004. Ford's menswear is immediately recognizable: It features strong roped shoulders, a boldly nipped waist, and wide, louche lapels. No menswear designer has ever more effectively conveyed the simple idea of luxury, and the power that goes with it. And who better to exemplify exactly that than 007 himself, Daniel Craig, who wore exclusively Ford suits for the James Bond films Skyfall and Spectre?

Founder: Jacobi Press

Year Founded: 1902

In menswear, there's always a latent desire for a total rejection of fashion, for the creation of a Platonic ideal, unchanging and ever-reliable. In the United States, at least, the closest anyone's gotten to that standard is probably J Press. Go into a J Press today and you'll see pretty much the same clothes on the rack that you'd have found fifty years ago-with one addition: The York Street Collection, designed by young menswear mavens the Ovadia brothers. No other brand, not even Brooks Brothers, has married itself so closely to the traditional American "trad" uniform. The three buttons (rolled to two), the undarted sack coats, the tweed and paisley ties and brushed shetland sweaters. If it's not to your taste, so be it, but it's nice just to know that it's there. Even if these days it's owned by the Japanese.

Founder: Charles H. Alden

Year Founded: 1884

America's finest shoe company is Alden. When the company was founded in the late 19th Century, the Northeast was lousy with shoemakers, but today Alden is the only brand standing. Their product exemplifies the traditional American shoe: perhaps a bit staid and conservative relative to its Italian competitors, but finely made and democratically tasteful. Among their many achievements are the iconic boots worn by Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, the Model 405.

Founder: Guccio Gucci

Year Founded: 1921

Gucci may be as well known for its family melodrama as it is for its apparel designs and contributions. One of the founder's grandsons turned his father into the IRS for tax evasion, and another ended up allying himself with the Mafia (he was later gunned down in broad daylight, apparently as a hit ordered by his ex-wife). But what solidifies it as "one of the greats" is its invention of the Gucci loafer—a slip-on shoe distinguished by a metal horse bit or sporty striped band with the company's colors. This easily recognizable loafer soon became a staple for playboys, preppys, and anyone part of the monied or leisure class. Gucci's recent renaissance under creative director Alessandro Michele is a sign of its lasting relevance. 

Founder: Charles Macintosh

Year Founded: Patented 1830

How important is a single innovation? It's a question we struggled with as we compiled this list. Adding Mackintosh, though, was an easy choice. Only relatively recently has the Mackintosh brand become a luxury item; really this is a company all about an innovation. In the 1820s, the Scottish inventor Charles Macintosh (no "k") figured out how to impregnate cotton with rubber, thus creating the modern raincoat. That innovation has proved durable-the company still makes the definitional raincoat nearly 200 years later.

Founder: John Emary

Year Founded: 1851

Aquascutum may be well less known today than Burberry, but it played no small role in helping popularize British outerwear. The company's founder, a tailor by the name of John Emery, is credited with having invented waterproof wool, hence his company's name, which means "watershield" in Latin. Since its founding, the brand has outfitted notables such as Humphrey Bogart, Winston Churchill, Cary Gant, and Edmund Hillary (significantly, for his historic climb of Everest). They also made one of King Edward VII's riding capes, tailored from a fabric the King designed himself (the famous Prince of Wales check). The King was so impressed with the work that he granted the company a Royal Warrant.

Founder: Thomas Burberry

Year Founded: 1856

Burberry earned it's reputation for one thing: Trench coats based on the sturdy, weather-proof gabardine fabric it developed in 1880. Its earlier prototype for this garment was the Tielocken, a long, belted military coat worn by British officers during the Boer War. In WWI, the British War Office asked Burberry to bring its Tielocken back, but with some additions. Epaulettes were put into the shoulders so that the Sam Brown belt–which was used to hold the soldier's guns, ammunition, and sword–could be held in place. D-rings were added to the coat's fabric belt so that there would be a place to hang grenades. The gun flap was used to pad the shoulder against recoil. This wartime garment has now become one of the most iconic foul-weather coats for civilian men and women alike. Today the brand is a well regarded fashion house with full collections worth coveting, but its roots in outerwear paved the way.

Founder: Giuseppe Borsalino

Year Founded: 1857

What would this list be without a hat company? Hats have fallen largely out of favor relative to their peak in the middle of the 20th century, but they're still an essential, and no brand says "fine hats" like Borsalino. Borsalino hats have been worn by great hatmen like Humphrey Bogart, Warren Beatty and Gary Cooper. While Borsalino hats are perhaps a step below the quality they once were, they're still one of the best hat brands you can buy in a store, and there's no name that says hats like Borsalino.

Founder: Gianni Versace

Year Founded: 1978

Versace is perhaps one of the first brands to really develop a full, encompassing lifestyle line. The company's founder and designer, Gianni Versace, made it fashionable for men to be flamboyant and loud in their sexuality. He designed shirts with vivid, flashy patterns, and bold suits that made men look like they were on a perpetual cruise-vacation. Versace's brand never became as successful as Ralph Lauren's, since it wasn't available at price points that most people could afford, but it still helped define a very specific, all-encompassing, flamboyant look, carried on today by Gianna's sister Donatella.

Founder: Rene Lacoste and Andre Gillier

Year Founded: 1933

Can you even imagine a world without the tennis shirt? René Lacoste was a tennis superstar in the 1920s and 30s, known as The Crocodile. His signature was the tennis shirt-you might know it as the polo shirt-a knit, short-sleeved sport shirt which we all know today but was quite new at the time. His featured a crocodile on the breast-a nod to his nickname-and he started selling them in the early 1930s. The revolution was multi-part: He helped popularize casual sports clothing, he created a preppy classic, and he helped invent branded clothing and athlete-endorsed brands. Quite a legacy.

Founder: John Barbour

Year Founded: 1894

There are few things more distinctively British than British country dress. The Italians and Americans have put their stamp on the lounge suit, but British country dress remains largely untouched. In this category, Barbour stands as one of the field's most important and defining companies. Their iconic, dark-green, waxed-cotton jackets with brown corduroy collars and characteristic plaid linings have been seen on everyone from The Queen to common country Brits. As such, Barbour's practical, no-nonsense, oiled cloth jackets have come to symbolize a certain kind of equality and simple-country values that have helped made them popular around the world.

Founder: Rei Kawakubo

Year Founded: 1969

Japanese label Comme des Garçons began in 1969 as a womenswear line, but it expanded to include men's clothing in the late '70s. The company's founder and head designer, the reclusive and highly secretive Rei Kawakubo, is famous for her creative, avant garde approach to fashion and clever deconstructions of tailoring. In the '80s, she was known for her all-black, "anti-fashion" collections, but has since come to embrace bolder, more colorful designs. Tailored glen plaid jackets with silk ties sewn onto the fronts, for example, demonstrate her more artistic view of menswear. She's also known to have financially launched Junya Watanabe's label, who used to work for her as a pattern maker, along with her support of current favorite Gosha Rubchinskiy.

Founder: Issey Miyake

Year Founded: 1971

In a world where silhouettes and styles get recycled by traditional tailors and fashion designers alike, Issey Miyake has delighted in being at the avant garde of technology, art, and men's clothing. For example, in 1997, he began research on A-POC (a piece of cloth), a new production process whereby clothes could be made without sewing. Here, yarn was fed into one end of the machine, and a tube with pre-marked seams emerged at the other end to create the intended garment. By drawing on inspiration from architecture, fine art, and furniture, Miyake has made his audiences reconsider everything from seams to textile fibers to shapes to silhouettes.

Founder: Yohji Yamamoto

Year Founded: 1972

There are few designers as successful as Yohji Yamamoto when it comes to unconventional menswear designs. In his time, Yamamoto has created beautifully poetic and radically draped silhouettes; worked with mills to develop new ways of finishing fabrics; and came up with a large range of interesting designs, such as his collection of tailored clothing made entirely out of knits. Not unlike how Ralph Lauren has created a label based on his fantasy, Yamamoto's designs are very much rooted in his specific worldview. Unlike Lauren and others, however, Yamamoto's work is arguably as much about art as it is about clothing (more so than many of his contemporaries, anyway).

Founder: George B. Cluett

Year Founded: 1851

Cluett, Peabody, & Co. was the parent company of Arrow, that brand of detachable collars with aspirational, Anglophilic names such as the Duncan, the Dover, and the Liberty. These were the most widely worn collars in the world at one point. In addition to making popular shirts, the Arrow Company also hired artist J.C. Leyendecker to develop an ad campaign. He came up with the Arrow Collar Man, which then become widely admired for the next twenty years (particularly among women, interestingly). By the mid-1920s, men started to dress more casually, and the days of the stiff, detachable collar was drawing to a close. Arrow then decided to switch from making collars to shirts. In effort to find a shirting that would not shrink in the wash, Sanford Cluett, a nephew of the company's founders, invented sanforizing, a process that of course we now principally to keep our jeans from shrinking.

Founder: George Henry Bass

Year Founded: 1876

G.H. Bass & Co. has one, but important, contribution: introducing the penny loafer. The origins of the penny loafer reach back to Norway, where Norwegian farmers made, wore, and sold their moccasin-style shoe to British sportsman, who in turn brought them back to the UK. Soon, Norway started exporting them to the rest of Europe, which is where G.H. Bass picked it up. They then designed their version with a distinctive leather strap and diamond cutout, and introduced it to the American market as "the Weejun," an acknowledgement of the shoes' derivation. Esquire soon talked about it, and not long after, the penny loafer became the sine non-qua shoe for the post-war "Ivy Look." It continues to be an American classic.

Founder: Tommy Nutter

Year Founded: Founded 1969 as Nutters of Savile Row

In 1969, the idea that a tailor could be a designer was revolutionary, almost absurd. But there was a new aesthetic movement underway in the UK, and Tommy Nutter stood alongside rock and rollers at the forefront. Nutter founded his house with help from Peter Brown, managing director of Apple Corps (the Beatles' corporate arm), among others, and his tastes were decidedly un-staid. His signature was an insanely bold look, with wide lapels, outrageous pattern-matching and bold colors. Nutter established the idea that a tailor could also make fashion, and forever changed menswear.

Founder: Ozwald Boateng / Richard James

Year Founded: 1995 (Ozwald Boateng) / 1992 (Richard James)

Every Savile Row tailoring house deserves a place on this list, but we've singled out Boateng and James not just because of the quality of their work, but because of its significance. Boateng started making bespoke suits as a very young man in 1990, and established a new vision for what a Savile Row tailor could be. Rather than call himself a tailor, he labeled himself a "bespoke couturier," bringing a sense of fashion and design to his work making custom clothing. James founded his house in 1992, with a similar vision. Both tailor-designers used bold colors to mark a contrast with the timid and conservative tailoring houses surrounding them. Together, they established a movement known as "The New Bespoke."

Founder: Kingdom of England (Royal Navy) / United States of America (US Navy)

Year Founded: 15th Century (Royal Navy) / 1775 (US Navy)

Much of menswear is drawn directly from military uniforms, and we thought we'd bend the rules a bit to acknowledge that fact. Certainly we could have picked the cavalry - though there's not a lot of horse-riding in the military these days - but we settled on the Navy as our representative. Of course, the most iconic military-civilian crossover garment of them all came from the Navy, the Peacoat, but the driving technological needs of the military pushed menswear further in innumerable ways. Where would we be without boot-cut pants or melton wool or submariner's sweaters? Most important, though, is the blazer. It's a naval garment that many men rely on every day. Thanks, seamen!

Founder: Harris Tweed Authority

Year Founded: First woven at least 200 years ago, Harris Tweed Association established 1906.

Harris Tweed is a brand, but it isn't a clothing brand. It's the brand of a type of fabric, made in a particular manner in a particular place. Tweed has been made in Scotland for at least two hundred years, but it was a essentially a trade meeting, held in 1906, that created Harris Tweed. Harris Tweed is traditionally hardy cloth, woven by hand on foot-powered looms on the islands of Harris and Lewis in northern Scotland. It's the definitional tweed, made of the colors of the Scottish landscape, tough-wearing and beautiful. Today, tweed is made all over the world, but Harris Tweed remains the gold standard.

Founder: Reginald Turnbull and Ernest Asser

Year Founded: 1885

In many ways, Turnbull & Asser define the British shirt. Their flagship store, on London's Jermyn Street, is the anchor for a strip of great English shirtmakers, and has been since the very start of the 20th century. While T&A makes many garments besides shirts, shirts are their core business. The classic British style is a staid, often solid-colored suit, a simple tie and a bold shirt, and if you're looking for the shirt part of that equation, T&A is where you will likely head. The company offers bespoke and off-the-peg shirting, and has made shirts for Prince Charles since the Prince was a boy.

Founder: Henry Huntsman

Year Founded: 1849

Huntsman's name comes from its founder, one Henry Huntsman, but it applies in more than one way. Huntsman's clothing is heavily influenced by sporting garments. The house style is structured and sporty, with strong shoulders and a nipped waist-like a riding jacket. The company put down stakes on the Row in 1919, and has been there since, serving customers like Winston Churchill, Rex Harrison and Douglas Fairbanks.

Founder: Simon Ackerman

Year Founded: 1953

Simon Ackerman, a British expat living in New York City, decided in 1935 that he wanted create a British-made, Savile Row-quality suits line for the US market. Though he offered bespoke tailoring, his focus was mainly in ready-to-wear garments, which he produced at a factory Crewe, a railway town within the Cheshire county of England. The company was wildly successful in the 1960s, when stockists included Harrods and Saks Fifth Avenue. The company started to unravel, however, in the late '70s, when it was handed over the Austin Reed, who used the factory to produce for other brands besides Chester Barrie. It passed through a few more hands after the dot com bust of the late-90s, but is now going through a revival with its new owners, Prominent Europe, who has brought on Edward Sexton to create patterns for its latest collections.

Founder: Mariano Rubinacci

Year Founded: 1932

To the extent that it can be said there's a regional style of tailoring in Naples, The London House (also known as Rubinacci) was the principle actor in defining it. Up until the early 20th century, much of Neapolitan tailoring took after what was going on in London. That changed, however, when Vincenzo Attolini—at the time the head cutter at Rubinacci—decided to cut a new style of jacket that would be better suited to Naples' warmer climate and more casual culture. The shoulder line was made to rest more naturally, the canvassing used was a bit lighter, and the overall fit was one that was softer and more at-ease. This style of coat was then copied by many tailors in the region, and has arguably come to define a very distinct Southern Italian approach to tailored clothing.

Founder: James Poole

Year Founded: 1806

James Poole began tailoring in 1806. Henry Poole took over the business when James died, and moved it to Savile Row in 1846. Poole were the first tailors on the Row, and thus the house is known as The Founders of Savile Row. Perhaps their most notable sartorial achievement was the creation of the dinner suit, or tuxedo. As the story goes, an American businessman named James Potter asked Poole to copy a short smoking jacket he'd seen the Prince of Wales wear. When he received it, he began wearing it to his more informal dinners at his home club, the Tuxedo Club in Tuxedo Park, New York. The resulting sensation changed mens' fashion, and firmly established Poole as the creator of black tie.

Founder: Peter Gustav aka Per Anderson

Year Founded: 1906

Anderson & Sheppard offer perhaps the most distinctive and also perhaps the most influential product on Savile Row. The firm's founder was a protege of Frederick Sholte. Sholte was legendary for pioneering the "drape cut." This combines a small armhole and fitted waist with a generous chest and soft construction. The result is a comfortable suit that's easy to wear, but nonetheless emphasizes the masculinity of the wearer. Legendary clients have included Fred Astaire, Gary Cooper and even the writer and literary wit Fran Lebowitz.

Founder: Hedi Slimane

Year Founded: 2001 - 2007

The slim and fragile looking Hedi Slimane started designing for Yves Saint Laurent in 1997, creating slim, closely cut silhouettes that built on the minimalism of Helmut Lang and Jil Sander. In 2001, he switched to Christian Dior, where he created a conspicuously chic collection of superslim suits under the Dior Homme label. His very modern view of tailoring sparked a new interest in fashion suits among younger consumers, which arguably led to a greater interest in men's tailored clothing in general. His subsequent stint as creative director at Saint Laurent proved to be wildly successful, as well.

Founder: Helmut Lang (Helmut Lang); Jil Sander (Jil Sander); Mario Prada (Prada)

Year Founded: Helmut Lang founded 1986; Jil Sander brand founded 1968; Prada founded 1913

In the decade of grunge and hip hop fashion, Helmut Lang, Jil Sander, and Prada helped popularize a new, almost mod, sense of minimalism with their chic, pared down designer suits. In a way, it was a riposte to the flashier, shinier, sexualized sense of style in the 1980s (think Versace). This new austere, monochrome look for suits was popularized through movies such as Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, and arguably helped set the stage for Hedi Slimane's skinny suit fashions in the next decade.

Founder: Calvin Klein

Year Founded: 1968

Calvin Klein is an accomplished designer in his own right, but his greatest achievements were perhaps in marketing. In 1980, after having just introduced a line of designer jeans, Klein hired Richard Avedon to shoot a then 15-year-old Brooks Shield saying the now famous double entendre: "Want to know what gets between me and my Calvins? Nothing." Sexy and incredibly controversial, the ad helped pull in millions. It also set the stage for another controversial ad campaign he created with Bruce Weber, who shot men such as Olympic pole vaulter Tom Hinthaus in a variety of homoerotic images. These ads, along those created by Italian megahouse Gucci, helped define a new era of overt, highly charged sexual advertising for men's clothing. New creative director Raf Simons will be the latest designer charged with keeping Calvin Klein in the headlines.

Founder: Nazareno Fonticoli and Gaetano Savini

Year Founded: 1945

The world's fascination with Italian style can arguably be traced back to Brioni. In the mid-20th century, Brioni became a "tailor for the stars," dressing men such as Gary Cooper and Clark Gable both on and off the silver screen. Consequently, Americans (and later the rest of the world) fell in love the streamlined Roman suit—that broad shouldered, V-shaped silhouette that was simplified by having the cuffs, pleats, and pocket flaps taken out. Brioni made other important innovations, such as hosting the first menswear fashion show, which took place in Florence, Italy in 1957. But it's really their role in popularizing Italian style around the world that cements their position as one of menswear's greatest.

Founder: Thomas Hawkes and James Watson Gieves

Year Founded: 1717 (as Hawkes & Co.)

There are a number of Savile Row tailors on our list. We've chosen Gieves & Hawkes because they are both an important pioneering tailor and an important international brand. The house was founded at the beginning of the 18th Century, and gained its first Royal Warrant at the beginning of the 19th. They've made clothes for everyone from George III to Michael Jackson. Visit their headquarters at 1 Savile Row and you'll see Jackson's military-influenced uniforms along with the military uniforms that inspired them. Hawkes was one of the the first British tailors to sell ready-to-wear (which was then called "Immediate Wear"), and today it's the bulk of the brand's business.

Founder: Pierre Cardin

Year Founded: 1950

On the subject of brands, credit should be given to the man who first really capitalized on the power of branding: Pierre Cardin. Cardin made his first impression on menswear in the 1960s, after having introduced a new, "modern" line of collarless suits with columnar silhouettes. These were wildly popular with designers and the public alike (think of the stuff The Beatles wore). His greatest legacy, however, was in being the first designer to embark on lifestyle licensing. Cardin sold his name to people who would put it everything from calculators to toilets. His pioneering into the world licensing set a new precedent for what a menswear "brand" could mean, and many successful designers since have followed suit.

Founder: Giorgio Armani

Year Founded: 1975

There are few people who have had as revolutionary an effect on the suit's silhouette as Giorgio Armani. After working as a designer for Nino Cerruti's Hitman line, and then later as a freelancer for Zenga and Ungaro, Armani struck out on his own in the mid-1970s to create his own fashion label. He developed a radically new look for suits by literally taking the stuffing out and making a more relaxed silhouette. The result was a very distinctive, widely popular, "Armani look" that defined one of the most significant eras in tailored men's clothing.

Founder: Henry Sands Brooks

Year Founded: 1818

What's the significance of Brooks Brothers? They're perhaps the oldest major menswear brand in America. They introduced ready-to-wear suiting to America. They defined the American menswear aesthetic. That enough for you? Their list of innovations is long. By 1900, they'd introduced Foulard ties, the sack suit and the button-down shirt. By the '30s, they'd introduced summer suits, pink shirts, shetland sweaters, madras, argyle socks and the polo coat. If this portfolio of innovations looks familiar, it may be because it's essentially a list of the elements of classic American menswear. And of course Brooks Brothers remains vital today. The brand struggled through much of the eighties and nineties, as corporate casual came to rule the roost. It had a series of owners, including the British retail chain Marks & Spencers. Now, though, the brand is stronger than ever. It has nearly 300 stores, plus outlets across the country. It's branched into designer clothing with its Black Fleece brand, designed by Thom Browne, and still offers most of the classics that have long been associated with it. Brooks Brothers is the classic traditional American brand.

Founder: Ralph Lauren

Year Founded: 1967

In the mid 1960s, Ralph Lauren was a salesman at Brooks Brothers. He'd served in the army and dropped out of business school. He was the son of European Jewish immigrants. And he was about to change menswear forever. In 1967, he founded Polo. Originally, he sold wide, 1930s-inspired neckties. (They were fashion-forward at the time.) In 1970, he won the Coty American Fashion Critic's award for his menswear line, which was driven by the same aesthetics. In the forty-plus years since, he's never lost his reverence for that golden age of American and British style. Why is Ralph Lauren our top choice? He's managed to create brands that exemplify classic style. He is by far the most globally-significant designer driven by menswear. He's delivered a stylish, quality product to consumers at every price point, from the high-end Purple Label to the most basic American Living. He is everything to everyone, but he somehow does it well. Speaking of which: Ralph Lauren also represents the triumph of the brand. Ultimately, fashion is transformational, and when Ralph Lifschitz became Ralph Lauren, he defined what that could mean for literally hundreds of millions of people. His designs represent an aspirational aesthetic that's somehow also democratic. Ralph Lauren is, to put it bluntly, the king of menswear.