By the ’80s and ’90s, Japanese style had become much more sophisticated. America (and to a lesser extent Britain) was still a major sartorial influence, but kick-started by Armani’s meteoric rise, many tailors also began looking to the soft shapes coming out of Italy for inspiration. “Lots of tailors started going over to Italy and many of them actually trained there,” says Marx. “The idea of going to the source and studying, training and learning the craft and bringing it back and just mastering it – that, I think, is an old pattern [in Japan]. What was new was having Italy in their eyes.” This had a huge influence on both bespoke tailors such as Tailor Caid, Tailor & Cutter, Sartoria Ciccio and Pecora Ginza as well as larger, more established makers like Ring Jacket, which today is famous for its distinctively Neapolitan influence.

Anyone who has worn a Ring Jacket garment knows how expertly they’re constructed, from the beautiful collar-shoulder-sleeve line, to the gently suppressed body shape and beautiful cloths, many of which they weave themselves. The lines are distinctly Neapolitan, but there’s possibly an even greater emphasis on extremely fine hand-work that belies the country of origin. Where Italian tailoring is louche, here it is both soft and sharp at once. “If you look at Ring Jacket, it’s a good time for them because they’ve spent decades behind the scenes honing a lot of stuff that now people are educated about and really care about,” says Marx. “It’s given them an opening to emerge and make that story of really beautiful construction and elegant style be enough.” It’s a trend that Marx calls the “cult of production”. “Suddenly it’s not about the designer or brand name, it’s about how it’s made, who made it and what it’s made from – those kinds of things that 15 or 20 years ago people might not have cared about.”

How did the Japanese become so good at this kind of tailoring? Firstly, there is an undeniable culture of craftsmanship in Japan, with a great many businesses and traditions leveraged around making very intricate things at a very high level of quality. Secondly, it’s important to remember that to learn a foreign craft, the Japanese often have no choice but to learn it at its point of origin. “If you think of Neapolitan tailoring, if you grew up in Japan, you have no actual experience of seeing the people around you wear this clothing,” says Marx. “So if you’re suddenly like, ‘I’m into Neapolitan tailoring and this is my thing’, the only way to know how to legitimately do it, because there’s no natural and organic way, is to go to the source and try to be as detail-oriented as possible about learning what makes it perfect, so that when you go home to make it or teach it to other people, you’re beyond reproach because you learned at the source and you know it as closely as anyone else.”