{"id":644167,"date":"2026-08-18T19:51:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T19:51:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/644167\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T19:51:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T19:51:18","slug":"suit-you-sir-elegance-and-craft-from-a-south-korean-tailor-with-that-touch-of-italian-style-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/644167\/","title":{"rendered":"Suit you, sir! Elegance and craft from a South Korean tailor, with that touch of Italian style \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunghyun Yoo\u2019s journey from South Korea<\/a> to becoming one of the only outsiders ever to become a master tailor <\/a>of Naples <\/a>began the day he first saw a Neapolitan tailored jacket.<\/p>\n

Fascinated with dress from an early age in his native city of Gyeongju, Yoo had long been making his own clothes when he couldn\u2019t find what he wanted to wear.<\/p>\n

He had spent eight years working as a fashion designer in Seoul but felt restless, unsatisfied with the lack of \u201ccraft\u201d in the system, in which designers would draw patterns and manufacturers would create the clothes mechanically elsewhere.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0A touch of Savile Row opens up on Dublin\u2019s Pearse StreetOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Then he happened upon the jacket: a hand-sewn piece of Neapolitan tailoring that a South Korean traveller had brought back home from Italy. It changed everything for Yoo.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was soft \u2013 in the sleeves too, in the shoulder,\u201d Yoo recalls, in the small tailoring house in the old town of Naples<\/a>, Sartoria del Signore, where he now makes suits by hand as an officially recognised Italian artisan.<\/p>\n

The jacket had the classic \u201cspalla camicia\u201d or shirt shoulder, the slightly rippling seam where the upper sleeve meets the shoulder that is a traditional feature of classic Neapolitan tailoring and makes the suit move with the body rather than bunching up.<\/p>\n

Yoo\u2019s decision was immediate.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had been married a year, and he told me: \u2018I want to go to Italy. To Naples. No other city. If that\u2019s where this came from, I want to go there\u2019,\u201d remembers Minjae Song, his assistant and partner.<\/p>\n

Friends were baffled. \u201cHe had never even been to Italy,\u201d says Song. Back then, she was working as a graphic designer in a Seoul publishing house. \u201cI\u2019m a bit of a strange wife,\u201d she says. \u201cI saw him as an artist, as a dreamer, and I wanted to support him.\u201d<\/p>\n

They both quit their jobs and arrived at Naples airport with four suitcases in November 2017. They threw themselves into Italian lessons and began working up a letter to introduce Yoo to the master tailors of the city.<\/p>\n

\"YooYoo founded Sartoria del Signore in 2022. Photograph: Naomi O’Leary <\/p>\n

Naples has a centuries-old tradition of top bespoke men\u2019s wear tailoring, and is still thought to have the highest concentration of master tailors in the world. But the tradition is fading.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a closed world,\u201d says Song, as Yoo (39) arranges bolts of material on his sewing table, half-finished suits hanging around him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe masters are getting old. They all want to pass their skills on to their children, and not to other tailors. They want it to stay in the family. But often the children don\u2019t want to take it on. It\u2019s not easy work,\u201d she continues.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s already dying out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The couple went around the city\u2019s famous tailoring houses and tried to explain that Yoo wanted to become an apprentice. These were small family businesses. The tailors spoke Neapolitan dialect \u2013 famously challenging even for Italians to master.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were very welcoming because they thought we were clients; they have a lot of Asian clients. It was difficult to communicate,\u201d Song recalls.<\/p>\n

\"YooYoo has travelled to Donegal to source tweed. His clients are international and some travel to Naples for fittings. Photograph: Naomi O’Leary <\/p>\n

One day they called at the tailoring house of Nunzio Pirozzi, a famous master tailor who began working in the industry in the 1950s. He had a severe reputation, but the two found him smiling and relaxed.<\/p>\n

Pirozzi listened as Yoo read out the letter he had prepared, explaining that he was looking for someone who could train him in Neapolitan tailoring.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe master realised this wasn\u2019t an ordinary young person; he had a special passion,\u201d Song remembers. \u201cHe said, \u2018come here. I accept you\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yoo\u2019s training had begun. He would spend two years studying under the Pirozzi family before moving to father-and-son business Sartoria Solito, learning first to make suit trousers, then jackets, and then coats.<\/p>\n

Finally, he was taken on as an apprentice by Raffaele D\u2019Alisa, a legendary Naples tailor.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was an old master with glasses,\u201d Song remembers. \u201cHe didn\u2019t have any children. He had run his own tailoring house for 50 years.\u201d D\u2019Alise adopted Yoo as a protege.<\/p>\n

\"EachEach commission takes at least three months to complete. Photograph: Naomi O’Leary <\/p>\n

Standing at his sewing table, Yoo explains the tools of the trade he learned to use: the wooden \u201chalf moon\u201d that helps to sew suit jackets with a slight curve to allow for the rise of the chest; the heavy metal iron that presses the material into the shape of the body.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is five kilos,\u201d Yoo says, lifting the iron. D\u2019Alisa, the master tailor, used a 7kg iron until his death last year at the age of 86.<\/p>\n

Feeling he was finally ready, Yoo founded Sartoria del Signore in 2022.<\/p>\n

On the wall hangs an official certificate: a recognition of artisan status by the Naples guild, awarded only to small businesses that create products by hand.<\/p>\n

Each commission takes at least three months to complete. Production is limited. Yoo hand-sews every piece \u2013 trousers, jackets, coats \u2013 with nothing done by machine or contracted out.<\/p>\n

Clients are international. Some travel to Naples for fittings; Yoo and Song also visit New York and Seoul frequently for trunk shows. Each suit is priced at \u20ac4,000, irrespective of the fabric used.<\/p>\n

Yoo travelled to Ireland to source tweed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis material comes from Donegal,\u201d he says, as he raises a grey woollen jacket. Other suits are made with Irish linen.<\/p>\n

\u201cI made these trousers with Irish material. Irish linen is quite special. It\u2019s heavier. It falls well on the body,\u201d the tailor explains.<\/p>\n

He lifts up a summer suit, showing how the material is almost transparent against the light.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t put a lining in for a summer jacket like this.\u201d The shoulder has a \u201cspalla camicia\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sunghyun Yoo\u2019s journey from South Korea to becoming one of the only outsiders ever to become a master…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":644168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[75],"tags":[18,117,19,17,371,2428],"class_list":["post-644167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-italy","tag-south-korea"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117118258449090499","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}