Singapore tailor becomes first non-Italian to win Italian bespoke tailoring trophy

Singapore tailor Javin Tan beat 23 rivals in Naples with a sailing-inspired suit to become the first non-Italian to win Italy's Trofeo Arbiter.

Tan, 37, founder of bespoke house Common Suits, took the title on Oct. 17 at the competition, which runs under the Milano su Misura banner and is organized by Italian menswear magazine Arbiter with luxury fabric maker Loro Piana, The Straits Times reported. Its field included heritage houses from London's Savile Row.

"Winning it in Naples is like winning a tech award in Silicon Valley," Tan told the newspaper. "The win is not just for myself and my team. It's also for the whole of Asia. We do have good craftsmen."

His winning look, for this year's theme of "Style on Board and Dockside," was an ocean-blue double-breasted jacket in Loro Piana wool, silk and linen, paired with ivory trousers.

Tan drew on a day at sea in May, when he sailed as a guest of Loro Piana at the Tre Golfi Sailing Week in Sorrento, Italy. His sunglasses were constantly wet from sea spray and he did not want to wipe them on his jacket, he said, so he built in a microfiber patch for cleaning them.

He also turned the telltales, ribbons on a sail that show sailors the wind direction, into green and red details beneath the jacket's sleeve cuff. Ivory rubber buttons nod to the rubber-soled shoes worn on deck.

The jury for the two-day contest included Massimiliano Attolini and Luca Rubinacci, generational tailors whose family workshops were founded in the 1930s. The judges examined each creation on a mannequin on the first day, and on the second the tailors walked a runway in their own designs so the jury could assess the fit.

"The tailoring quality was impeccable: cut, fit and choice of fabric were perfect," Franz Botré, Arbiter's director, told Italian daily La Verità. "The functional details made the difference."

The competition traces its roots to the Festival della Moda Maschile, held in Italy in 1952 as the world's first event dedicated to men's fashion and tailoring. Revived as the Trofeo Arbiter in 2020, it was open only to Italian master tailors until it began admitting international entrants in 2024. This year's sixth edition was the first held in Naples, after five in Milan, the Naples daily Il Mattino reported.

Tan first competed in 2025, invited because Common Suits is a tailoring partner of co-organizer Loro Piana. That year's brief, winter elegance, was a tough one for a tailor from the tropics, but the judges unofficially told him he had placed second. This year's nautical brief played to his strengths in tropical tailoring, and Naples, like Singapore, is a warm port city.

Tan fell in love with well-cut suits as a finance and marketing student at the National University of Singapore. When he told his family he wanted to become a tailor, his mother, a former beautician and clinic assistant, backed him.

In 2014, two weeks after his final exam, he rented a booth outside a campus canteen to sell his first suits, hoping to catch classmates who needed suits for job interviews.

He then marketed the business online, taking the bus with his luggage to customers' homes whenever inquiries came in. In the early days, he said, he was lucky to draw S$1,000 ($781) a month.

The mostly self-taught tailor learned much of the craft from YouTube, from taking measurements to drafting patterns, before hiring a few master tailors and learning alongside them.

Common Suits now has ateliers in Singapore, Manila, Jakarta and Bangkok, and a team of close to 20 who make the suits by hand in Singapore. Its clients are mostly entrepreneurs, professionals, expatriates and grooms.

Bespoke suits start at $1,640, and cost an average of $2,340 to $2,730. Each suit takes 50 to 60 hours to make and is usually ready in about eight weeks, after four to five fittings.