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Newly arrived in Hong Kong in the early 1980s and hardly knowing anyone, I went looking for a bespoke suit. My first tailor was young and fast-talking, and promised my new ensemble within three days. What's more, the suit adorning the dummy in his window looked very good.

It was then that I learned the three golden rules of Hong Kong tailoring, all of which still apply today: 1) Truly good tailors are too busy turning out back orders to do much talking. 2) The best tailors are mostly middle-aged men. 3) Few self-respecting tailors can promise a suit in less than a week.

Seventy-two hours later, my new threads were indeed ready. The trouble was, the left shoulder had slightly more padding than the right. No problem, muttered my suddenly less talkative personal valet. We merely had to add more padding to the right shoulder. But then the right shoulder looked bigger than the left; so he packed in still more padding into the left. By the time he had both shoulders perfectly matched, I strolled out of that shop resembling Superman.

This archetypal piece of Hong Kong romantic past is dying, and hardly anybody seems to have noticed. Fifteen years ago, virtually any local male over 16 with a job and a pulse owned at least two tailored suits and a dozen body hugging tailored shirts, albeit all of them white.

From the 1940s to the 1970s Hong Kong was home to over 1,000 tailors - and also tens of thousands of dandified file clerks who kept a dozen suits crammed in their closet. After all, even for an office messenger earning less than US$200 a month, it was a matter of pride to buy a new suit twice a year. In the late 1970s in city districts such as Causeway Bay and Wanchai, there were so many tailor shops that one could hardly throw a coat hanger without hitting someone else on the head.

The literal truth behind this was that intense competition had driven second rate tailors to stand and pitch outside their shops, like carnival barkers drawing in an audience. That's how I found my first tailor.

Today, Hong Kong legendary tailor shops, numbering less than 250, are dying, done in by crushing rents and the refusal of the younger generation to take up the mantle of 12-hour work days. There is also the increasing preference for outfits designed by gentlemen with names like Valentino, Miyake or Boss, rather than Chan, Li, or Tang.

In fact many Hong Kong tailors don't use their family names as a company name anymore. The international image has more caché; thus the city boasts a Hollywood Tailor, and a Broadway Tailor, a Park Lane Tailor, a Cambridge Tailor and a Princeton Tailor.

With all the best names apparently taken, other tailors have appropriated names which they hope will suggest good sartorial results to potential customers. Thus there's the earnest but unpretentious Modern Tailor, the dignified but proud Very Good Tailor, the smugly self-assured Brilliant Tailor, Excellent Tailor, Deluxe Tailor and, my favourite, the Fantastic French Tailor Company.

Tony Chang, manager of Ascot Chang Tailor, and son of the eponymous shirt-maker, says, "The tailoring business in Hong Kong is facing many problems. In general, profit margins for tailors are not as large as for ready-made shops, so high rents are especially hurting them. Quality of workmanship is also dropping because many of the best tailors have retired and the new generation will not do the same kind of workmanship. Only a very few companies are still properly training their staff to do this kind of work."

The story that many of Hong Kong best tailors came from Shanghai is true, says Mr. Chang. "Back in the 1930s Shanghai was much more prosperous than Hong Kong and suit-making became popular, but after 1949 many Shanghai tailors came here."

Ascot Chang sells 90,000 custom shirts a year; about one-third go to Hong Kong residents, while the balance adorns the backs of affluent visiting businessmen, people such as former U.S. president George Bush. The average price of an Ascot shirt is between US$100 and $130, says Mr. Chang, but his finest shirts, made of a silky cotton imported from Switzerland, costs close to $300. "This material is the best in the world, a 200 yarn count, which means a very fine yarn, making the cloth very silky-soft to the touch, but also very durable."

Aside from Hong Kong outlets, including those in the upmarket Peninsula and Regent hotels, Mr. Chang's firm is one of the very few to have branched beyond the territory, with shops in Beverly Hills and Manhattan.

Proper measurements are crucial to a shirt's final appearance, says Mr. Chang. "A lot of people have arms with two different lengths, there are slopping shoulders and square shoulders, and the posture when you stand is different when you sit. All these have to be considered when you're measured for a custom shirt."

While people have grown taller and often fatter over the centuries, the basic style and cut of today's business suit has hardly changed in 250 years. Few of today's bankers or stock brokers are aware, for example, that the jacket they all pull on every weekday morning is virtually identical to that worn by the demobbed officers of Napoleon Bonaparte's French Army, from which theirs originated. The slit in the back, for example, allowed the wearer to sit comfortably on horseback.

In fact, the only substantial change in suits in centuries to come may well have been my own sartorial contribution - the ‘shoulders � la Rambo’ suit, which over the years, has both impressed myopic women and frightened nightclub bouncers. Amazingly, the jacket still fits, too, although the waist on the trousers has become strangely tighter over the years. Must be due to the poor quality fabric, surely?

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