The city is hot, wet and unimpressed. The cloth has to be chosen for it.
Most cloth sold as suiting was designed for weather this city has never once had. A heavy worsted that drapes beautifully in a showroom will sit on your shoulders like a verdict by lunchtime. The house's first question about any cloth is not the pattern or the price — it is what will this be like at 2pm in October.
The numbers that matter: 9 to 11 ounces is the city's range. Below that, cloth wrinkles faster than it breathes; above it, you are dressing for a city you don't live in. A high-twist yarn in that range is the quiet trick — the twist springs the cloth back from creases and holds a current of air through the weave.
An open weave cools better than a light weight. Fresco — plain-woven, high-twist, almost rough in the hand — is the great Bombay cloth: it looks formal at ten paces and ventilates like a shirt. Hopsack does the same job for blazers. Wool-mohair adds a dry crispness that survives an evening function without wilting.
Linen is honest about heat but gossips about humidity — it creases theatrically and drinks the damp. Wear it knowingly on a Sunday; do not ask it to carry a Tuesday. In the wet months the high-twist worsteds earn their keep: they shrug off moisture that would flatten a soft flannel.
A mid-blue or grey fresco for the working week. A navy hopsack blazer. One wool-mohair for evenings. That trio, cut to your measure, answers ten months of the year — and the cloth for all three is on the table at the atelier. Cloth is chosen by touch; come hold it to the light.
The house will write to you to confirm the hour.