Those who subscribe to George Bernard Shaw's (oft misquoted) adage about youth being wasted on the young will be bitterly disappointed by Buzz Tang. Since co-founding The Anthology in 2018, the 24-year-old designer and entrepreneur has made short work of menswear's elite opinion circles, with tastemakers at Monocle, The Rake, and Robb Report all cottoning to his brand's sharply realised vision of “old-school suiting [made] relevant and contemporary”.

In practical terms, that mission translates to easy-wearing 'artefacts' (as Tang himself puts it) of a sartorial bent, crafted using traditional tailoring techniques and an aesthetic palette brimming with plenty of youthful, 21st-century chutzpah. You'll find those ideas embodied across The Anthology's entire range of bespoke and off-the-rack designs, though they ring out in vivid concert within the suiting segment - the cornerstone of Tang's brand.

Jackets carry a touch of Neapolitan softness (a detail that is functionally important to The Anthology's clients in Southeast Asia) yet find their soul in the Florentine tradition, characterised by an extended shoulder that narrows the chest and flatters the waist. Trousers, cut with a high rise and generous pleats, are similarly fulsome. It's a look that borrows heavily from the lexicon of classic clothing - without the constant, rear-view-looking stuffiness that has felled many a respected heritage brand.

Earlier this month, we caught up with Tang around St. James in central London. Out to road-test his brand's latest collaborative drop - a monster of a polo coat made in 30oz Irish donegal - our ensuing conversation smacks a little of a 'year in review'. There's talk of matters both daunting and wonderfully trivial, from tailored clothing's future place in the world to the food that provide Tang with constant creative fodder.

By way of introduction, let's kick things off with a brief explainer of your clothing business, The Anthology…

The Anthology began life as a company that specialised in bespoke tailoring. Since then, we've expanded our oeuvre with a series of ready-to-wear [RTW] garments. But whether it's bespoke or off-the-rack product, our 'blueprint' - if I may use that word - has always involved classic clothing.

Nowadays what we're really focused on is a meaningful split between the bespoke side of our business and our RTW offering. In the latter area, we've put no small effort into original designs - a lot of them being historically inspired. You'll see that in our silhouettes, practical details, and importantly, our choice of fabrics: a big chunk of our RTW is produced using vintage textiles, sourced from 'noble' mills who have a proven record of longevity.

It's interesting - the amount of attention we're lavishing, so early on in our discussion, on bespoke. For someone of your background, who came into menswear through your personal love of tailoring, do you think it's sustainable, in the post-pandemic era, to build a business entirely around bespoke? Or are you a firm believer in the idea that RTW is the future?

I think, as with most things in life, it's a tug of war. Sure, in a way we're designers of clothing but we're also purveyors - both facets are equally important. Like many of our customers, bespoke still has a place in my wardrobe, but as we continue to explore the different dimensions of our brand, I've realised that RTW gives you a platform to design from a place of pure creativity that's largely absent in bespoke.

In bespoke, the conversation always pivots on decisions about precision and fit, whereas in RTW, it's much easier to make the vernacular around a garment emotive and sensory.

I guess, practically, the split also boils down to the preferences of your existing customers, right? Because The Anthology really does feel like it's outside the scope of a 'normal' tailoring outfit - it's not all groomsmen and office workers.

Right. And, believe it or not, I think that the more casual RTW pieces serve an equally important function to our bespoke business, because they provide an outlet for those stylistic inflections we can't graft onto a patch pocket sport coat or pair of linen trousers.

So the act of 'creative expression' is vastly different when one is working on bespoke as opposed to developing a new ready-made garment?

Absolutely. In the case of bespoke, what we are exploring is the use of cloth and how best to augment the physical space determined by the wearer's physique - it's why we use terms like 'silhouette', 'balance', and 'proportion'. But when you're designing RTW, I think the creativity factor actually stems from finding ways to manipulate what exists - so much so that you can transform the original 'lifestyle' a piece of clothing was intended for.

With bespoke, the other thing to note is that, as a matter of historical record, it has largely been constrained to clothing of a very specific form. With a jacket and a pair of trousers, the only area in which there's real stylistic variation would be the pockets. So, when we're speaking about 'sartorial clothing' in that sense, there's a limit to how much you can do.

Designers often speak about their desire to create a 'uniform' for their customers. Do you think that's a useful mantra for The Anthology?

Well, sort of [laughs]. We do have a family of thematically related jacketing that includes the ivory and honey sport coats, but these don't necessarily recur every season as part of a premeditated look. What I will say is that, whenever we are designing new RTW or tweaking our signature cuts, we do so with a 'house code' in mind - and that possesses certain similarities every season.

I'm getting the sense that you're more interested in crafting a particular ambience - a 'vibe', as certain people are so fond of saying.

I think so. We really try to revolve our work around the idea of coaxing out our customers' identities. It's about crafting clothes that will amplify the innate personality and expressiveness of each individual. Ultimately, we achieve that not by prescribing one consistent, hyper-specific uniform - not that there's anything wrong with that approach, it's worked wonders for designers like Thom Browne - but by combining different elements in the way people dress from across our clientele.

So, in any given situation, you might have two 'Anthologists' who wear your pieces very differently, but are also connected by an underlying esprit de corps that is unique to the brand?

We like to think of ourselves as having a set of ideas which are applicable to a number of different archetypes - some relatable, others more fantastical. Taking our 'urban creatives' as an example: many still wear fully bespoke tailoring to work, but the method of fabrication contrasts with what's used to make a classic work suit for our boardroom clientele.

And yet, in either case, I like to think there's a general feeling our clothes evoke that's internally coherent. A big part of that is styling that isn't exclusionary: believe it or not, we do like it when Anthologists mix things they've purchased from us with their own little personal accents.

Is that breakdown in 'norms' (in favour of highly individuated style) a change that has been borne out statistically? Are more of your customers turning to tailoring primarily for emotional pleasure?

I do think - without listing all my complaints about the pandemic - that there has been a shift that's more or less tracked the decline of 20th-century working culture. There certainly used to be more polarisation: even a few years ago, many people (especially in cities like London and Hong Kong) felt a subconscious expectation to wear a full suit and tie.

Whereas the last two years have shown them that most employers are definitively relaxing standards, right?

Absolutely. But interestingly, as a result, we've reached a crucial 'moment of truth' where businesses are actually able to identify those demographics who are genuinely interested in this stuff, as opposed to simply keeping up with appearances.

Let's move on. In recent years, you've demonstrated a rather strong affinity for collaboration. What is it about working with other brands you find so rewarding?

I suppose that the experience of getting inside someone else's perspective is very intriguing. As many who work in consumer design will tell you, when you get too caught up in your own subject matter, there's always the possibility you'll lose sight of interesting influences on the periphery.

What's more, I'm a firm believer in the wisdom that one really cannot be master of all. When it comes to work with a technical foundation, borrowing somebody else's expertise is always very helpful. At The Anthology, we do own and operate our own atelier, but it's focused on producing bespoke and RTW garments. We don't pretend that we have the know-how [to make] a great pair of bench-grade shoes. Really, what's better than working with somebody who can actually meet the physical challenge of what you're attempting to do creatively - somebody, as you said, who possesses enough of an understanding to properly execute our ideas in the real world?

How about a tangible example? Stefano Bemer, let's say. What is it about that operation - an esteemed Florentine shoemaker - that you were unable to replicate on your own?

Beyond the fact that it's obviously a hugely specialised company, part of Bemer's charm was the fact that the brand already had a defined aesthetic self-image. For our Khamai loafers, I'd always had a basic look (and the ways we might vary it) in mind, but on the strength of Bemer's visual identity we were confident enough to incorporate their trademark 'edginess' into our final design.

In what way, exactly?

The last. I was particularly inspired by the brand's E-shaped last - one of the most rounded shapes Bemer offers. To that, we did some tinkering: shortening the length of the vamp, softening the angularity in the design. There was an extensive back-and-forth about the overall 'balance' of the shoe. We asked ourselves how far we could push details like the apron and metal hardware in order to get the most interesting intermingling of English and Italian aesthetics.

When you're having these creative discussions with others, does it help to have a shared philosophy? Is that pivotal to inspiring better outcomes?

Usually, yes. Whether we're interacting with a publication or co-designing with people like Simon Crompton, being on a similar page when it comes to craft and nuance is important.

Those values come through even in the physical spaces The Anthology operates. It would appear that the showrooms in Hong Kong and Taipei carry flashes of your own personal interests, such as music and contemporary art. Do these broader cultural pursuits tend to play a role in the identity of the brand?

I think so. Art plays an especially vital role, because of its relation to colour. Colours have been crucial to helping us craft a certain mood for our brand, and can be used to set a range on light, contrast, and whatever other artistic effects we happen to be playing with. As a team, we'll often scour period photographs in an effort to contextualise and identify patterns which have typified a range of colours during a specific era. Of course, there are certain shades that are always going to be beautiful regardless of the era, but the value of indulging in this kind of exercise is that you build up the courage to occasionally make irrational decisions.

A formulaic, yet somehow spontaneous exercise?

Normally, what I tend to do [as opposed to co-founder Andy Chong] is select a 'palette' from a particular artist or historical time period I like, and then try to embellish. We might add one or two extra colour references, or remove what we think doesn't resonate within the canon of The Anthology. That's how we're able to generate pieces that feel original, without leaning on gimmick for its own sake.

Stretching beyond art and music, are there any other sources of inspiration for the brand which you've felt to be unusually inspiring?

Food is a great one. It sounds bizarre at first, but when you think about the indispensable role that texture, colour, and branding play in culinary culture, it suddenly feels like one of the most kindred artforms to tailoring.

Still, it takes a certain kind of mind to envisage a jacket with the same texture as a Perigord truffle...

Oh, you mean the heathered wool/silk sport coat we did last year? It's funny, really: when we're designing something inspired by a certain cultural niche or demographic, we still try to make it amusing. And regardless of whether you're an epicurean, the idea of edible fungus - the texture, the colour - seemed to be something that was instantaneously fun for many of our customers. Obviously, the 'truffle' nickname just made the design that much more memorable; from a marketer's perspective, it was a neat conversation starter.

We imagine that has something to do with the universality of food - everybody eats.

One hundred percent.

Let's move away from culinary conversations now and come back to work. While a student at London College of Fashion, you moonlighted as a fabric trader. Did those early encounters with mills and merchants influence the style of cloth you'd go on to offer at The Anthology?

Absolutely. I think we're now in a place culturally where customers realise it's important to trust the clothiers they support to make an informed decision about cloth. My experiences in the trade have given me some measure of insight around how mills and fabric merchants market themselves. A lot of those companies claim they're jack-of-all-trades, but they do that to optimise their business.

For our part, when we're sourcing or developing new fabrics we always look for the right producer with the right record - in whatever specialty cloth we happen to be focused on. Let's say, for argument's sake, that I was working on a wool/cashmere overcoat for our RTW offering. There's a certain Scottish mill we've worked with over the last few years who'd always welcome us with open arms. We stake that relationship in the knowledge that they're one of the best mills in this country, if not the whole world. Conversely, if we were trying to develop a summer hopsack cloth, there would definitely be other, more suitable candidates than our aforementioned Scottish friends - because the skills required are completely different.

The second volume of this year's Autumn/Winter campaign, photographed by Alex Natt, has just been unveiled. What can you tell us about some of the broader themes you're exploring in Interpretations and Stereotypes?

Well, from a semantic point of view, this is the first time we've ever launched a collection that included a complete RTW suit. Our aim was to break the stereotypes associated with suiting. Typically, when people think about that style of clothing, they're imagining sombre charcoals and strong navies - articles worn vocationally, without much thought given to how the jacket and trousers can be separated. We've essentially reinterpreted that idea as pieces designed to be broken up and worn on their own, which just so happen to share the same fabric and colour.

Pieces like our brushed cotton jackets really showcase The Anthology's forte: the fact we've made something our customers may wear twice as regularly has positive implications for sustainable consumption. They're also great for wardrobes where space is limited, whether by design or happenstance.

Let's stay on those RTW suits for a moment. One of this offering's most novel elements is that it utilises fabric most consumers think of as a summertime textile. You've recontextualised cotton as something hardier - for cold weather. Can you speak a little more to the rationale behind this decision?

In actuality, what a lot of people don't realise is that many classic cold-weather fabrics, such as corduroy and moleskin, are 100 percent cotton. Depending on the fabrication method, these can be just as heavy and insulating as your traditional winter fabrics.

This season, we picked brushed cotton because we like the fabric's appeal. When you make a suit with it there's a certain inherent softness that resists the appearance of formality. We also allowed ourselves a touch of mischief with the colour palette. By orthodox standards, the 'dolphin grey' is a bit of a risky take: we had to make major tweaks to incorporate the right amount of blue (tonally, that's also very different to the gradation you'd see in formal suiting).

We ended up sourcing the final bunches from a Japanese manufacturer, one with a lot of expertise in these sorts of brushed-cotton fabrications. The functional properties of what they were able to supply are excellent: the brushed surfaces assist with heat retention, while the fabric's internal facings have an extremely dry hand. All of that amounts to cotton that looks wintry, wears warm and feels extremely comfortable on the skin.

The title of the campaign got us thinking about biases - unconscious or otherwise - in the wider fashion conversation. The Anthology is one of a very small number of tailoring outfits that's so candid about its use of Chinese manufacturing. Beyond cost, what are the advantages to owning and operating your own China-based atelier?

Lower-than-average labour costs have long been touted as a given in Chinese manufacturing, but you'd be surprised - with the quality of make we demand, the price isn't necessarily attractive. The idea that Chinese apparel factories are always predisposed to doing things 'on the cheap' is a…

…faux pas?

Exactly [laughs]. When Andy and I acquired our workshop, one of the key considerations was consistency. It might sound obvious, but that was arguably the biggest benefit of owning our own atelier: the fact we were able to implement our own quality-control procedures, and that we could be precise about our specifications.

Right. Because there aren't a dozen other wholesale clients, all with different patterns and delivery schedules, to worry about?

Correct. Generally speaking, the subject of craft is rather objective. Having undergone three-and-a-half years of 'trial by fire', I've been rather pleased to see just how open-minded our customers are. They're able to judge our work on its own merits: so much so that the fact our garments are 'made in China' no longer even really factors into the conversation. Which is great, in a manner of speaking.

By way of backstory: right before we formally opened, we'd actually been presented with the opportunity to acquire an Italian atelier. And yet - as with the colour sampling we do every season - we decided to make an 'irrational' decision by going with a workshop in southern China. At the preliminary stage, it would have been a lot easier to embrace the 'made in Italy' narrative, but we decided not to go down that route because…

…you'd lose a degree of control over the specificity of how each garment is made?

Right, that's one thing. On an idealistic note, we were also somewhat concerned about the future of tailoring. As a small business owner with a vested interest in ensuring this area of the fashion industry survives - it's been through a lot of rough patches - I spend a lot of time agonising about what future generations of tailoring enthusiasts will look like. The Chinese market is a big part of that conversation. The country has a longstanding relationship with artistic crafts, and in the latter century, industrialised manufacturing. So why not bring the two together in pursuit of a product made at a very high level?

At our loftiest, I think what Andy and I want to create is an institution that seeds an appreciation for tailoring in the next generation. Whether or not we succeed is another question entirely, but it's important to have that conversation - particularly since we're living in a world where technological advancements - automation specifically - have really encroached upon our whole industry.

We imagine that The Anthology sometimes gets lumped unceremoniously into the 'suiting' genre of men's clothing brands. How do you maintain positioning which distinguishes you from the established tailoring houses of the previous century?

Well, firstly, for better or worse, the tailoring category, which includes suits, sport coats, trouser separates, still accounts for the largest share of our revenue - that's something I won't deny. But we're juggling that more classical dimension of the business, where much of the product is handmade and specific to a single person, against casual products that are made to original designs - modern-feeling, without being overly futuristic.

More than any one product, our identity is connected with a certain youthful perspective. There are a multitude of menswear brands out there right now who are trying to reproduce things that have been done in the past decades, even centuries. The best way in which I can think to orientate The Anthology is to say we're interested in doing something slightly more original.

Do you feel that the more conservative tailoring houses - be they in Florence, Hong Kong, or on Savile Row - can be somewhat hobbled by their own heritage? What pressing challenges do they face to remain relevant?

I'm probably not the best person to say but, from my purely anecdotal observations, I think what it boils down to is that many of the bigger houses lack an eye for creative design. It's often been said that great designers require great craftsmen, and the inverse is true - that's something I realised first-hand while at fashion school and then subsequently running my own business.

So, many of the big names in the tailoring establishment possess fantastic craft - in certain cases, the best in the industry - but perhaps have become stuck in a kind of self-imposed comfort zone. That's been the case for such an inordinate length of time that once they attempt to step outside of that, the product becomes overengineered or even inauthentic. When you spend upwards of half a century mastering one particular 'house style', the challenge rests in how to adapt that to a rapidly shifting world.

Right. To end things on a more conceptual note, in the past you've mentioned the importance of 'unlearning' tenets and precedents in order to redefine classic menswear. Let's unpack that.

At its core, the 'unlearning' process I've spoken about is the act of offsetting tradition with modernity. I for one still really love digging into the historical aspects of how and why certain garments have persisted in our popular culture. But, to be brutally honest, we also need to unlearn our attachment to some of these ideas because they can be…

…unrelatable?

For many communities around the world, absolutely. Seeing how the business of tailoring has suffered these past 20 years, it's clear to me that the only way forward is if the trade convinces consumers that the craft and customs associated with traditional handmade clothing are worth preserving. In many parts of the world, it's not enough to sell people on a grand old heritage story that frankly doesn't engage them in any meaningful way.

I imagine that's a recurring dilemma in markets where there's no baked-in culture of sartorial clothing: Russia, China, much of the Arabic-speaking world.

Exactly. And in those markets, we try to connect with our customers by giving them a product that feels very organic to their situation. That's why so much of our day-to-day unlearning occurs during the design process. Gun pockets in the city, gurkha waistbands on shorts: these are, speaking candidly, the sort of overrated details - borderline inappropriate in certain circumstances - that we're working to rid ourselves of. I think excess and aesthetic gimmickry get right in the way of our goal at The Anthology: that is to offer ease and comfort - a certain astuteness for every occasion.