“I personally don’t buy vintage clothes.” Benedikt Fries had just sat down with us on the terrace of the Café Condi at the hotel Vier Jahreszeiten in Hamburg. The sun shines so the ever-elegant owner of Shibumi takes of his overcoat, scarf and gloves.

His answer to my first question sounds as honest as it is pleasantly surprising. Everybody loves pre-worn clothes and accessories nowadays, but they are not for the founder of the tie brand Shibumi. “I prefer to wear clothes out myself. Shoes with signs of wear are beautiful. I don’t even mind if they have scratches as long as they are well polished.”

Benedikt is perfectly dressed in a very Italian way. This is not an acquired taste even though he is German because his grandfather was from Italy. Benedikt watched his “nonno” closely and probably his bespoke suits sewed the seed for his fascination with bespoke clothes and all things made by hand. Nevertheless, he doesn’t pretend that he was born with shirt and tie. “As a young guy I loved American sportswear.”

Now almost everything Benedikt wears is bespoke. “It’s all made in Napoli except for my shoes, the socks and my underwear. But the socks are still from Italy, but from the north. They are the same make that we sell in our shop.” I notice that his shoes hardly show signs of wear and Benedikt smiles. “They are brand new. I have only worn them a couple of times. But the first scratch will come soon.” Almost reluctantly he confirms that they are bespoke.

Benedikt is an exception from most men that I meet in the menswear world. He is exceptionally well dressed but not in the least the type that wants to show off. So getting him to talk about his clothes is a bit of a task. He prefers suits over the “spezzato”, the combination of blazer or jacket and separate trousers. “I order about 6 to 8 outfit per year, 80 percent of them are suits, the rest are sportscoats”. His favourite colours are dark grey and dark blue. He sometimes orders suits in near identical fabrics, one as double-breasted, the other as single-breasted.

“I never order a suit from a fabric that I already have. This doesn’t mean that I don’t own more than one navy suit. I have many navy suits but the fabrics always differ, sometimes only very slightly”. As much as he loves ordering suits he finds that a new suit must “make sense” for his wardrobe. This is why the fabric of a new suit must either differ in colour or weave or weight from anything that he owns already. “This is a rather tricky business at times”, he admits with a twinkle in his eye.

Benedikt is a stickler for detail when it comes to the product he sells, he has a different attitude towards his bespoke clothes. “I judge a suit by how it looks, not by the quality of the stitching. Of course I expect a certain level of craftsmanship but I have learned to live with the imperfections that come with handwork.” He advises novices to the world of bespoke tailoring not to expect perfection. “Some tailors simply forget little details. Even after years of telling them again and again. I always order my sports jackets with one button at the cuff and the suits with two. Very often this is ignored.”

Even though we are surrounded by smartly dressed people in this venue we spot only one middle-aged gentleman wearing a tie. Is the tie dying? “People wear ties less, this is a fact. At the same time there more people who wear ties because they love it. This is why ties of exceptional quality have a growing share of the market.” Benedikt himself wears a tie almost every day. “I love ties, I even wear them on holiday because I usually visit visits.”

The tie he has donned for our conversation is the most important one in his life. “I have worn this tie on the first date with my wife in Kyoto in Japan. Of course, she wasn’t my wife then, but she is now. It seems I’ve picked a good tie for that evening.” Of course he took it from his own collection. “It’s a 36oz silk hand screen-printed in Macclesfield, England. We produced it for the first time in 2015 and it’s been available ever since then. It seems that not only women like this tie.” Even though Benedikt cherishes this tie he wears it frequently. “Good things are to be worn. And it reminds me of a wonderful moment.”

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Photograhy by Tommi Aittala