When the British took over much of East Asia in 19th and early 20th century, they needed to make Hong Kong (Shanghai, Singapore, etc.) like home, thus they brought their way of life over too. Â During 1920s, there was a demand of dress wear (3-piece suits and dinner suits) in Shanghai, where the British had the largest investment outside Hong Kong, and both cities were blooming. Â However, due to the lack of quality mills in the East, many English tailors refuse to travel East; those who did come over needed more hands than he could find, so they trained a group of Shanghai-nese tailors. Â Tailors you find in Hong Kong (and I don't mean those 'Make-a-suit-in-48-hours' Indian shops) nowadays are the 2nd (or even 3rd) generation Chinese/Shanghai-nese tailors. Â Unfortunately, the British taliors didn't train too many shirt-makers; and good Chinese shirtmakers are rare. Â Ascot Chang (who is from Shanghai) is a rare example, though his trade is only on shirtmaking. Hong Kong tailors, due to their background, have English blood running in them (though that doesn't really mean much ...). Â They favour English fabrics more than Italian, and are experts at tailoring for odd sizes (imagine middle-age Chinese man with hunch-back or a recent client of my tailor who practically has no neck, short but a 36" waist). Â One good thing is that they always have a small staple of seamstresses at their command to do all the handwork (buttonholes, etc.), who, in my opinion, does better than even US department stores, as they used to cater to the 'elite' British residents in Hong Kong (back in those days).