Home › Best of the Best

Best of the Best: Style

Our 2026 style honorees make craft a pleasure to wear.
October 15, 2026

Style in 2026 was defined by clothes and accessories that balanced authorship with genuine usefulness. Louis Vuitton commanded the broadest field, building a complete men’s wardrobe across tailoring, outerwear, shoes, bags, and travel pieces, keeping things fresh and modern but with a foot firmly planted in its history.

At Hermès, Véronique Nichanian concluded her 37-year tenure with a collection that placed archival designs beside new work. Giorgio Armani’s final menswear collection offered another powerful lesson in longevity. Zegna reinforced the suit’s contemporary relevance through textile expertise, made-to-measure service, and tailoring intended to endure across generations. Ascot Chang and Herian applied bespoke principles to shirts and eyewear with exacting precision.

Montblanc, Roger Vivier, and Tumi approached accessories through three distinct disciplines: writing, couture technique, and performance engineering. In Manila, Univers shows how intelligent retail can connect established houses, directional designers, and independent labels within a coherent men’s fashion edit.

Best of the Best: Louis Vuitton

Louis Vuitton delivered the year’s most complete men’s wardrobe, extending a strong point of view across tailoring, outerwear, shoes, bags, and travel pieces. Pharrell Williams’ Spring/Summer 2026 collection drew on Indian dress and craftsmanship through relaxed suits, indigo textiles, richly embroidered surfaces, animal motifs, and fluid layers suited to warm weather. The accessories carried the idea further through embellished bags, supple Monogram pieces including a color turn for the Speedy, which, while surprising, felt completely at home in the narrative. Sandals and trunks combined the maison’s travel heritage with the collection’s detailed workmanship. Fall/Winter 2026 introduced elongated coats, parkas worn over suits, A-line trousers, lustrous shirts, faux-fur collars, patent Oxfords, and a new treatment of Monogram for its 130th anniversary.

Louis Vuitton earns Best of the Best because it made every part of the male wardrobe—from an impeccably cut suit to an elaborate travel case—feel integral to the same assured vision.

Menswear Legacy: Hermès

Véronique Nichanian concluded 37 years at the helm of Hermès menswear with a final collection that made the endurance of her work visible on the runway. Among the new leather trousers, silk knits, supple coats, and precisely layered separates were 10 designs drawn from earlier seasons, including a mocha calfskin jumpsuit from 1991 and a navy leather pinstripe suit from 2003. Their ease within a Fall/Winter 2026 collection demonstrated how consistently Nichanian had designed beyond the demands of a particular season.

Her legacy rests on this continuity: exceptional materials, restrained construction, sensual color, and close attention to how clothes move and acquire character through wear. By allowing three decades of design to coexist without rupture, her farewell presentation made a compelling case in the enduring relevance and legacy of Hermès.

Bespoke Shirting: Ascot Chang

Ascot Chang preserves a highly personal form of dressmaking while keeping it relevant to the contemporary wardrobe. Founded in Hong Kong in 1953, the family-run house creates each shirt around the client’s measurements, posture, proportions, and preferences rather than adapting a standard block. Fabric, collar construction, cuffs, fit, and finishing are determined through a process that rewards precision over visible flourish. Its continued international reach, including a Philippine presence and trunk shows around the world, demonstrates the durability of this specialist model. Sometimes, customization is often reduced to a menu of options, but Ascot Chang retains the rigor and intimacy of true bespoke.

Off-Duty: Giorgio Armani

The late, great Giorgio Armani was rightly celebrated for his generation-defining tailoring—but his off-the-clock garb is no less worthy of acclaim. The look that stuck with us from his Spring 2026 menswear collection, his final for the house, was this brown field jacket—officially, in brand parlance, a hemp blouson. The four-pocket style is unlined, except for the yoke, which gives its shoulders some structure but allows the rest of the light construction to drape easily. It’s packed with smart details: a zipper pocket on the left side of the chest, slanted pockets below for easy access, and an interior drawstring to give the waist a little definition, if you wish. It’s the perfect thing to wear on travel days, or any time you’ve got more to carry than your trouser pockets can handle.

Performance Luggage: Tumi

Tumi approaches the suitcase as a piece of precision equipment. Across its collections, the brand continually engineers weight out of handles, wheels, zippers, shells, and interior components while preserving the resilience, capacity, and organization required by frequent travelers.

This pursuit of lightness forms part of a broader performance philosophy encompassing durable materials, rigorous testing, smooth handling, secure closures, carefully configured interiors, repair services, and the TUMI Tracer recovery program. Every element is designed to earn its place, resulting in luggage with the finish of a object and the dependability of equipment built for constant use, where refinement and performance are inseparable.

Multi-Brand Boutique: Univers

Univers gives Manila access to an unusually broad and discerning international fashion edit. Its selection brings established houses into conversation with directional designers, streetwear, accessories, fragrance, home objects, and collectible design. Brands including Thom Browne and Comme des Garçons sit within a retail environment that encourages discovery beyond a single house or prevailing look.

This breadth has allowed Univers to serve several kinds of male customers without losing the clarity of its point of view. In a market dominated by mono-brand boutiques, Univers demonstrates the continuing value of knowledgeable, independent selection under Jappy Gonzalez’ keen eye.

Contemporary Tailoring: Zegna

Zegna reaffirms the suit as a personal, adaptable, and enduring part of a man’s wardrobe. Its renewed focus on Su Misura draws on the company’s vertically integrated textile expertise, allowing fabric development, construction, fitting, and finishing to operate as parts of a single system. The Torino suit, based on a silhouette created by founder Ermenegildo Zegna with his own tailor, is distinguished by structured shoulders, broad lapels, rounded pockets, and three-button sleeves. Fall/Winter 2026 extended the idea through the “family closet,” presenting clothes intended to be worn, altered, and eventually passed between generations. Zegna’s tailoring respects inherited form while responding intelligently to how men now expect suits to fit, move, and endure.

Bespoke Eyewear: Herian

During Herian’s Philippine debut at Rustan’s Makati in February 2026, founder Herian Boccali conducted private consultations in which a frame began with the wearer’s face, preferences, and an original sketch, bringing the judgment and handiwork of an independent Florentine atelier to Manila. Each bespoke pair is made by hand in Florence, with acetate or buffalo horn shaped, fitted, and finished for the individual client.

Boccali’s third-generation optical background brings technical knowledge to frames that are also highly personal design objects, demonstrating that eyewear can possess the specificity, authorship, and intimacy normally associated with bespoke clothing.

Couture Footwear: Roger Vivier

Roger Vivier’s L’Atelier des Papillons earns Best Couture Footwear for applying the methods and expressive freedom of couture to shoes. Presented during Paris Haute Couture Week, the Pièce Unique collection used embroidery, hand-painted feathers, crystals, beadwork, and sculptural metal to interpret the butterfly across sneakers and the house’s concave Choc heel. Creative director Gherardo Felloni treated each surface as a field for meticulous handwork while preserving the clarity of Vivier’s established silhouettes. The collection also expanded Pièce Unique, previously associated with exceptional handbags, into footwear. These singular creations reaffirmed the shoe as an object of fantasy, technique, and serious decorative art.

Leather Goods: Montblanc

Montblanc marks a century of leather craftsmanship in 2026 with accessories that translate its writing heritage into objects for contemporary work and travel. Under artistic director Marco Tomasetta, pens, notebooks, and the act of writing increasingly determine the architecture of the house’s bags. For example, briefcases open to reveal an organized mobile desk with dedicated places for writing instruments, a notebook, a journal, and a watch.

Pen holders designed to be worn around the neck give the writing instrument a visible place within personal style, while the broader leather collection introduces lighter constructions and richer seasonal colors; its utilitarian and design language gives the business bag a purpose and identity beyond carrying a laptop.

This article originally appeared in Robb Report Philippines Best of the Best Issue, October 2026. See the full list of Best of the Best awardees.

Access to this content is reserved for members only. Please purchase a membership to unlock this content.

Be A Member If you need assistance, please email [email protected]