New York’s Coolest Custom Tailor Is Bringing His Suits to Your Couch

For well over a decade, J. Mueser, the bespoke tailoring shop founded by Jake Mueser in 2008, has outfitted the city’s pickiest sartorialists. Mueser starting sewing as a teenager, and ever since opening the doors of his Manhattan fitting-room-cum-haberdashery, he’s helped countless flummoxed dudes walk out in exacting suits cut with natural American shoulders, natty English ticket pockets, and generous Italian lapels. Much like New York itself, Mueser’s suits are a hodgepodge of influences far greater than the sum of their parts—especially when you factor in the accoutrements he now sells alongside them.

Mueser’s world-class bespoke program might be the brand headliner, but his expansive range of ready-to-wear—crisp point-collar shirts, classic-leaning sweaters, killer off-the-rack suits—is no understudy. The one downside? Until recently, the whole lot of it was exclusively available via the brand’s West Village shop or in limited quantities on its own webstore. (The West Village is scenic and all, but it requires a little bit of planning to get to; I’m roughly 25 minutes away door-to-door, and the trip already sounds arduous.)

I say “was”, though, because that’s no longer the case. A few weeks ago, the savvy Brits at Mr Porter brought J. Mueser’s tailoring to the worldwide web, where you can now buy an assortment of the brand’s suits, ties, and shirts just in time for peak wedding season.

The house-speciality Waverly Suit, which the brand offers in five colors, starts with a jacket that’s svelte but not severe, in both a single-breasted three-roll-two with notch lapels or a double-breasted 6×2 with peak lapels. The matching trousers feature a high rise, straight leg, and flat or pleated fronts, depending on the design. (If you just need to upgrade your summer slacks, you can buy ‘em as separates.) The lightweight wool iteration is expectedly beautiful, but the linen version exists on a different plane altogether.

As long as you’re looking to get capital-D Dressed, don’t sleep on the shirts, either. The assortment at Mr Porter is tight—two button-down Oxford shirts, two cutaway-collar poplin shirts—but the team managed to nab the greatest hits, and you can always expand the rotation if you like ‘em as much as we do.

Now, of course, is right around the time when we might sheepishly mention that this stuff isn’t cheap. It isn’t: a full suit will run you close to $2,000. But the amount of care and craftsmanship that goes into each means that the Waverly dogwalks pretty much every alternative in its price range—and more than a few well outside of it.