The Armoury opened its doors on October 20th, 2010, as a small boutique on the 3rd floor of the Pedder Building. Today, we have our Hong Kong flagship in the Pedder Arcade, two stores in New York in Tribeca and the Upper East Side, and an extensive online shop.

Our business is about everything a gentleman might wear. It is based on warm relationships, personal style, great tailoring, and fine craftsmanship.

We started off selling a curated collection of products from different brands and representing different tailors from around the world. As time went on, we gained experience and knowledge, and we started to design our own goods. Our collection, ranging from shirts to jackets to shoes to watches, is now almost completely designed in-house and made by skilled craftsmen from Italy, Japan, the UK, Spain, and more.

We have put together an exhibition at the Pedder Arcade of the last 15 years - wonderful moments for our community of customers and colleagues captured on film, as well as displays of important products we developed over the years. We have notes for each of the photo displays with some interesting trivia, please take a moment to read them. If you have any questions about the items on display, please feel free to ask our shop team. Some of it is for sale!

1. Pedder Building Unit 307 during one of our earliest site visits. Unit 307 was our home for more than ten years before we started the Pedder Arcade and moved into Unit 501. The store was designed by Katherine Wong who has worked with us as the designer of all of our Hong Kong stores as well as the Pedder Arcade.

2. Our earliest supporters the day before our shop opening including - Michael Drake, the original founder of Drake’s, Michael Hill, creative director of Drake’s today, Kunichi Fukushima, president of Ring Jacket and Hidetoshi Sasamoto, head of sales at Ring Jacket and Duncan Miao. 

3. Monocle magazine wrote us up when we first opened. The article was written by Liv Lewitschnik, seen here interviewing the Ring Jacket team. Emi Saito acted as translator for the interview. 

4. The initial team of Mark Cho, Ethan Newton, Alan See, May Ng and Joey Lau. 

5. In the early days, we were hesitant to show our faces so we covered our faces with a logo image. How times have changed!

6. Alan See always had fun ideas for displays and he suggested we make a Christmas tree made of different items from the store.

1. Our shop caught the attention of Hong Kong Land and its director of leasing, David Marten. He generously invited us to be part of HKL’s new gentleman’s floor initiative in the basement of the Landmark Central. Thus, our second shop, a small accessories boutique, was born. 

2. Bespoke tailors have always been an essential part of our business and the second to join our roster was Antonio Liverano from Florence. The first was WW Chan. 

3 & 4. Liverano’s suits had a very particular cut which influenced us greatly. It was broad in the shoulders, rounded at the quarters below the buttoning point and cut slightly on the short side. Part of our business has been educating customers on the nuances of tailoring from different parts of the world. Liverano’s work is an excellent example of Florentine tailoring.

5 & 6. Our first television appearance - our shop was profiled on TVB’s popular program: Dolce Vita.

7. Founder of British accessories brand Drake’s, Michael Drake, shown here admiring a Drake’s tie on Armoury co-founder, Mark Cho. Michael sold Drake’s to Mark in 2010 and he made frequent visits to the factory in Clerkenwell, London. 

8. Visiting British shoemaker Gaziano & Girling at Pitti Uomo, one of our earliest suppliers. 

9. Koji Suzuki was the first Bespoke shoemaker we partnered with.

1. Jake Grantham, Alan See and Ethan Newton enjoy a moment with guitars. Jake was an early employee of the company and later went on to found menswear brand Anglo-Italian in London. Ethan also went his own way to set up Brycelands in Tokyo, Hong Kong and London.

2. Close friend of The Armoury Gianluca Migliarotti made a beautiful film on Neapolitan tailoring titled O’Mast. The Armoury hosted a screening of the film in New York.

3. December 2013 was the soft opening of our first store in Tribeca, New York. We found our way to the Big Apple thanks to a thriving online business that had a large New York client base.

1. Two Japanese style greats - Kenji Kaga on the left and Noriyuki Ueki on the right. Kaga-san is the founder of Tie-Your-Tie in Asia and continues to make beautiful ties and mens’ accessories today. Ueki-san is the founder of Ciccio, one of the greatest tailors in Asia and beyond. 

2. Hong Kong Land offered us the opportunity to move into a larger store in the Landmark Central. We took over a larger space that allowed us to showcase our full collection. 

3. Friend of The Armoury and creative director of United Arrows Yasuto Kamoshita visiting our Tribeca store for the first time. 

4. Because of the need to be efficient with our limited space, we kept our shoe stock above our product displays. Ladders became an important design feature in almost every Armoury store since. 

5. Orazio Luciano, founder of his eponymous brand and a great tailor in the Neapolitan tradition.

1. Looking over the Drake’s necktie collection at menswear trade show Pitti Uomo. 

2. Koji Suzuki showcasing his bespoke samples in the basement lounge of The Armoury Tribeca.

3. Co-founder Alan See, former creative director Jan Tong, current general manager Sam Wong

4. Our go-to tailor in the Milanese style Gianfrancesco Dembech waiting for a coffee with Jan and Sam.

5. An image from our lookbook shot at the New York club Spring Place in their sunken living room. 

6. Visiting Hitoshi Tsujimoto, the founder of Real McCoy’s in Kobe 

7. Our former colleague Arnold Wong had great skill with window displays. Arnold has since started his own brand specializing in traditional Chinese clothing. 

8. Menswear illustrator Mr Slowboy lent his talents to our lookbook that year, adding his vibrant characters to our photographs. 

9. Ethan, Mark and Alan at The Rake’s anniversary celebration in Tokyo. The Rake magazine has been a huge contributor to the world of classic style.

1. Our group photo of the year with the entire New York team. Of our earliest colleagues, Jeff Hilliard became head of special projects at Hodinkee, Richard Carroll went on to be a prolific full time illustrator, Bailey McKay is now the general manager for The Armoury USA, Jim Parker is our USA creative director and Jeremy Kirkland founded the Blamo! Podcast and media group. 

2. Our New York business has made huge strides and the parties kept getting busier and busier. 

3. As Antonio Liverano got older, he started to send his successors to our trunk shows. Qemal Selimi, an outstanding tailor, was the first to take over the mantle. He has since left Liverano and has become a successful independent tailor.

1. Bespoke trousermaker and troublemaker Salvatore Ambrosi.

2. Connie Cheung, Alice Yip, Joey Lau and Starry Luk in The Armoury’s first ladies photo shoot. 

3. The gentleman on the left is Yohei Fukuda, the second bespoke shoemaker to be added to our roster. An excellent shoemaker in the English tradition, Fukukda-san went on to design the initial lasts and patterns for The Armoury’s in-house shoe collection. 

4. We made frequent visits to Liverano’s workrooms in Florence. Sometimes we pretended to work there.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Images from our first overseas lookbook shoot in Tokyo.

6. Shot by friend of The Armoury Rob Spangle, one of the early street style photographers. Rob went on to become a prolific product designer under his brand Observer Collection. 

7. Our lookbook shoot at Coney Island. Our American team had an excellent sense of wanderlust and often went to new locations for shoots.

1. Legendary menswear writer Bruce Boyer sharing a few thoughts with Mark

2 & 3. Film director Gianluca Migliarotti later started menswear brand Pommella and was one of our suppliers for bespoke trousers.

4. The alley across from our Tribeca store was frequently used for photo shoots. Since the explosion of social media, you see the alley being used a lot by content creators.

1. The start of The Armoury TV - our YouTube channel. YouTube has become one of our most important tools for spreading the word about The Armoury, its products and its philosophy on style. 

2 & 3. Our Upper East Side store started as a pop-up on Madison Avenue. We were given this great opportunity by kind supporter of The Armoury, Haim Chera, an important figure in the world of retail real estate in New York. We were meant to have the space for only 6 months but due to Covid, we stayed there for nearly two years. We later found out we had shocked UES landlords by being the only shop on that stretch of Madison Ave. to have survived Covid intact.

1 & 2. Our first ever watch collaboration - the H. Moser x The Armoury Total Eclipse. With the generous support of Edouard and Bertrand Meylan, the leaders of H. Moser, Elliot Hammer and Mark Cho created a 38mm dress watch that made use of Vantablack, the blackest material in the world. 

3. Since Covid had limited our travel, our lookbook this year was an imaginary exploration of Florence that blended studio shots, travel photography and drawings by our colleague Misako Otani.

1. Although we started with a tailored clothing focus, we wanted to make casual clothing that was relevant to our customers’ lives. We created a small collection called Dayware that encapsulated this easygoing style. 

2. We were the first dealer of Naoya Hida, one of the leading Japanese independent watchmakers. That year, we released our first collaboration with him - the Lettercutter. We designed a new dial and font that drew inspiration from the traditional craft of cutting text into stone. 

3. 2023 saw the launch of the Pedder Arcade - our shopping arcade concept. The Pedder Arcade was born out of a desire to create something new for Hong Kong - an intimate and engaging retail space. Phillips was our first tenant and we ran the other shops as temporary pop-ups on behalf of our friends’ brands. After a year, the project gained traction and we leased the rest of the spaces long term to the businesses you see here today - Lok Man Rare Books, Kaneko Optical, JK5 and Whisky Library. 

4. We had a big group expedition to see our factories that winter. This photo is of our team in Edinburgh having a pub lunch before moving on to see the fabric mill Lovat in the Scottish Borders. 

5. Another byproduct of our Scotland trip - our first collaboration with Scottish watch brand Paulin. We designed the “Hong Kong Dial” - a mix of roman numerals and Chinese characters. 

6. Seeing the fabric archives at Vitale Barberis Canonico, one of our favorite fabric mills. VBC has the largest collection of ancient and vintage fabrics of any of the mills in Italy. From left - Max Papier, head of content production with an encyclopedic knowledge of Armoury product over the years. Jan Tong, former creative director for Hong Kong. Armoury co-founder Alan See.

1. The 10th anniversary of The Armoury New York was graciously hosted by Campari at their beautiful headquarters building.

2. Our first collaboration with Unimatic - the Blu Notte, based on the ripples of water across a deep blue lake. 

3. The largest ever exhibition of drawings by Mr. Slowboy and a weekend of live sketching by the artist himself. 

4. A wonderful gathering of friends of The Armoury Study, our cigar lounge in the Pedder Arcade.

5. Armoury veterans - Tim Smith & Elliot Hammer

1. A photo feature showcasing all the different shopping you could do at the Pedder Arcade.

2. Our gold bracelet program - custom solid gold bracelets for Cartier watches.

3. Our first collaboration with Ressence - the Scattering Sun. We imagined what a classic dress watch could look like from a highly modern and minimal brand like Ressence. 

4 & 5. The Pedder Arcade’s atrium became a regular hangout for groups - hosting talks, launching products and having get-togethers. 

6. Hosting the Alternative Horological Alliance for their first big group show. Ming, Fears, Fleming and JN Shapiro showed their creations to an appreciative Hong Kong audience. 

7. Mark and president of Japanese camera brand Sigma Kazuto Yamaki. Our pop-up shop with Sigma highlighted the iconic BF camera, one of the most stylish cameras ever made.