Umberto Angeloni is a luxury entrepreneur but before that, he is the bona fide mastermind of men's fashion. Umberto originally built up the menswear house of Brioni before an acrimonious departure two years ago.

He's the reason James Bond and the former chancellor of Germany wear the Brioni label.

Now he's going down a new path with a concept for tailored suits that stands everything seen until now in mens' fashion on its head.

Breaking new ground in men's fashion, especially the suit, seems to be a naive notion.

After all, the suit, the basis of a man's wardrobe, has a century under its belt. Umberto Angeloni has weighed all that and, as he says, pressed the reset button. That's how his description for a new concept called Uman, a name formed by joining the first two letters of his first and last names which conjures up words such as humanism.

The label follows no trends, rather it aims at the individual customer in an unusual and comprehensive way. Thus, Angeloni can actually be indifferent about events such as the recent men's fashion show in Milan. Also, the Uman showroom in the city's Via del Gesu is open to customers beyond the end of the show.

The name Angeloni is known to anyone who has immersed himself deeply in men's fashion, even though Angeloni, who has a doctorate in economics, is a quiet man. Starting in 1990 he drew designs that were responsible for the rapid growth in the traditional Brioni label. The Brioni label became the Rolls Royce of men's suits thanks to him. Pierce Brosnan, a former James Bond, became a poster boy for them and the former German chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, is also a fan.

Even when the highly cultured Angeloni, who was born in Rome, left Brioni in 2006, he did not let go of the suit. "At Brioni, I interpreted the suit in a way that carried on the history of the fashion house," Angeloni said. "Now I have been able to interpret the suit in radical new ways."

Angeloni achieved this in a segment in which fashion icons such as Tom Ford and labels such as Zegna, Scabal and Kiton have established themselves successfully in recent years. Prices lie mostly, but not always, in a range lower than those of clothing that is entirely tailored. The designs have a more modern effect and the customer can see the end product when he orders it after being measured at fixed places on the body.

The result is a suit that varies accordingly from the standard model. Angeloni developed his technique by starting with one of the standard models of the suits and adding on.

Thereby, he has newly defined classic ready-made sizes.

"Why is size 50 a 50? Why is the next step 4 centimetres wider?" he asked. After asking these questions, he stumbled upon the fact that modern-day suit measurements go back to army uniforms made during World War Two.

Motivated to update this practice, he used the know-how of the US company Alvanon, which has scanned hundreds of thousands of people in recent years, allowing it to map every individual body type. There's also a similar project in Germany called Size Germany.

Alvanon issued Uman an average virtual body of a 40-year-old, athletic, wealthy European man living in London, Paris or Milan. This body type was determined from a group of 3,000 men fitting the profile whose bodies were scanned.

"I took the cities from which suits come," Angeloni said, referring to his choices. The lifestyle and the body builds of men in western cities are similar. He targeted 40-year-olds because they are in the middle of the age range he is hoping to serve. A model was created for Uman in which all proportions were taken into consideration. All suits are modelled on the silhouette.

The end product is a suit that looks more agile and lively; the rigidity of tailor-made suits isn't there. Angeloni considers his suits far superior to those that are tailored.

"And the value for money is much better," he said. Of course, he can list all the qualities of the perfect suit. "It must be masculine and at the same time emanate grace. And it must express the character of the man wearing it."

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Uman by Umberto Angeloni
To find the a fit as good as a tailored suit, Umberto took a relook at how suits were sized by using body scans from 3,000 men fitting his ideal client profile