Mencyclopaedia: Rubinacci - Telegraph The Neapolitan tailoring house with a dandyish heir. The loftiest social sphere in Regency England was transfixed by the dedicated dandyism of Beau Brummell. He advised royalty on personal hygiene, is credited as being the catalyst for the general masculine adoption of long trousers, and is immortalised by a statue on Jermyn Street. Yet despite all this, Brummell failed abysmally when it came to making money out of his fame: he died in poverty, of syphilis, in France. Two centuries on, there is a new dandy at large - and this time the territory transfixed is the blogosphere. Search online for "Luca Rubinacci" and you'll see picture upon picture of the same gentleman - balding, blue-eyed and lightly bearded - sympathetically photographed wearing extrovertly elegant clothes. On the streets of Milan, Paris and London he wears delicately cut, generously proportioned suits jazzed up with flashes of colour at the shirt, pocket square, shoe and tie. In Florence, there was an especially striking lavender jacket. On the beach in Rio he was shot striding across the sand in turquoise shades, a navy-on-white patterned shirt, and with a purple, fringed scarf knotted insouciantly through the belt-loops of his shorts. In his most conventionally dressed portrait, Rubinacci wears a dark, City-perfect suit as he carves downhill on a snowboard. IN PICTURES: Men's street style from New York Fashion Week spring/summer 2013 There are a gazillion wannabe Beau Brummells and Brummell-ettes on the internet (see lookbook.nu for a dose of undiluted vanity), but Luca offers dandyism with design. For decades, his father, Mariano, has run the family tailoring house Rubinacci in Naples, following that city's sartorial tradition of hand-sewn, silk-threaded buttonholes, high collars and expansive lapels. Its clothes are wonderful but expensive, and its clientele, for many years, were predominantly middle-aged. Then, in 2002, an American named Scott Schuman met Luca and began posting photographs of him on his hugely popular blog, The Sartorialist. As more and more readers left admiring comments - e.g. "penetrating eyes and a flawless style" - Rubinacci, the company, received more and more enquiries from a new generation of prospective customers. Overcoat, £1,950. Slippers, £300 Inevitably, nearly the first subject Luca addressed when we met in Rubinacci's Mayfair outpost recently was that day's outfit. He said: "This is a normal, grey, flannel suit. It is a look, a masterpiece, a classic English gentleman style. But I add a burgundy velvet loafer and a denim, green and violet shirt with horn buttons. It is elegant. When you play with colours like this you have to know you are playing on the edge - you can look like a clown. It is a very tight line. Rubinacci is as dismissive about big-brand fashion as he is dedicated to colour. Those brands cost a lot. But why should you pay €1,000 for a mass-produced jacket from a salesman who thinks only about profit, when you can go to a tailor and have your vision made? Seduced by Luca's online lookbook, wealthy young aspirant dandies now come to Rubinacci for violet jackets, check overcoats, and just-so deconstructed double-breasteds of their own. And Luca now travels the world to advise them: when we met he had just touched down from a personal tailoring gig in Almaty, Kazakhstan. For the ready-to-wear classes, there are Rubinacci options; eye-snagging ties, pastiche Hogarth silkscreen scarves, colognes and other smart sundries are available on the company's endearingly unsophisticated website. Luca's accidental emergence as a sartorial avatar has proved a potent way to sell personally tailored, unique clothes to a new generation of decadent dressers. And if you can't afford to buy into it yourself, this 30-year-old Brummell 2.0 still makes for a pretty beguiling Google.