(FORTUNE Magazine) – Housed on the top floor of Paul Smith's newest store in London is a made-to-measure suit service. This is notable not only because young men from the City of London can now get suits made with the stylish input of Smith's minions--and often Smith himself--but because it may represent the future of the custom suit. Over the past century, armed with mass manufacturing and brilliant marketing strategies, designers killed bespoke tailoring. Dressing to show success now means wearing a designer label, be it an Italian, American, or English one--not a Savile Row one. So it's fairly ironic that Smith, the best-known British designer in the world, has turned to making bespoke suits.

Smith already has annual sales of $292 million and sells some 140,000 suits a year. So why has he chosen to crown his new store with an old-fashioned bespoke tailoring service? "It's a statement against what's happening with the major designer brands," Smith says. "Corporations that are important lack individuality. They've become marketing-led, which is a killer of diversity. This is a statement against blandness."

Which is closely tied to the reasons Smith gives for why the business is booming. "It reflects people's need to return to individuality--to things that are more personal." In practical terms, this means that the 55-year-old CEO who comes in for a plain navy suit might end up in one with a purple lining.

"We sold 20 suits the first weekend," Smith said. "It's a little bit scary, to tell the truth--we don't want it to be a big business." How good is 20? A Savile Row shop like H. Huntsman & Sons sells fewer than 600 a year.

Smith isn't the first one to think about reviving the art of tailoring--nor will he be the last. Richard James led this latest bespoke revolution on Savile Row with his colorful, airy shop situated directly opposite the staunchly traditional Dege. Timothy Everest opened his house of tailoring in an East London townhouse back in 1991. And at least one established shop on Savile Row is fighting back. Behind snazzy new etched windows, Kilgour French & Stanbury is offering a lower-priced suit that's cut in London and sewn in Singapore, as well as a small ready-to-wear collection, in the hopes of attracting new, younger customers. And there are rumors that the trendsetting designer Helmut Lang plans to offer his own bespoke service.

Although Smith likes to brag that he hired two young cutters with Savile Row experience, die-hard bespoke fans know there's a difference. At H. Huntsman & Sons the entire suit--starting at around $3,000--is constructed on the premises. Smith's suits are cut at his store but sewn by various tailors in London--they begin at $1,500. It's clearly a technicality that's not hurting business.

Richard Martin, curator of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, predicts that shops like Smith's are the wave of the future. "We'll see a shift to this new school," he says. "The culture has come to accept the designer as a godlike figure, and we're all caught up in this designer dependency."