Quote:
Originally Posted by
pvrhye 
The shirts I got must have been from the same factory. The collar stays are definitely fused right into the collars. The fabric was alright at Dynasty though. Last batch of shirts had some wonky buttons, which I really wasn't happy with, so I'm probably done with them for shirts. Always got good service on my suits though (just gotta be clear with what you want so you don't get a horrible style).
Not necessarily the same factory; the point I was making was that the models and work flows used across Korea (and this pretty much goes for any kind of business) are the same. They don't spend time worrying about that stuff when they can copy. Get somebody who has worked elsewhere, get them to set up the new stuff, etc, and it spawns on, unchanged.
You probably weren't here to notice this, but there was a breaking point where all the cheap DDM and street stuff like women's shoes, clothes - those went from being all Korean made to being largely imported from China, etc. Just couldn't keep selling at the same prices, they used to have women's shoes at like 3 pairs for 20,000W. Anyway, with those, those were factory runoff of the same thing they were selling in department stores for like 200,000W, and those too were like the men's shirt situation - they were made on the same lasts year after year, had by and large the same patterns, but the materials and detailing were changed model to model obviously. Still, there was always something awkward about them, that made them look cheap when put next to steel-shafted Italian made women's shoes. I saw a picture of a woman in Myongdong in like, 1965, and sure enough, her heels looked just like the ones they sold 5 years ago. Same last, same pump, etc. There are a lot of examples of this. Men's shoes are the exact same story. Basically, the reason the things like removable collar stays on shirts, felted undercollars on suit jackets, welted and steel shafted shoe construction never take place in Korea is that Koreans in the days of yore just learned from looking at pictures of stuff in foreign magazines, etc. They never had any real examples to reverse engineer, so the things they couldn't see, they just didn't include, naturally.
It's not inherently bad, and it's not like a restaurant re-using food or something, it's not that. It's just that these big-volume factories exist to produce junk that they know will be thrown away within 3 months, and so they've never bothered to really seek any new technologies after the American mall brand stores stopped producing stuff here in the '80's and '90s, and they've never rearranged their work flows, or improved on their value. I think someday we'll wake up and the clothing factories will just be completely gone. People will want 10,000W an hour minimum wage to work at McDonald's, nobody will want to sew.
It's a shame because Koreans did a decent job at it when they did truly do it. They could re-arrange their manufacturing setups to be a value proposition. Nobody will though, very stubborn, and the more time you spend arguing with a Korean person nowadays about things that will benefit them, that is just time off your life at that point. Koreans are all just driving themselves to the brink of an economic holocaust here, for the sake of their pride.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
XKxRome0ox
hey impolyt
you are still in korea?
who is your go-to tailor? do you have a favorite?
I've been using Savile Row. They are about 80% there - the service is alright, the workmanship is 90%, the fit is always good (this is their real value)... but I came in with a friend to refer, and got talked into buying a second suit, and they still weren't gonna give me a discount. I was about ready to say I'd never use Savile Row again, but my friend went back for a fitting and told them they did me wrong, and they coughed up a pretty meager 50,000W discount. I am still kind of peeved about that, considering I know what the numbers on this stuff are, and I was giving them the easiest sale in history - same pattern as the first, in-house fabric, yada, yada...
I have a private source in my own factory now, so I am gonna probably have him try making me suits reverse engineered from the SR ones. I might try have him making me one, but am not hoping for much. Can't just take a tape measure to a jacket and have it turn out that well. You gotta start from the body and have a paper pattern.
In reality though, I am likely to start testing out Japanese bespoke, as well as a lot of Japanese OTR stuff that I get tailored to fit. The prices between well-made Japanese OTR stuff in great fabric and the Korean crapshoot stuff in good fabric are no different. It's a no-brainer really.
