Born To Tailor in Manhattan

[MFH33]

I apologize if this has been answered elsewhere but a forum search didn't produce any results. Has anyone tried/does anyone know anything about Born To Tailor On Lexington Ave in Manhattan? They claim to offer "custom" suits with fully canvassed jackets for $699-$1899 and I was wondering how they stack up to other MTM shops in comparable price ranges like Proper Suit, Suit Supply, Kent Wang, Mr. Ned. Thank you.

 

[PASstudy]

bamp

 

[traverjr]

I've been into their location at Lex and put down a deposit on 4 yards of Super 160s wool and will be completing payment for the suit soon. I plan to wear it in my wedding in the Fall(2014) so I hope it goes well. I had met with about 10 other bespoke suit tailors before deciding on Born to Tailor, it seems like the least shady of all of them and is owned and operated by a Parsons or Pratt(cant remember which) grad who studied fashion and was the son of a tailor - hence "Born to Tailor". Not run by old guys with the fashion sense of the roaring 50's, this guys seems legit and offers the best option for the price. Also the suits are made in the us, in SOHO NYC, not riverside CA or other boarder towns......
I'll update when I get my suit but I felt more than confident taking the jump on a suit after meeting with the owner!

 

[Hennessy17]

I'm a long-time lurker, but was finally compelled to post here specifically in response to an awful experience with this tailor, to warn others against attempting to order anything from this place.

If you peruse the Yelp reviews, you'll see that Varun seemed to do quality work for some time, but then at some point in late 2016, something happened that caused him to completely fall apart. Since then has been deceiving, lying to, and defrauding customers.

I had a truly atrocious experience.

It seems that many others had a similar experience to me, although perhaps I was lucky that anything was delivered to me at all. I ordered a custom 3-piece tuxedo and Marcella tuxedo shirt on September 1, 2016 for my wedding on November 26, 2016. I also spent hundreds of dollars extra on a special silk grosgrain for the lapel facings and supplied this to Varun.

Varun assured me the final product after all fittings, would be done within 10 weeks. After numerous delays, with increasingly ridiculous excuses, I did receive my tuxedo a few days before the wedding. I thought the grosgrain looked different than what I supplied to Varun, but he assured me it was what I ordered.

However, the tuxedo shirt was not at all what I ordered. It was a completely different type of fabric. Varun agreed to remake it, and did so, with a fabric that was still wrong, and didn't deliver it to me until the day before my wedding. Needless to say, this was a very stressful experience.

Varun promised to make me a new shirt and a complimentary blazer to atone for this, but then repeatedly avoided making an appointment with me to discuss this and the concerns I had about the construction of the jacket.

Since I was never able to discuss it with Varun, I took it upon myself to examine the construction of the jacket and discovered evidence that two of my suspicions were correct:

1) The jacket is NOT fully canvassed as we had agreed. It is half canvassed (in the chest only) with fusing on the front of the jacket. Varun had agreed in writing and you explicitly told me to my face that the jacket was fully canvassed. The promise of full canvas construction was an essential factor in my decision to commission the tuxedo from him, as opposed to the many other shops that offer half canvas construction in a similar price range. The promise of full canvas was also a key factor in my decision to spend additional hundreds of dollars on the silk grosgrain facing (more on that below). I was willing to spend the additional money on upgraded materials only because I thought I was adding those materials to a suit constructed in the best way, fully canvassed.

This is flat out FRAUDULENT. Varun lied about a critical component of the suit in order to get me to buy it. It would be like a car salesman claiming a car has a v8 engine when it only has a v4.
Even if I give Varun the benefit of the doubt (which, at this point, I don't) and assume he actually believed the suit was fully canvassed, but something got mixed up or lost in translation along the way at his workshop or from whoever physically assembled the suit, it is still completely unacceptable from the customer's perspective.

2) As I mentioned, I spent an additional several hundred dollars out-of-pocket on fine silk grosgrain for the lapel facings. Grosgrain is a ribbed silk. When I picked up my tuxedo I thought the silk didn't look quite as I expected. The silk was flatter and smoother than I expected, almost like a satin. I asked if it was the grosgrain, and Varun assured me it was. I asked if he had the original sample of the grosgrain I provided, because I wanted to compare it, but he said he had left it at your workshop or misplaced it.
After acquiring another sample from the original source (Isles Textiles group) to compare, I realized what happened. The silk facings are indeed the material I purchased, but they were cut and attached facing the WRONG WAY! The ribbed facings are attached facing inside, while the flat back of the fabric is facing outwards. I confirmed this by looking at the inside breast and hip pockets on the jacket, where you can see the reverse side of the material is ribbed! The ribbed face is the one that is supposed to be exposed outward!

This is a screw-up of epic proportions on Varun's part! He essentially wasted hundreds of dollars of precious grosgrain silk by sewing it on backwards, defeating the entire purpose of the style!

To this point I had refrained from posting any reviews of my own about my bad experience, because I wanted to give Varun the benefit of the doubt and give him a chance to atone for the poor experience I've had. However, I now believe Varun is either a liar and a crook, or just incredibly incompetent. He strikes me as too smart and too knowledgeable to be that incompetent, so unfortunately I'm left suspecting the former is the case. He continues to ignore, avoid, or give non-answers to my emails attempting to resolve this. His stream of increasingly pathetic excuses is hard to take seriously after a while.

To be fair, the fit of the tuxedo was pretty good, though not "perfect" as Varun repeatedly promised. However, the flat out lying and deception, plus the fraudulent products, are completely unacceptable.

I've filed a complaint with Better Business Bureau. If that doesn't resolve the problem, I will pursue legal proceedings against him.

 

[GBR]

How strange that you first post should be to damn the man.

 

[Hennessy17]

How strange that you first post should be to damn the man.

I'm not sure what you're trying to imply. This was my first post because it's the first thing of substance I've felt I could contribute here to help other readers. Would you prefer I first posted another "what color shoes should I wear with a navy suit?" or "should I leave the last button undone on my working cuff buttons?" thread?

I had been trying to resolve this privately with Varun for over a year, without airing things publicly, but since he's shown no interest in taking any corrective action, I felt compelled to warn others and call out his disgraceful and unprofessional conduct. Check out other recent reviews for Born To Tailor on Yelp. Almost every review since late 2016 tells a similarly unpleasant story. I'm not sure what happened at that time, but for whatever reason it seems that Varun can no longer be trusted.

I checked out this very thread before going to Born To Tailor, and didn't see any negative feedback, which helped make me feel more comfortable trusting Varun. I don't want other readers to make the same mistake.