Capital Custom Clothiers - Annapolis, MD - Any reviews?

[Beatlegeuse]

Does anyone here have any experience with this place?

http://www.capitalcustomclothiers.com

There's a Groupon today for $205 worth of clothing for $95 - so basically you could get 2 shirts for the price of 1. On tried searching on here and Google but couldn't really find much in terms of reviews.

 

[beowolf]

The client photos look like crap.

 

[Beatlegeuse]

^ Yeah I agree. But I didn't want to get any suits made, just a couple of shirts. I have a bunch of shirts that already fit perfectly, so I thought this might be a good deal to get a few more MTM at a decent price. Not sure about their quality though...

 

[Beatlegeuse]

Bump...any comments about this place at all? I'm probably going to go ahead and get the deal. I have a bunch of credit thru Groupon so this will only cost me a couple bucks....worth a shot.

 

[Beatlegeuse]

I ended up buying this deal...I had some Groupon credit that I applied so this only ended up costing me $70. So, I'll get 2 MTM shirts out of the deal, not bad for $35 apiece. I'll probably try it out sometime in the next month or so, and I can write a review here.

 

[KObalto]

Let us know how it turns out. I bet this is yet another tailor that uses English-American? How many cuff and collar options does Tom James offer? I'll have to check this when I get home.

 

[Beatlegeuse]

It doesn't say on their website if they use EA or not...but I just did notice that they only have 6 collar and 8 cuff options for shirts. That seems a little low to me.

 

[Beatlegeuse]

I finally got a chance to check this place out last weekend. It's a small, but very nice looking shop in a great area of downtown Annapolis. I made an appointment before I went in, but I don't think I really needed to as nobody else came in or out of the store the entire time I was there (about 30 minutes).

Even though the place was small, they had a ton of fabric choices for shirts. I looked through maybe 6 books that each had about 50 swatches each, and there were dozens of other fabric books around the store that I didn't even open. If you don't have at least some sort of idea of what you're looking for, you could spend hours in there looking through all the books. All the fabrics I saw looked and felt like fairly high quality, definitely better than the sale fabrics from Modern Tailor that I'm used to. However, I didn't really get into the specifics about 1-ply vs 2-ply or thread count about each fabric. Nothing I felt seemed like a cheap 1-ply fabric, and for the most part I don't care too much about thread count as long as the cloth looks nice and feels good to the touch.

I knew before I went there that there were a couple staple shirts I wanted - a solid light pink and a solid light lavender/lilac color. I found some I liked pretty quickly in one of the fabric books, which consisted of all Made in Italy fabrics (doesn't automatically mean they were great fabrics, but they looked and felt quality to me). I had a Groupon worth $205, so I could have stopped there, but if you buy 3 shirts the price drops to $99 per shirt (as opposed to $109 per shirt if I had only bought 2). I ended up looking through a couple other books and found an orange/blue check shirt - sounds kinda weird, but I liked the pattern and fabric. So all in I got 3 shirts, and after the Groupon I had to pay $97 out of pocket, not a bad deal.

I brought a shirt with me for them to copy the measurements from, so hopefully they stay true to the fit of that shirt. If they do, then I should have no problems. They also took my body measurements while I was there - I asked them why that was necessary, since I was asking them just to copy the measurements from the shirt I brought in, but they said they just like to have all that stuff on file......okay.

My only major gripe was that there was only one person working there, a girl who was maybe in her early to mid-twenties. Normally that shouldn't matter, but she didn't seem to be super knowledgeable about the fabrics. I had some questions about some of them, and she wasn't able to give me any real definitive answers. For example, I saw one fabric book with a bunch of swatches labeled "Wrinkle Free" so I asked her if they were 100% cotton or if there was some synthetic fibers in there to make it wrinkle-free. She said that maybe there was 1-2% linen blended in, but she didn't seem too sure of herself. I was hoping there would be someone else there that could have answered my questions about the fabrics with more certainty.

Altogether, it was a pretty positive experience, and as long as my shirts come out fitting well, then I'll be happy. I'm not sure if I would go back and spend full price...I'm so used to my Modern Tailor shirts for 40 bucks, and I've had pretty good luck with the fit of those. But if these turn out to be really extraordinary, then I may consider going back for more.

Sorry for the long-winded review! Hopefully someone found it helpful. I will post an update once my shirts are finished, which should be in about 6 weeks. That seemed a little long to me, but they said they are backed up with a lot of orders for upcoming weddings that have been marked as rush orders. I didn't need my shirts right away, so I can wait and I didn't want to pay extra to mark it as a rush order.

 

[nhollick]

I'm curious to find out how your shirts turn out. I walked by there today and the shop seemed quaint, but it was closed, so I couldn't go see the selections. I just checked out their website, and I agree, the suits don't look great. Leads me to believe that is really a made to measure operation for suiting. When you were there, did you get any information about their suiting?

 

[Beatlegeuse]



I'm curious to find out how your shirts turn out. I walked by there today and the shop seemed quaint, but it was closed, so I couldn't go see the selections. I just checked out their website, and I agree, the suits don't look great. Leads me to believe that is really a made to measure operation for suiting. When you were there, did you get any information about their suiting?

Nope, I'm not interested in any new suits right now, so I didn't inquire into any of their suiting fabrics at all. My shirts should be done sometime within the next 2-3 weeks, so I'll post another update then.

 

[Beatlegeuse]

After nearly 9 weeks, my shirts from this place are finally ready. I'm out of town this weekend, so I won't be able to pick them until next Saturday. I hope they come out perfectly, because if there are any issues, I don't want to have to wait another 9 weeks for a remake. I'll post another review once I pick them up.

 

[Beatlegeuse]

Finally went to pick up my shirts this past Saturday. Long story short - each shirt was at least 1-2 inches too big in every dimension, except for the collar...that was the only part that fit well. The shoulder seams were hanging well past my actual shoulder, the arms were big and billowy, and the chest and waist had a ton of extra fabric. After talking with the guy there (one of the owners of the store), I found out that the young girl that took my measurements during my first visit was fired shortly after I placed my order. Great.

More bad news - the perfectly fitting shirt that I left there for them to copy the measurements is missing. Awesome. Also, I gave them some thick, high-quality mother of pearl buttons for them to use on my shirts...the girl I gave them to stuck them in a drawer somewhere, and my shirts were made with cheap plastic buttons. My mother of pearl buttons are nowhere to be found. Fantastic.

The guy at the store apologized profusely, and he promised he will find my original shirt that I left there (one of my favorite shirts btw, which I have now been without for 2 1/2 months), he will find the buttons I brought, and he will get the shirts remade to the correct specifications. I will believe it when I see it, so until they make it right, Capital Custom Clothiers!

I'm really hoping that this is all stemming from the girl that is now fired, and that this is a very rare case at this place, so I will post an update once I see things start moving in the right direction. They are closed Sunday and Monday, so I should hear back from them tomorrow. If they can't find my shirt or my buttons, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. Hopefully they have a similar fabric (it was just a pretty standard white/blue check) and they can remake my original shirt for free. And I'm sure they can source some mother of pearl button somewhere....we'll see what happens.

 

[unbelragazzo]

Some of that might be allowance for shrinkage, but def not all of it....

 

[Beatlegeuse]

^They washed the shirts before I picked them up...and when the guy measured me while wearing it, he agreed it was far too big.

 

[chet31]

Let me guess, the girl was cute.