Film Noir Buff
Distinguished Member
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- Jun 26, 2005
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+10, Alex "Hey, nice suit. Where did you get it? I bespoke it. Really? Yeah! It's custom made from a bench tailor."
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+10, Alex "Hey, nice suit. Where did you get it? I bespoke it. Really? Yeah! It's custom made from a bench tailor."
Synthetic forum-speak or not, "bespoke" and "made-to-measure" are used on the forums to distinguish between two meaningfully different things, no? The problem with "custom" isn't that it isn't elegant enough, but that it doesn't make that distinction clear. Sure, the average person on the street will look at you funny if you insist your suit is bespoke, not made-to-measure; but, that doesn't mean the difference isn't real. Amongst people into this sort of thing, it's nice having clear terms, regardless of their etymology or popular usage.
As atailor said and I fully agree, bespoke, by definition, does not describe the quality or build of the suit, only the process by which the suit was acquired. Bespoke does not relay how the suit is made or the quality of the suit and if you think that the physical suit is better just because of a pattern making process, you are wrong. "Custom" conveys more the meaning of craftsmanship but it does not define the method of crafting such as machine made, hand made, or bench made and the term bespoke does not distinguish this either. I could make you an individual pattern and run the suit thru a factory or make it on the bench. Are they both bespoke due to the paper pattern the cloth was cut from? I know famous tailors who make a pattern for each client but the pattern is not drafted it is made from a block. Does this effect the meaning of bespoke or does the individual pattern need to be organic and made by formula. Pattern,shhmattern. The attributes of the pattern are relevant but it's in tandem with what happens after the cloth is cut that matters and defines the end product.
This may be your best contribution to date. What did Greedo say to make everyone laugh?
To me MTM is closer to RTW than custom and that is the first comparison. RTW vs MTM. MTM should be seen first as a next level RTW rather than a lower level Custom made/tailor made/bespoke garment. I associate bespoke with working thru a custom tailor and a vastly different experience, process and product.
Bottom line, I don't like the term bespoke because it doesn't mean or define what people think it does.
Generally speaking, MTM is RTW with nearly none of advantages of RTW and with nearly all the disadvantages of custom/bespoke.
? Do explain.
As atailor said and I fully agree, bespoke, by definition, does not describe the quality or build of the suit, only the process by which the suit was acquired. Bespoke does not relay how the suit is made or the quality of the suit and if you think that the physical suit is better just because of a pattern making process, you are wrong. "Custom" conveys more the meaning of craftsmanship but it does not define the method of crafting such as machine made, hand made, or bench made and the term bespoke does not distinguish this either. I could make you an individual pattern and run the suit thru a factory or make it on the bench. Are they both bespoke due to the paper pattern the cloth was cut from? I know famous tailors who make a pattern for each client but the pattern is not drafted it is made from a block. Does this effect the meaning of bespoke or does the individual pattern need to be organic and made by formula. Pattern,shhmattern. The attributes of the pattern are relevant but it's in tandem with what happens after the cloth is cut that matters and defines the end product.