Increased Price of Clothing

[VMan]

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...52C0A963948260

Our London-based friend, a notorious high liver, casually mentioned that a Turnbull & Asser bespoke shirt cost between $30 and $50, depending on the fabric (and the fluctuating rate of exchange).

With inflation that makes the shirts $60-$100 in 2008 money (not factoring in the exchange rate) which is insane compared to the $400 - $600 that T&A charges for bespoke shirts these days. Basically internet MTM tailor prices. Full article:

SPEAKING OF BESPOKE By BARBARA GELB Published: January 20, 1985 BARBARA GELB's most recent book is ''Varnished Brass'' (Putnam). To some Americans, the celebratory ritual of ordering custom-made shirts from Turnbull & Asser in London is tantamount to investiture, almost like being knighted. After all, Turnbull & Asser, 100 years old this April, are shirt makers by appointment to Charles, Prince of Wales, and many of the establishment's other customers also bear hereditary titles. I was instantly captivated by the shop's patrician aura when, eight years ago, I accompanied my husband there to order his first bespoke (made-to-measure) shirts. I had watched him evolve from his youthful Wallachs phase (1946 - we were childhood sweethearts) through the Brooks Brothers 346 Department (1950 - his preppy look) to Paul Stuart's Canadian line (1967 - his executive image). Everything, of course, was purchased ready-made, including his shirts, although he had, from time to time, flirted with the idea of ordering shirts made to measure. Being taller than average and with long arms, he had always had to settle for sleeves not quite long enough; he needs them to be 37 inches and ready-made shirts don't come longer than 36. So when, in 1976, a friend in London suggested a visit to Turnbull & Asser (''my shirt maker, the best,'' he assured us), my husband expressed guarded enthusiasm. Was he ready to take the plunge into made-to-measure? Our London-based friend, a notorious high liver, casually mentioned that a Turnbull & Asser bespoke shirt cost between $30 and $50, depending on the fabric (and the fluctuating rate of exchange). My husband was used to paying around $18 for a shirt. As I recall, he flinched. But our friend pointed out that not only would my husband's cuffs, at last, extend elegantly beyond his jacket sleeves, but the shirts would be superbly tailored and the pattern and style would be exactly to his taste. He would, in brief, feel dressed like a prince. Moreover, said our friend, scornfully glancing at my husband's conventional blue oxford button-down, anyone who did not bespeak his shirtings at Turnbull & Asser was infra dig. He succumbed. That was the beginning of a long, meaningful and expensive relationship with Turnbull & Asser. Now, every time we are in London, we pay a visit to the shop, and if my husband doesn't really need any new shirts, he has his old ones re-collared and re-cuffed (at about $30 a shirt, but they're as good as new) or he buys a few ties or (as he did on our last trip) his first Turnbull & Asser ''jumper'' (in America, a sweater). Last autumn, on our most recent trip to London, we planned our ritual visit to the shop, realizing we'd begun to think of Turnbull & Asser as a kind of club, with its special ceremonies. This sense was confirmed when, on our second day in London, we had lunch with David Frost and his wife, Carina. Frost, as always, was late, and when Carina saw my husband she did a charming double take. He was wearing a four-year-old Turnbull & Asser shirt with alternating wide and narrow stripes of different blues on a cream ground. I had carefully selected a dark blue Turnbull & Asser tie with small red dots for him to wear with it. ''I'm almost sure David is wearing the exact same Turnbull & Asser shirt,'' Carina said. ''Wait till you see! And I picked out his tie.'' When Frost arrived we did indeed see that the shirt was identical and the tie very similar. That customers should often turn to their wives or roommates for assistance in selecting the appropriate tie for a particular shirt is understandable. The patterns of the shirtings can run to the bold: broad stripes of strong color, assertive checks, peremptory plaids. The novelist Joseph Heller, another friend who orders his shirts from Turnbull & Asser, thinks my husband's taste is too timid. Heller himself sometimes wears an assertively checked shirt with an aggressively striped tie - an esthetic error, in my opinion, and one that I try (in common with Carina Frost) to help my husband avoid. I have discussed the shirt-ordering process with a number of New York-based members of the Turnbull & Asser club, and they all agree that the first bespoke shirt is the hardest. Not only do you have to bite the bullet as to cost, you have to learn patience, and the enjoyment of small (some might say niggling) detail. The process begins with a leisurely thumbing through fat books of cloth samples in the shop's Churchill Room - named for a cherished customer. Turnbull & Asser, which also has a ready-made shirt department, is situated at 71 and 72 Jermyn Street, St. James's, and its interior spaces are all mellow lighting and gleaming, dark wood-paneled walls, peopled by immaculately turned out and beautifully mannered salesmen. Under the benign and occasionally impish eye of Ken Williams, managing director of the company that owns the shop, the staff takes infinite pains to please, and its time is completely at your disposal. What shape do you want your collar? How long do you want the points? How full do you want the body? Do you want a pocket? A monogram? (Twenty percent of the customers order hand-embroidered monograms.) Even the shape and color of buttons is open to negotiation. Most crucial - and Mr. Williams's esteem for you might ultimately rest on this decision - do you want a three-button or a two-button cuff? (A one-button cuff is unthinkable, and not even mentioned.) ''We make what the customer wants,'' Mr. Williams says. ''But of course, three buttons are our hallmark.'' He says this, shooting his exquisite, three-button cuffs (white cuffs attached to a dazzling red and white striped shirt that also has a flawlessly fitted white collar). There can be endless discussion, with both Mr. Williams and Paul Cuss, the head shirt cutter and pattern maker, before each fateful decision is made. ''There are finicky customers who tell us the number of stitches they want in their collars,'' says Mr. Cuss, who is designated in Turnbull & Asser's mailed circulars as Royal Shirtmaker. Yet, however carefully you are measured by Mr. Cuss, or by Robert Squires, one of his assistants, there are always little adjustments to be made in the finished product. Indeed, it will very likely be six months before the sample shirt is pronounced wearable. My husband's first shirt was mailed to him in New York about two months after he was measured. He unfolded it reverently. It was a deep, glowing pink with tiny white checks. The cotton was smooth and supple, the cut generously full, the stitching sturdy and almost invisible. When he slipped it on he instinctively stood taller. The fit, however, was not perfect. What was acceptable in an $18 shirt became impermissible in one costing over $30. The collar was a bit high in back; the points were a trifle too long; the cuffs buttoned a mite too snugly. He dictated some imperious notes to me regarding these minor deficiencies, and I, agreeing with him that we should not overlook the most trifling flaw (nor would Turnbull & Asser wish us to), then mailed back the shirt with written instructions for adjustment. The shirt was returned several weeks later. This time the cuffs buttoned a bit too loosely and the collar was a smidgen too tight. Once again, I sent the shirt back with instructions. This kind of back and forth mailing is routine. ''Our shirts know their own way across the Atlantic,'' says Mr. Williams. The beauti- ful pink shirt was returned again, after several weeks, with a courteous letter suggesting that my husband wear it, have it laundered, and then judge the fit. If it suited, the rest of the shirts would be made exactly the same way. He did as instructed and at last had a perfect fit. Four months later, the remaining shirts arrived, all equally perfect. With new cuffs and collars, my husband is still wearing several from that original batch. Turnbull & Asser's painstaking methods and courtly atmosphere have been carefully nurtured and cultivated by Mr. Williams, who took over management of the shop 10 years ago, and began wooing Americans. ''Our business today is, effectively, American,'' Mr. Williams confesses, adding that, while the shop still has a good percentage of English clients, the business could probably not survive without the custom of its American cousins. Mr. Williams, at 46, is president and chairman of the board, as well as managing director of the company that owns not only Turnbull & Asser, but also its sister shop, Hawes & Curtis, whose customers are overwhelmingly British and European. Prince Charles's father, Prince Philip, orders his shirts from Hawes & Curtis, at 23 Jermyn Street. ''Each of the shops developed its own personality,'' Mr. Williams says. ''Americans found Turnbull & Asser. Americans' hearts are won by any shop that gives Old World service.'' Mr. Williams adds that Americans think Turnbull & Asser is typical of British elegance, courtesy and devoted workmanship, and he encourages that image. But, he implies - in truth and to his sorrow - it is atypical and, in fact, artfully contrived. ''Hawes & Curtis is different in style from Turnbull & Asser, quite deliberately,'' Mr. Williams says. ''It's more British and formal. At Hawes & Curtis the salesperson is older, in his 50's. At Turnbull & Asser he's in his 30's. It's a mutual love affair, Americans and Turnbull & Asser.'' Mr. Williams describes his efforts to lure and coddle American customers as being ''softly commercial.'' ''It was a lovely old business,'' he says, ''and no one wanted it to become overcommercial.'' Reginald Turnbull and Ernest Asser opened their shop in 1885 as hunting wear outfitters, specializing in the hunting shirt with attached stock. Turnbull was the shirt maker and Asser the salesman, and it wasn't long before their shop expanded into racing silks and they were appointed shirt makers to the Quorn Hunt, whose members still ride to the hounds, and whose emblem - three plumes rampant - is embossed on the Turnbull & Asser stationery. Today, Turnbull & Asser sells ready-made suits, as well as underwear, pajamas, dressing gowns, sock, scarves, sweaters, ties and braces (suspenders). But, says Mr. Williams, ''shirts are our real business.'' The company owns, in addition to the two shops, a group of manufacturers that weaves and dyes the fabrics for the shops' shirtings and knits wools for their sweaters. ''We ourselves make 84 percent of everything we sell,'' he says with satisfaction. ''And we sell only British-made goods.'' He delights in naming the celebrated for whom Turnbull & Asser has made shirts (and other items of gentlemanly apparel). Among the shop's British customers are Laurence Olivier, Alec Guinness, John Gielgud and Paul Scofield. Mr. Williams will not name members of the aristocracy who are customers for fear they might close their accounts. ''It isn't done,'' he murmurs. He sighs over past customers. ''We've been losing our good ones lately,'' he says. ''David Niven, for instance, and Richard Burton. And Ralph Richardson - he bought lots of silk dressing gowns from us. I can't imagine what he needed with so many. He wore them all, I know, because he kept bringing them in to be re-lined and repaired.'' (Silk dressing gowns cost between $150 and $170.) Mr. Williams cheers up over his list of very much alive American celebrities, among whom are Woody Allen, Tony Bennett, Mel Brooks, Walter Matthau, Al Pacino, Robert Redford and Tom Selleck. The silk fabrics that go into dressing gowns can also be made up into shirts, but silk is more difficult to launder, and most American customers prefer the cottons. Prices have risen since my husband bought his first bespoke shirt and the least expensive - a standard-weave broadcloth - now costs l$:50, which, at the current rate of exchange, comes to about about $57. (Ready-mades start at $40). The most expensive shirts are those woven from Sea Island cotton (imported from the Windward Islands) and voile (imported from France and Switzerland). They cost about $75, but for that price you also get hand-sewn buttonholes and hand-anchored buttons. ''There are only three people left in all of London who can sew buttonholes,'' says Paul Cuss, who joined the firm 25 years ago. ''It is practically an extinct craft. In 1950 there were still 30 people who could do it.'' Only Prince Charles gets hand- sewn buttonholes on his everyday, broadcloth shirts, as well as the fancy ones - and who would begrudge him that extra bit of swank? With or without hand- sewn buttonholes, ''in excess of 20,000'' made-to-measure shirts are sold annually by Turnbull & Asser, according to Mr. Williams. The shop employs a workroom force of 300, which - deployed in five workrooms throughout London - finishes between 40 and 50 dozen shirts a week. The shirts are cut - on a wood block, with a razor-edged knife - in a basement below the Churchill Room. The basement is also where ties are stored, boxes and boxes of them. Foulards, at about $13.50 each, are the most popular, selling at the rate of about 100 a day. The 50-ounce silk ties are a bargain at about $20, compared with the American price for a good silk tie. Also in the basement is a customers' repair and cleaning service, presided over by Charles Morrow, who is 79. Mr. Morrow was the manager of the laundry, a service provided to customers until as recently as five years ago, and he remembers the days when shirts were pressed with gas irons. The second floor houses Mr. Williams's office, which is modestly appointed and cluttered. ''This is a working office,'' Mr. Williams says, apologetically, noting that it is a far cry from the ''very posh'' executive offices he visits in America. He spends 12 hours a day in the shop when he is in London, much of it on the telephone with his buyers. He entertains a good deal, most of it business-related, and what little home life he has is spent with his wife in a house they own in Dulwich, four and a half miles outside of London. His 22-year-old son, Martin, is working at the shop, ''learning the business.'' To maintain and encourage the American connection, Mr. Williams travels frequently to the United States. Turnbull & Asser ready-made shirts, ties and other articles of clothing are sold at Bergdorf Goodman in New York, where ready-made cotton shirts run from $75 to $120, and at Neiman-Marcus in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Houston, Chicago and Boston, and Mr. Williams visits all these shops regularly. ''I do what you might call personal appearances,'' he says. ''I serve tea, chat up the customers, answer questions, give them tourist information about London. It's a total P.R. job. I think I have more friends in New York than I do in London.'' And twice a year - in the spring and fall - Turnbull & Asser mounts what Mr. Williams calls a trunk show. The firm culls its file of 16,000 active accounts, worldwide, and sends between 3,000 and 4,000 letters to its American customers, reminding them of the impending visit. (The letterhead of this reminder reads, discreetly, ''By Appointment to H.R.H. The Prince of Wales Shirtmakers.'') Four representatives of the firm - fitters, cutters and patternmakers - establish headquarters at a New York hotel (for 10 days in the spring, 20 days in the fall) where they make available the same fat sample books of fabric kept in the London shop, as well as stock shirts. Anyone can come and buy or be fitted. But it's just not the same as going to the splendid source in Jermyn Street, St. James's.