mortgagebank
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STYLE. COMMUNITY. GREAT CLOTHING.
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Has anyone tried the grandi & rubinelli oxfords or have swatches?
@luxire - which fabric is that? Searching MIDNIGHT GREY PLAID or grey plaid yields no results.
I am working on a new collar for a BD (it is actually an old Barba BD collar #3062. They made it perfect the first time, but the collars of my last 3 orders don't look like the first one. So I want to make my future BD collars look exactly like my first Barba collar). Is this the right way of drawing the collar? Do I need some adjustments? I also assume that Luxire would understand that the lines should be straight and not skewed (red and yellow line) like in the picture.
Also, are you able to make inverted pleats like Cleeve of London x Drake's?
Hey all,
As mentioned a month ago, today I visited Luxire’s Bangalore facility for a talk with founder Ashish Arya and a tour of the factory. As promised, here’s a write-up of my visit featuring an (hopefully) interesting read for new and old thread followers alike.
Let me start this write-up by addressing an issue that I hope can be buried once and for all. On this thread, several individuals have raised concerns about garment production in Eastern countries, citing horror stories about exploitation and unworthy working conditions.
This is not the case with Luxire.
I saw the factory floor; it was clean, well lit and spacious. I spoke with several employees; they were all smiling, laughing and seemed to be genuinely happy about and proud of their work. Also, there were no monkeys.
Luxire tailors
Fusing a shirt placket
The company
Luxire’s founder, Ashish Arya, left a decade-long banking career in New York to establish himself in his home country, India. Initially, he did a stint in the steel industry along with his father, but changed directions after a friend convinced him to take a look at the clothing industry. Shortly after this suggestion was made, Luxire became reality.
In its nascent weeks and months, Luxire was a four-man shirt making business in a 150 square foot room. Mr. Arya was in charge, flanked by a trusted cutter and two tailors. Over the 30 months that have since passed, they have expanded into an operation providing custom-made shirts, pants, suiting and outerwear, and most recently shoes and leather wares. Shoe making is difficult and still a WIP (I saw Betel's shoes while I was there), but they're getting therhe bags are simply incredible. I want one, badly.
One of the sample bags
Mr. Arya (from now on called Ashish, because he makes you feel like you’ve known each other for years the moment you meet) explained that growing into a provider of a range of high-quality custom garments was the first major milestone of Luxire. As far as I could gauge, there are now around 35 tailors employed (cross-functional with regards to shirts and pants, more specialized with regards to suiting and outerwear) and a dedicated team of cutters, both overseen by a head tailor whose father was a high-end tailor during (and for) the British Raj. In addition, there is a leather-working team, a QC team, a fabric handler and an administrative team. The initial employees are still with the company.
The customer interface of this rocket growth has primarily been Theresa, who many of us know from this thread and as the spearhead of [email protected]. Ashish acknowledged, however, that customer service has suffered somewhat in the chase for expansion. That’s why “The New Nice”, as he calls it, is the next milestone for the company and something they focus heavily on currently – ensuring that every customer of Luxire has a completely pleasant experience throughout the purchasing process. Judging from the recent feedback on the thread, it appears it’s working out well.
The process
When Luxire receive our specifications (specs which, I must say, are pretty OCD when you see them printed on paper), Mr Kabir Gupta, whom some might have noticed now replies to some of the e-mails to Luxire, and his team start by transposing the specs onto a company-standard notation sheet.
This sheet is passed on to the cutters, who use their professional judgment to implement the changes that aren’t easily quantifiable on a spec sheet. If it’s a simple order, a CAD-model is made and a CNC machine cuts the template before it’s finished by hand. More complex orders or changes to existing templates are done completely by hand. If an order requires changes to an existing template, the changed template is glued onto a copy of the old template. Hence, all iterations of an account’s templates are kept track of.
My pant template
The templates are stored in numbered plastic containers, and a spreadsheet makes it easy for the cutters to retrieve the right template for an order.
Meanwhile, the fabric handler finds the right fabric and takes notes of the order #, order size and how much fabric was needed to fulfill the cutter’s requirements. An interesting note about the fabric handling process is that when it comes to the more exclusive fabrics, the fabric is ordered from the mill at cut length for each order. In other words, ordering trousers in a “one-off” fabric means that a couple of meters of that fabric will be shipped to India for the purpose of making the garment.
Obviously, this isn’t a sound long-term strategy, neither with regards to economics nor environment, but it’s the consequence of offering the range of fabrics that Luxire does. Ashish told me that they’re seriously considering to consolidate their fabric offerings, which at the cost of choice offers the possibility to purchase larger quantities of fabric, resulting in lower product cost to the customer. This makes for an interesting debate here at SF – personally, I’m all for it (I’m too feeble-minded anyway to choose between 20 different white dress fabrics).
Selvedge denim
One of the sample bags
Mr. Arya (from now on called Ashish, because he makes you feel like you’ve known each other for years the moment you meet) explained that growing into a provider of a range of high-quality custom garments was the first major milestone of Luxire. As far as I could gauge, there are now around 35 tailors employed (cross-functional with regards to shirts and pants, more specialized with regards to suiting and outerwear) and a dedicated team of cutters, both overseen by a head tailor whose father was a high-end tailor during (and for) the British Raj. In addition, there is a leather-working team, a QC team, a fabric handler and an administrative team. The initial employees are still with the company.
The customer interface of this rocket growth has primarily been Theresa, who many of us know from this thread and as the spearhead of [email protected]. Ashish acknowledged, however, that customer service has suffered somewhat in the chase for expansion. That’s why “The New Nice”, as he calls it, is the next milestone for the company and something they focus heavily on currently – ensuring that every customer of Luxire has a completely pleasant experience throughout the purchasing process. Judging from the recent feedback on the thread, it appears it’s working out well.
The process
When Luxire receive our specifications (specs which, I must say, are pretty OCD when you see them printed on paper), Mr Kabir Gupta, whom some might have noticed now replies to some of the e-mails to Luxire, and his team start by transposing the specs onto a company-standard notation sheet.
This sheet is passed on to the cutters, who use their professional judgment to implement the changes that aren’t easily quantifiable on a spec sheet. If it’s a simple order, a CAD-model is made and a CNC machine cuts the template before it’s finished by hand. More complex orders or changes to existing templates are done completely by hand. If an order requires changes to an existing template, the changed template is glued onto a copy of the old template. Hence, all iterations of an account’s templates are kept track of.
My pant template
The templates are stored in numbered plastic containers, and a spreadsheet makes it easy for the cutters to retrieve the right template for an order.
Meanwhile, the fabric handler finds the right fabric and takes notes of the order #, order size and how much fabric was needed to fulfill the cutter’s requirements. An interesting note about the fabric handling process is that when it comes to the more exclusive fabrics, the fabric is ordered from the mill at cut length for each order. In other words, ordering trousers in a “one-off” fabric means that a couple of meters of that fabric will be shipped to India for the purpose of making the garment.
Obviously, this isn’t a sound long-term strategy, neither with regards to economics nor environment, but it’s the consequence of offering the range of fabrics that Luxire does. Ashish told me that they’re seriously considering to consolidate their fabric offerings, which at the cost of choice offers the possibility to purchase larger quantities of fabric, resulting in lower product cost to the customer. This makes for an interesting debate here at SF – personally, I’m all for it (I’m too feeble-minded anyway to choose between 20 different white dress fabrics).
Selvedge denim
Has anyone tried the grandi & rubinelli oxfords or have swatches?
Just ordered one of these as a popover (I have popover mania and Luxire is my connection...), based on the good words for the fabric here. Looking forward to it.Wearing my sky blue oxford today that I recently received. Now I realize why everyone was saying that this shirt is a must. Fantastic quality for the price and they nailed the fit adjustments to the bottom of the shirt. Excuse the bunched up fabric on my shoulders as it is just the way I am sitting. This will definitely be my go to shirt to wear both tucked in as well as untucked with jeans for many months to come.