Some of you may remember my thread complaining about the difficulty in finding a quality shirtmaker. Well, I finally found the time to stop by a shop that I discovered quite by accident. I was actually looking for a place called russell's, but was on the wrong street and stumbled upon this one.
The store is called Arthur Inc. It's right above Troika on Crescent. It's owned and operated by a Lebanese gentleman and his son (who's my age). They're both a pleasure to deal with. I had just intended to drop-in for an hour to get quickly acquainted and measured, but I was there for closer to three.
Before I dropped-in to the store I had sent them an email asking some pretty specific questions about how they do things in an attempt to see if it would be worth the visit. I sent an initial email because I hate the idea of going in to a shop where you deal with the owner and then having to leave because you don't like their offerings. This actually served a dual-purpose because when I entered the store they remembered my email and knew that I was really in to this stuff.
Arthur is very much a man that seeks to please his clients. He answered all my questions and then some. He's not the least bit arrogant and he seems to really enjoy educating his customers. At one point when we were talking about armholes, a favorite subject of mine, he went in to the back and got out an old book on pattern drafting to help illustrate a point.
He stocks mainly Alumo (makes up 70% of his inventory), Acorn, and I believe some Testa, and he will be stocking SIC Tess in the near future.
The measuring process went very smoothly and he was very thorough. He took me through all the little things he noticed about my body and explained to me in each case what he would do to correct for them.
I had a good feeling about things and I wanted to do a muslin fitting to ensure proper fit on all my shirts so I committed to a 6 shirt order. If you chose to skip this stage, there is no minimum order.
In terms of details, he'll do anything you want. He defaults to machine-sewn buttonholes and buttons, but shanks the collar button. Construction quality is very good. The stitching is very straight and he does edge-stitching well. All of the stitching is very clean; no need for gussets here. Pattern matching is done without the customer having to ask for it. You also have a good selection of MOP buttons to chose from and they really are some of the nicest buttons I've ever seen.
At a customer's request he'll also do stitching by hand, hand-sewn buttonholes, shank the rest of the buttons, etc. The hand-stitching is very well done and quite closely spaced, somewhere between 8-12 stitches/inch if I remember correctly. The handsewn buttonholes are also very well done.
Pricing is quite reasonable at about 200-250 for standard italian cotton (100 2x2). The Alumo stuff starts at 275 and goes to around 425. Anything you have done by hand is tacked-on to the base price. EDIT: it's $175 extra for him to do the shoulders, buttonholes, and buttons by hand.
Since I didn't pick any fabrics yet I just made a deposit and I'll worry about cost on my next visit. On the whole I'm quite impressed so far, but I'll withold final recommendation until I get my shirts.
The store is called Arthur Inc. It's right above Troika on Crescent. It's owned and operated by a Lebanese gentleman and his son (who's my age). They're both a pleasure to deal with. I had just intended to drop-in for an hour to get quickly acquainted and measured, but I was there for closer to three.
Before I dropped-in to the store I had sent them an email asking some pretty specific questions about how they do things in an attempt to see if it would be worth the visit. I sent an initial email because I hate the idea of going in to a shop where you deal with the owner and then having to leave because you don't like their offerings. This actually served a dual-purpose because when I entered the store they remembered my email and knew that I was really in to this stuff.
Arthur is very much a man that seeks to please his clients. He answered all my questions and then some. He's not the least bit arrogant and he seems to really enjoy educating his customers. At one point when we were talking about armholes, a favorite subject of mine, he went in to the back and got out an old book on pattern drafting to help illustrate a point.
He stocks mainly Alumo (makes up 70% of his inventory), Acorn, and I believe some Testa, and he will be stocking SIC Tess in the near future.
The measuring process went very smoothly and he was very thorough. He took me through all the little things he noticed about my body and explained to me in each case what he would do to correct for them.
I had a good feeling about things and I wanted to do a muslin fitting to ensure proper fit on all my shirts so I committed to a 6 shirt order. If you chose to skip this stage, there is no minimum order.
In terms of details, he'll do anything you want. He defaults to machine-sewn buttonholes and buttons, but shanks the collar button. Construction quality is very good. The stitching is very straight and he does edge-stitching well. All of the stitching is very clean; no need for gussets here. Pattern matching is done without the customer having to ask for it. You also have a good selection of MOP buttons to chose from and they really are some of the nicest buttons I've ever seen.
At a customer's request he'll also do stitching by hand, hand-sewn buttonholes, shank the rest of the buttons, etc. The hand-stitching is very well done and quite closely spaced, somewhere between 8-12 stitches/inch if I remember correctly. The handsewn buttonholes are also very well done.
Pricing is quite reasonable at about 200-250 for standard italian cotton (100 2x2). The Alumo stuff starts at 275 and goes to around 425. Anything you have done by hand is tacked-on to the base price. EDIT: it's $175 extra for him to do the shoulders, buttonholes, and buttons by hand.
Since I didn't pick any fabrics yet I just made a deposit and I'll worry about cost on my next visit. On the whole I'm quite impressed so far, but I'll withold final recommendation until I get my shirts.
