Ongoing Bespoke Projects

[dieworkwear]

The small bench tailors you would have developed a very nice personal relationship with no longer exist. In days gone by customers were extremely loyal to one tailor. But times change.

I think that's mostly true insofar that more people back in the day used a tailor and they didn't think of bespoke tailoring as their hobby. The dandies and hobbyists back in the day still used multiple tailors. Adolphe Menjou, for example, even called his book "It Took Nine Tailors." Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino, the Duke of Windsor, and Pola Negri also used multiple tailors. But clothes took a special place in their lifestyle.

 

[Toninno]

I think that's mostly true insofar that more people back in the day used a tailor and they didn't think of bespoke tailoring as their hobby. The dandies and hobbyists back in the day still used multiple tailors. Adolphe Menjou, for example, even called his book "It Took Nine Tailors." Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino, the Duke of Windsor, and Pola Negri also used multiple tailors. But clothes took a special place in their lifestyle.

Very nicely said. I like that ??

 

[poorsod]

For me bespoke is much about the experience, not just only about the stuff. I like my bespoke more than most RTW I’ve tried. I notice that the RTW that I still wear are made from heavy fabrics with a lot of drape. I suspect the drape from heavy fabrics makes the “bullseye” for a good looking garment bigger.

 

[jonathanS]

Garments were ordered over the course of three orders. If I remember correctly, it was:

1. A suit and a sport coat.
2. Two sport coats and two pairs of trousers .
3. Six pairs of trousers.

I thought the suit was OK and I kept it. I also liked how the two trousers in the second order turned out, so I ordered more. In the end, I had to get the six pairs of pants fixed and I kept the one suit.

I have a couple of friends who still use NSM and like them. Not saying my experience is the end all be all. I'm just skeptical of the rules people put up on how to order bespoke clothes. I still think of this stuff as like going to a restaurant. You go, order something, and see if you like it. You might go back and try again later. You might have a favorite and still eat at different places. Some guys only eat at one restaurant, etc. You might decide a particular restaurant isn't for you.

When I first started reading about this stuff online, I remember guys would write about the process in this almost mystical way. Like you have to have some deep relationship with your tailor. I love the romance around bespoke tailoring, but ... I also think some of this stuff can be overwrought.

Unless I’m extremely confident in the tailor, I don’t reorder until I have the first garment done & ive had an opportunity to wear it for a while. I have to figure out if the styling is for me.

also. Aren’t Nsm fitters? They don’t actually cut the garment & farm it out to different tailors in napoli which could explain the inconsistent results

 

[coolpapa]

Garments were ordered over the course of three orders. If I remember correctly, it was:

1. A suit and a sport coat.
2. Two sport coats and two pairs of trousers .
3. Six pairs of trousers.

I thought the suit was OK and I kept it. I also liked how the two trousers in the second order turned out, so I ordered more. In the end, I had to get the six pairs of pants fixed and I kept the one suit.

I have a couple of friends who still use NSM and like them. Not saying my experience is the end all be all. I'm just skeptical of the rules people put up on how to order bespoke clothes. I still think of this stuff as like going to a restaurant. You go, order something, and see if you like it. You might go back and try again later. You might have a favorite and still eat at different places. Some guys only eat at one restaurant, etc. You might decide a particular restaurant isn't for you.

When I first started reading about this stuff online, I remember guys would write about the process in this almost mystical way. Like you have to have some deep relationship with your tailor. I love the romance around bespoke tailoring, but ... I also think some of this stuff can be overwrought.

I had a similar experience. I started off small, with a jacket order, followed by some trousers. I thought they were very good, so I placed a large order, several suits, a jacket, and more trousers. I think I had the misfortune of placing that order when they were experiencing growing pains, consequently the quality of what I received was pretty low. Most of it has been donated to charity, and I haven't used them since.

 

[dieworkwear]

Unless I’m extremely confident in the tailor, I don’t reorder until I have the first garment done & ive had an opportunity to wear it for a while. I have to figure out if the styling is for me.

also. Aren’t Nsm fitters? They don’t actually cut the garment & farm it out to different tailors in napoli which could explain the inconsistent results

That's very reasonable, but it also seems like a very slow way to build a wardrobe. Given the seasonality of clothing, how often I wear any single piece of clothing, and the nature of getting clothes from traveling tailors, I feel like I could be dead by the time the second sport coat arrives.

 

[lordsuperb]

Unless I’m extremely confident in the tailor, I don’t reorder until I have the first garment done & ive had an opportunity to wear it for a while. I have to figure out if the styling is for me.

What tailors are you ordering from who don't give you confidence?

 

[rob]

I’ve only known one tailor and the tailor has travelled as much as I have for the pleasure, he and I being 90 miles apart. The last few items have delivered to my door. In person by the tailor.

Once, a tux was delivered by said tailor when I waited with baited breath with my shirt and black tie and a pair of jeans so I could do a quick change and be off to an event that started before he arrived. As a result, instead of walking in early, I made an entrance late, with all that involves.

I’m pushing about 30 pieces of product with him, not counting shirts, and couldn’t think of using another tailor anymore than I could think of switching best friends.

The thought of a multiple-tailor relationship has about as much appeal to me as an open relationship: more variety, but not much depth and even less contentment. But then again, perhaps I’m one of those irritatingly lucky ones. The one who found their soul mate in high school and lived happily ever after.

rob

 

[stuffedsuperdud]

I think that's mostly true insofar that more people back in the day used a tailor and they didn't think of bespoke tailoring as their hobby. The dandies and hobbyists back in the day still used multiple tailors. Adolphe Menjou, for example, even called his book "It Took Nine Tailors." Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino, the Duke of Windsor, and Pola Negri also used multiple tailors. But clothes took a special place in their lifestyle.

It seems like back when a lot of guys had at least one bespoke suit (either his own or bought 2nd hand from a richer person), and all guys in general had to wear suits at least once a week, if nothing else than for religious services, your local tailor was more like any other skilled service provider, like a doctor or mechanic. He would just hang up his sign, "John Doe, tailor" and people who lived nearby would come to have their clothes made for their whole lives. Money is exchanged, sure, but it doesn't feel very...businessy. The relationship I suspect was something akin to an arranged marriage: it is born from, and monogamous due to, mutual necessity and geography, but over time might grow into something more.....probably not romantic love though, though I must admit that my own tailor is a beautiful man, and at 63 doesn't look a day over 57.

I am not a high-powered businessman so take the following with the entire shaker of salt:
Now where I think times changed was, a nice suit used to hold value because society said you ought to have a nice suit when going outside, and because you wore it all the damn time. Nowadays, a suit's value isn't created by societal need anymore, rendering bespoke tailors unable to justify the price, a price that has undoubtedly gone up due to the loss of economies of scale, e.g. you can no longer have a team of seamstresses with you and now each suit takes 60 hours to make whether you have 1 order or 100 orders. Under these circumstances, most (older) tailors have resigned themselves to just doing alterations and other work that they did as child trainees, to pay the bills. The more enterprising ones though are aggressively taking up sales/marketing activities on top of the actual technical work of putting a garment together. In other words, to bring up some icky salesy words, they are creating value in their products to replace the value lost in the suit's partial obsolescence. These are the guys who post tons of videos detailing how each garment is crafted, from sheep to your back. They'll also go out of their way to explain that while you no longer wear a suit because you have to, you really ought to do so because you want to, because it makes you feel good and makes life a bit more fun. A tailor is no longer just a guy grinding away in a small room with his assistants; rather he's now the heart of a conventional business pushing custom clothes onto an international audience. Unfortunately, this also means that they're catering to a much larger audience, one that consists mostly of dandies, which inevitably results in less personal relationships. If this helps keep bespoke tailoring alive, I am okay with that.

Related: While I applaud their marketing efforts, I do wish they would knock it off with the occasional bits of nonsense that somehow catch wind, like Negroni tweed (stop pretending like anyone looks good in a jacket made from a 1970s couch), those tobacco linen suits from last year, no-break pants with loafers, etc. etc. but I digress.

 

[yanagi]

What tailors are you ordering from who don't give you confidence?

I agree that if a person doesn't trust his tailor, he shouldn't have placed an order to begin with. But I also agree with @jonathanS that for a first order, it's sensible to choose just one item (jacket, trousers, or suit).

Then if the first order was amazing, great; continue the relationship. If you're happy overall but there were a few changes you'd like, no problem; just ask for them the next time around. If it was a disaster, what's done is done.

 

[dieworkwear]

It seems like back when a lot of guys had at least one bespoke suit (either his own or bought 2nd hand from a richer person), and all guys in general had to wear suits at least once a week, if nothing else than for religious services, your local tailor was more like any other skilled service provider, like a doctor or mechanic. He would just hang up his sign, "John Doe, tailor" and people who lived nearby would come to have their clothes made for their whole lives. Money is exchanged, sure, but it doesn't feel very...businessy. The relationship I suspect was something akin to an arranged marriage: it is born from, and monogamous due to, mutual necessity and geography, but over time might grow into something more.....probably not romantic love though, though I must admit that my own tailor is a beautiful man, and at 63 doesn't look a day over 57.

I am not a high-powered businessman so take the following with the entire shaker of salt:
Now where I think times changed was, a nice suit used to hold value because society said you ought to have a nice suit when going outside, and because you wore it all the damn time. Nowadays, a suit's value isn't created by societal need anymore, rendering bespoke tailors unable to justify the price, a price that has undoubtedly gone up due to the loss of economies of scale, e.g. you can no longer have a team of seamstresses with you and now each suit takes 60 hours to make whether you have 1 order or 100 orders. Under these circumstances, most (older) tailors have resigned themselves to just doing alterations and other work that they did as child trainees, to pay the bills. The more enterprising ones though are aggressively taking up sales/marketing activities on top of the actual technical work of putting a garment together. In other words, to bring up some icky salesy words, they are creating value in their products to replace the value lost in the suit's partial obsolescence. These are the guys who post tons of videos detailing how each garment is crafted, from sheep to your back. They'll also go out of their way to explain that while you no longer wear a suit because you have to, you really ought to do so because you want to, because it makes you feel good and makes life a bit more fun. A tailor is no longer just a guy grinding away in a small room with his assistants; rather he's now the heart of a conventional business pushing custom clothes onto an international audience. Unfortunately, this also means that they're catering to a much larger audience, one that consists mostly of dandies, which inevitably results in less personal relationships. If this helps keep bespoke tailoring alive, I am okay with that.

Related: While I applaud their marketing efforts, I do wish they would knock it off with the occasional bits of nonsense that somehow catch wind, like Negroni tweed (stop pretending like anyone looks good in a jacket made from a 1970s couch), those tobacco linen suits from last year, no-break pants with loafers, etc. etc. but I digress.

I think this is only true for some tailors. Not all tailors serve a hobbyist crowd. The times I've been to an Anderson & Sheppard trunk show, for example, my impression is that the other clients I bumped into were mostly business people who only had a passing interest in clothes. They just needed a wardrobe for certain events. Not saying that makes the firm better or worse, just saying not everyone ordering a suit is reading about Milanese buttonholes or whatever.

I also saw that Negroni tweed in person and thought it looked pretty nice. Not something I'd wear, but I appreciate that some people can pull it off.

I agree that if a person doesn't trust his tailor, he shouldn't have placed an order to begin with. But I also agree with @jonathanS that for a first order, it's sensible to choose just one item (jacket, trousers, or suit).

Then if the first order was amazing, great; continue the relationship. If you're happy overall but there were a few changes you'd like, no problem; just ask for them the next time around. If it was a disaster, what's done is done.

If you live outside of New York City, sometimes you have to order multiple things to get a tailor to come out.

 

[yanagi]

If you live outside of New York City, sometimes you have to order multiple things to get a tailor to come out.

I totally understand that there has to be enough potential business for a tailor to come out. I used to work in a part of the Midwest (not Chicago) where I'd probably have to order 11 jackets all at once to get any of the tailors that visit NYC to come.

But in areas more populous than that but less than NYC, is another option to see if there is "enough" interest from other StyleForum members people?

 

[dieworkwear]

I totally understand that there has to be enough potential business for a tailor to come out. I used to work in a part of the Midwest (not Chicago) where I'd probably have to order 11 jackets all at once to get any of the tailors that visit NYC to come.

But in areas more populous than that but less than NYC, is another option to see if there is "enough" interest from other StyleForum members people?

I've tried to organize trunk shows through this forum. Success varies. A tailor usually wants ten orders before coming out (either suits or sport coats). Sometimes there's enough interest to meet that minimum. Sometimes I can only gather up a small number of people for that minimum, so I end up picking up the rest. Really just depends.

 

[Texasmade]

If you live outside of New York City, sometimes you have to order multiple things to get a tailor to come out.

Or just travel to NYC on a semi regular basis. I usually go 2-3 times a year to visit some friends and now started timing that to see tailors.

 

[dieworkwear]

Or just travel to NYC on a semi regular basis. I usually go 2-3 times a year to visit some friends and now started timing that to see tailors.

Going to be real with you. Visiting people sounds even less tempting than flying out to NYC to buy clothes.