Rory Duffy: The Unmaking of a Coat

[carpu65]

No, you miss the point COMPLETELY!

My point is not what "was supposed to happen", or what would have been the right thing "to happen". My point is about what ACTUALLY happened.


Two people made a deal. A ****** deal by all of your accounts, but a deal nonetheless. One person got what was promised. One person did not.

Wait ,
We have listened ONLY ONE of these two persons.
Which is the Rory interpretation of this story?

 

[Claghorn]

Do you think they have an obligation to their audience to disclose the relationship?

Depends on their role. If they have an audience and are deliberately trying to influence that audience, then absolutely.

 

[9thsymph]

Wait ,
We have listened ONLY ONE of these two persons.
Which is the Rory interpretation of this story?
Wait ,
We have listened ONLY ONE of these two persons.
Which is the Rory interpretation of this story?

why didn't you just say that in the first place if you actually meant it?

 

[unbelragazzo]



Depends on their role. If they have an audience and are deliberately trying to influence that audience, than absolutely.

As far as I can tell, this is the closest AY came to saying the coat was to be free:

Good grief.

May it please the jury, I met Rory last year at a party. Turns out I'd read about him years ago after he won the Golden Shears and we hit it off. Like most people here here, I'm a menswear dork and was excited to meet someone who (unlike most menwear dorks) really knows what they the hell they're talking about. After seeing the quality of his work, I commissioned him to make me a discounted sportcoat--the construction of which I'm documenting with a series of videos produced for both Rory's own promotional purposes and general #menswear interest. (Full disclosure: I'm a filmmaker who's previously done stuff for Put This On and A Suitable Wardrobe.)

Rory has nothing to hide, and neither do I. On the contrary, our whole idea was simply to create a detailed look into the process of handcraft bespoke tailoring--for both those who might be interested in actually having Rory make them something, and a more general audience (like myself) who are generally happy to look on from the cheap seats. If you think he charges too much, don't be in the first category. All I said in the first place is that this guy's here in NYC, that he's good, and that he'd be happy to meet with anyone interested in a Savile Savile Row standard of bespoke. Be your own judge of his clothes, not my freaking SF threads. Sniffing around for sinister motivations is a tedious waste of everyone's time and goodwill.

Assuming the text up with the first video on AY's site is what was originally posted on ASW, he says the coat is made "for" him, but doesn't give any more detail than that. I guess one might infer that the coat is being provided in exchange for the video, but on the other hand, one might not.

ASW definitely has an audience, and the first post ends with an explicit hope that the videos influence that audience

 

[9thsymph]

And look, before this 'dispute' goes any further, I'd just like to add that I don't really care about either party.

 

[Claghorn]

And look, before this 'dispute' goes any further, I'd just like to add that I don't really care about either party.

Nobody does.

This is SF. We eat this **** up like it's Cheerios

Quote: I think this strongly implies he's paying something for this--and not just for the fabric. So yeah, I'd argue that that was less than ethical practice

 

[carpu65]

I currently work for the one of the largest manufacturers in the world out of Asia.”
Who knows how long Duffy will remain with his Mystery Asian Firm...


Indochino?

 

[unbelragazzo]



I think this strongly implies he's paying something for this--and not just for the fabric. So yeah, I'd argue that that was less than ethical practice

FWIW, I don't want to accuse Andrew of being intentionally unethical. His videos are well-done and his writing is nice. He probably didn't want to interrupt it with a disclaimer of "hey look, just so you guys know, I'm not paying anything for the coat, it is being made for me in exchange for this video". And if it were something he were doing for Rory's own site, there would be nothing exceptionable about it. ASW is a store too, so it's not completely obvious that there would be anything different about posting it there. The lines here are all pretty blurry, and I wouldn't want to accuse anyone of bad character based on an infraction of these non-existent rules. But that said, if you've been on the forum long enough, you've seen that the nondisclosure of these payments weakens the trust that readers have in what anybody says. Which is perhaps just as well - you shouldn't trust anything you read on the internet anyway (although here Hanlon's razor applies).

It would suck a little bit if this sort of thing drove out good coverage of lesser-known makers. For instance, Andrew's videos are excellent, and if the trust readers put in that sort of thing were weakened to the point that ASW-like outlets no longer wanted to publish it, that would be too bad. Or even if blogs that are run completely without pay decided not to cover interesting makers because they didn't want to be perceived as shilling.

 

[Claghorn]

But he, at that point, chose to say "at a discount" as opposed to "at cost." I'm not going to say that not revealing the nature of his relationship at the outset was unethical (though I do think it is wise and a good thing to do). But it seems like, when you actively lie about the relationship--which the "at a discount" comment probably is--that does cross ethical boundaries.

That being said, I've never seen his videos, but I do enjoy his writing and will happily continue to do so.

 

[Montauk]



no you don't get the point. so let me spell it out for you. if andrew had simply said initially I have no experience with Rory, he seems like an interesting guy, I'm going to make a video about him in exchange for a,bespoke jacket, i'm excited to see how it turns out--I don't think you would be getting this reaction. instead it was hyperbole about the only true savile row master tailor in New york and if you want a suit there is nobody finer for the price, etc.

This is a fair point. I took my lumps two years ago for it, but it’s a fair point. My early posts about Rory may have been hyperbolically glowing, but they obviously came from an honest (if naive) place. As both a lover of fine clothes and a filmmaker, I was totally enthused with Rory, who was himself hungry enough to lay bare his craft for my camera. I wrote what I wrote from an excess of enthusiasm and excitement about being able to offer this community what I knew these videos would be. It’s always been about the videos. (It’s worth noting that my original proposal to Rory was in fact to produce a series about him making a coat for one of his other clients. He immediately responded that he’d happily make one for me, and off we were.)

The initial backlash over my supposedly being a shill took me completely by surprise. Those early contentious posts were written before any of the videos had been completed, and we had certainly not yet gotten to the point where I was asking for any compensation beyond the eventual coat itself. Indeed, at that point I was $300 in the red, having purchased the cloth myself. By the time I received my first penny from Rory, the series was months underway on ASW, and the conversation here had long since turned to its content rather than my princely compensation.

And rightly so. I never presented myself as a journalist. From my first post here (and in the series introduction on ASW) I made it very clear that I was doing my utmost to promote Duffy. In the spring of 2013 he was telling me that he and his wife would be returning to London within the month if his business didn’t improve. Nobody knew about this guy, but I had already seen enough of his work (and more the point, how he worked) that I knew he was worth trying to keep in NYC. I threw myself into that project with everything I had, virtually abandoning my own wife and young daughter for weeks on end in a race to get videos shot and online. I was on a mission, asking for and receiving nothing but more footage. As the series expanded beyond its initial scope, I even quit my day job to have more time to concentrate on it. Yes -- at that point I asked to Rory help me out a little. Mea culpa. You all seem very adamant that a tailor should be paid for his work. How about a filmmaker?

The essential point many of you are missing is that this series was not a review. It was not plug. It was in a sense the opposite of those things: Don’t take my word for it -- here’s how he does it. Watch and see for yourselves! Isn't this cool? I undertook this project not for money, or because I really needed a bespoke coat, but because it was a unique and unprecedented opportunity that I was exactly the right guy to seize.

The movies and the essays speak for themselves, and for me. They are in every frame and word a labor of love. Were they false advertising? Since the coat was never completed, I guess we’ll never know. That’s the real tragedy here. Go ahead and play the gotcha game all you want, but I’ve already been burned on this one far beyond your means.

 

[Montauk]



As far as I can tell, this is the closest AY came to saying the coat was to be free:
Assuming the text up with the first video on AY's site is what was originally posted on ASW, he says the coat is made "for" him, but doesn't give any more detail than that. I guess one might infer that the coat is being provided in exchange for the video, but on the other hand, one might not.

ASW definitely has an audience, and the first post ends with an explicit hope that the videos influence that audience

For the record, the copy on my website is what was originally submitted to Will:

If you’ve managed to read a blog post of this length, you won’t have any problem getting through any of these videos, which range from three to six minutes in length. As a proud menswear dork, confident of our tribe’s mission to help cover a brutish society, I sincerely hope that they will account for countless lost hours on company clocks, endless rounds of more or less civil online discussion, and perhaps a few new commissions for Rory.

I recall that Will actually made an edit to this final paragraph of the series' introductory piece by removing the last two clauses (presumably out of concern for looking "shilly" himself), but in the comments section flatly rejected accusations that anyone was doing anything untoward. Go ahead and knock on his door if you need confirmation of that.

 

[Patrick R]

No. I guess my point is that I don't really find it problematic if the folks who go out of their way for tailors get 'deals'. I'm fine with it...

Do you think they have an obligation to their audience to disclose the relationship?

The FTC does.

 

[carpu65]

But,because this is a clothing forum,the question is:
Is Rory Duffy a good tailor,he make good bespoke suits with a smart silhouette ?
All the rest is an affair between Rory and Mr Montauk.
Or here we're saying that Rory is a trickster that always fraud his customers,takes the money and get away?

 

[Montauk]



Or here we're saying that Rory is a trickster that always fraud his customers,takes the money and get away?

Let me be very clear. Rory screwed ME, and that's what this thread was about. I have no reason to think he's ever delivered anything less than a perfect bespoke suit for anyone else, but since my name will be forever associated with his here on SF, I felt the need to add a pissy disclaimer to my previous hagiography of him.

 

[Cantabrigian]

Do you mean to suggest that one-man tailoring operations that no one ha ever heard of aren't always reliable?