Put This On

My mother is a part-time antiques dealer, and one of her specialties is textiles. That usually means dress fabric, but she happened upon some beautiful woolens in an estate sale and was thoughtful enough to buy them for me. She bought four lengths, and gave them to me the last time I was visiting her in San Francisco.

Of course, the question was: what to do with them?

The reality is that even when you have the fabric, the CMT (cut, measure, tailoring) cost is quite high for a suit. Most of the cost comes not from the fabric but from the labor-intensive process of actually putting that jacket together. Things like creating chestpieces and setting sleeves are difficult, time-consuming and thus expensive. Even an affordable Hong Kong tailor like say Peter Lee will generally charge around a thousand dollars.

That wasn’t really in the cards for me, but I did have a little bit of wardrobe budget from my television program, so I decided to have some pants made. My tailor, Mr. Yoo at Pro Tailor in Los Angeles is primarily an alterationist, but I knew he was capable of making clothes, so I asked him how much he would charge. He gave me what I think was a bit of a friends-and-family rate, $125, and I decided to go for it.

I had Mr. Yoo base the pants on a pair of old Oxxford for Abercombie & Fitch pants I had on hand. I like Oxxford’s half-waistband (which you can see in the photos). He did some of the work Oxxford does by hand by machine (though he gave me the option of doing it by hand if I wanted him to), but the result is wonderful. Nice to have a high-waisted pant with a narrower leg.

I figured that as long as I was buying bespoke trousers, I might as well leave off the belt loops. Mr. Yoo didn’t have any waist adjusters on hand, so I made a trip to B. Black & Sons in downtown LA to buy some for him.

I’m absolutely delighted with the three pairs I had made, and I’m going to see if I’ve got the scratch to have a fourth put together, in a light gray flannel. Mr. Yoo was delighted to have the opportunity to work on the pants, and I was excited I could support a local craftsman. (Not to mention excited about my new trousers.)

It’s On eBay

Gieves & Hawkes Greatcoat

Speaking of RJMan, here’s a Gieves & Hawkes coat he found on the Bay, dated 1953. The seller only ships to the UK, but I bet if you emailed he might be amenable to international shipping.

Buy It Now for

A beautiful tailor’s book from 1921 at The Cataloguer’s Desk.

(Thank you, John!)

WSJ: How to Get the Bespoke Suit That Fits

Featuring G. Bruce Boyer and MistahWong.

Simon at Permanent Style compiles the 12 steps involved in his new bespoke shoes from Cleverley in London.

It’s On eBay

Anderson & Sheppard of Savile Row 3-Piece Suit

This suit is so close to fitting me, and yet… so far.  Look at that pattern matching.  Look at that pattern!  Unreal.

Starts at $543, ends Sunday

Time Out New York is a wonderful publication (I’m particularly a fan of the beautiful and charming Jane Borden’s comedy coverage) , but if they want to run articles about men’s style, maybe they should hire someone to look them over who… you know… knows something about men’s style. 

They just published this piece, about “bespoke” suiting in New York.(1)  The disasters are all over everywhere here.  Frankly, they’re too many to enumerate.  Judging by these photos, at least three, maybe four of these men would have been better suited with a $400 suit from some worst-case-scenario off-the-rack retailer like The Men’s Wearhouse.  This is that bad.

The lesson here is that tailors vary wildly in their abilities, their offerings and particularly in their taste.  You cannot rely upon a tailor to tell you how to style your clothes.  They are craftsmen, skilled at making clothes, not at designing them.  Find a good tailor, learn about clothes, and know what you want before you start ordering purple button holes and black wool.  Furthermore: keep it simple.  Just because you can order white-on-black Al Capone pinstripes doesn’t mean you should.

(A proviso: one of these suits, by Michael Andrews, looks fine.  It’s also possible, even likely, that many of the other problems came from the styling and choices made by the gentlemen featured in the article, rather than by some mistake of the tailors.)

(1) (I would ordinarily use “bespoke” to describe a process in which a tailor creates a pattern specifically for a customer, then makes a garment from that pattern with multiple fittings; it appears they are mostly featuring made-to-measure programs here.)