How to Buy Your Next Custom Suit.
A How to Guide: What to Look for When Buying a Custom Suit
A Great Suit is Expensive. Here’s our guide to help you weigh out your options and make the best investment.
We believe buying a great suit can be broken down to a few simple elements. We will walk you through our thought process, the pros and cons of the different options and a few questions to ask
Should you buy a custom suit or off-the-rack?: Sometimes custom isn’t the best choice.
What are the different types of custom suits: Navigate the giant gap between all the different custom suit options
Breaking down the what makes a suit great: Workmanship, Fabric, Cut.
Balancing quality vs. price: The best made suits doesn’t always mean the best value.
Is a Bespoke Custom Suit Better than an Off-The-Rack Suit?
Pros of buying off -the-rack
The best of the best- Off the rack designers, like Kiton, Brioni, and Batistoni are arguably the best constructed suits in the world. Most bespoke suits do not match the level of craft these brands build into their offerings.
A better cut- Brands like Tom Ford, Isaia and Brunello Cucinelli have a visionary design aesthetic to match their quality construction, which is comparable to the best bespoke tailors.
Substantial savings- While the above brands are the very top of the market, head to head against a similar tier top-of- the-market bespoke shop and off-the-rack designers will be 20-30% less.
Instant gratification- Bespoke takes time. Custom tailors tend to take a few weeks to a few months to finish a suit. The top end brands are ready to take home today. Even with alterations and fittings, most designer boutiques have great in-store tailors that can deliver a finished ready to wear suit with in days, in some cases even hours.
In general- Yes, head to head, a bespoke custom suits is better than off-the-rack. With that said, there are people that will get more value from a high quality off the rack suit.
Are you ALL of these:
Height range between 5’10”- 6’1”
Weight range between 165lbs - 185lbs
Have a Drop (the difference between your chest and waist measurements) of 5”
Have an Ectomorph body type
If this describes you and you don’t have any glaring posture or body asymmetry issues… congratulations! You are an ideal size 38R-42R. This means that when a designer creates the suit, this is the pattern/block he bases his entire size run on. Its the sizes they use on their models and is the ideal proportion for the cut of their suits.
Off-the Rack Brands to Consider: (That are easy enough to find at top end department stores)
For the best construction and finest materials: Brioni, Kiton, Batistoni
For visionary design and cut: Tom Ford, Isaia, Brunello Cucineli, Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren Purple Label, Ermenegildo Zegna
For fashion: Saint Lauren, Prada, Dolce & Gabana, Dior Homme.
If you are one of the few that fall into a perfect sample size and are looking to buy at the top off the market range ($3000+ ) an off-the-rack suit is a great choice and arguably better made than a matching price point bespoke suit maker. These designer brands offer a better or comparable quality, visionary design and availability that can be hard to beat.
Left to Right: Our master pattern cutter refining the details of a custom suits paper pattern. Hand work on a bespoke jacket. Hand pressing and shaping the final step of a custom suit jacket.
The Different Types of Bespoke Custom Suits
Whats the difference between the best bespoke tailors and all the others?
When it comes to Bespoke, all tailoring houses are not made equally. There is a giant gap in the top end of the market, the bottom and everything in between . Here is a break down of their general tailoring process and costs.
Legacy bespoke tailors: Price Range $3500+ (most Savile Row tailoring houses start at $7000+)
These shops are generally smaller, with a few dozen or less tailors and apprentices and is usually led by one or two master tailors.
What is a master tailor? When it comes to bespoke suits a master tailor is a tailor that has been formally trained in a process or school of tailoring, using techniques that have been passed down through generations. Our master tailor can trace his pedigree three generations deep, 75 years, to the Savile Row tailoring house Norton and Sons.
Each suit is bench made. Usually the process is straight forward- You are measured by the master pattern cutter/tailor, A paper pattern is drafted and cut by said tailor, A shop tailor or apprentice prepares a baste fitting, You return and are fitted as many times as needed, The baste suit is chalked up and the final suit is built by one or two tailors under the supervision of the master tailor.
This is the best of the best when it comes to bespoke tailoring.
Bespoke custom tailors: Price Range $2500+
These shops are smaller, often with one or two tailors.
Each Suit is bench made. The tailor that fits you, does everything him self. They focus on really low volume and tend to build their business around doing daily normal alterations (Hems on jeans, takeing in a waist on slacks etc.)
If you can find a great tailor, there is value here. Some apprentices and shop tailors from respected houses have branched off to focus on this type of bespoke. IF you happen to stumble on to one of these you can get a high end bespoke suit at fraction of the price.
Made to Measure Services: Price Range $1500 +
Varying in size, these are basically sales organizations with an army of “clothiers” aka sales people “consulting” to sell made-to-measure suits. Pioneered by Tom James, this is the biggest part of the custom suit market today.
What is a made-to-measure suit? It is a factory (yes- it is not a tailor shop, Its a factory) that has a pre-made size run of a particular cut of suits. Unlike a Bespoke suit where each pattern is drafted from scratch, made-to-measure simplifies this process by having patterns already made and uses these patterns as a starting point. After your measurements are taken, the closest pattern to match your size is used and modified to build a suit that best matches you.
There is very little to no control of the finished product. Often the clothier measuring you has little to no formal training in ANYTHING related to bespoke custom tailoring and there is very little to no direct interaction between the sales person and the person sewing the garments.
In our opinion, This is the fast food option of custom suiting. While some fast food is a great value - Like an In and Out, Chipotle or a Five Guys - for the most part what you end up with is marginal at best.
On-Line DIY: Price Range $500+
If made-to-measure services are the fast food of custom made suits, On-line DIY is the microwave frozen dinner version.
You take your own measurements, or have a friend take your measurements, or you use your phone to measure you, some have shops that have “trained” consultants to measure you, You use an app or their site to toggle through design options, you select the fit you want (usually Standard, Slim or Extra Slim), they mail the suit to you and give you an alteration credit if needed.
There are so many points of failure in this process of “custom suit” making. As formally trained tailors and designers, its very hard for us to imagine how this can be done with any degree of true custom fit and quality. The best bespoke legacy tailors in the world, with all their training, experience and instincts need fittings. They often times do not get it right the first time. Expecting an untrained person or a phone camera to be able to measure and translate those measurements into a pattern that actually fits seems very improbable.
We are a Different Animal: We built our business model from the ground up with a focus on making great bespoke tailoring accessible.
From our shop we have the scale-ability of a factory, The pedigree of a legacy Savile Row house, and the personal one-on-one approach of a neighborhood bespoke tailor.
But talk is cheap, judge us by our knowledge, judge us by our work. +Explore our: Quality I Craft I Work