Bespoke suits, jackets and trousers are the Bugatti of menswear: exclusive, personalised, the height of luxury and the opposite of mass produced, RTW offerings. At the other end of the market you can find literally boatloads of garments, ranging from T shirts at a few dollars to well made (in some cases handmade) suits in the finest fabrics. Made to measure sits somewhere in between, offering the customer some combination of style, fit, fabric choice and other customisation. Like RTW products, MTM products vary considerably in quality of construction, fabric choices and originality. One thing to remember is that MTM is not discount bespoke. So don’t go into a MTM shop thinking that you are going to come out with something that is more or less bespoke though at a lower price. MTM is its own thing – worthy in itself, but different.
When you order MTM, the first thing to consider is the concept: MTM makers advertise themselves as “custom” shops, but that does not mean the same thing in all cases. 95% of them have a house style (a basic jacket, trousers, waistcoat, shirt, etc) from which they derive all their orders. Some offer considerable variations (e.g., lapel width, jacket length, canvas full or half, lining full, half or unlined) but as you read above, MTM is not really about being cut-rate bespoke so it is best not to expect a bespoke-style service.
Next, consider the maker. When you go to the shop’s website, what do you see? If you see pictures of men wearing skinny suits, that is what the maker will do for you. If you ask for a 40s style bold look suit the maker may promise to accommodate you, but the fact is that he can’t. He is running a factory operation and it is impossible to reconfigure a factory’s machine settings to turn a contemporary cut into a bold look cut. It is not only that the lapels, button stance, jacket length and other externals will “look” different – the piece has to be made differently from the inside out. So if you are looking for full cut trousers, for example, search for a maker who features them on his website and find out if he can actually make them (note: full cut trousers are not big skinny trousers with an extra couple of inches on the rise).
Third: If the maker asks for your measurements (as he must, one way or another), give your actual measurements. Do not declare a 45 inch chest just because you want one, or because you would like a slightly larger chest piece on your jacket. Doing so will result in a terrible fit, because the maker will take you at your word (unless he has a consultation service where you can actually discuss what you want). And avoid complicating matters with requests such as “Please make the shoulders a little wider”. “A little” is not a measurement that you can feed into a CAD file. In other words, keep the whole thing as short and specific as possible.
This will be continued in the next post. Stay tuned.