The Dying Art of Custom Mens Suits

Tears of a Tailor - A lesson in appreciating custom mens suits

Custom Men's Suits
Tailors, like custom men's suits,
never lie. . .

Suits, built from scratch, are the ultimate item of clothing a man can wear. Yet, all over the world, good tailors are becoming a scarce resource. Quickly being replaced by machines, and shops that specialize in pumping out bland suit after bland suit.

Sure there are still a litany of "tailor's" who will simply alter the suit you bought off the rack at the sidewalk sale in front of your local Men's Warehouse, but a true "tailor" would never stoop so low.

Even before the 1920's, tailoring custom men's suits was a profession bound by tradition and reverence for fine quality - a profession handed down from generation to generation.

Today, in the buildings of New York's Madison Avenue, in the shops of London's Savile Row, and behind the storefronts of Rome's narrow streets, classic tailors ply their trade making bespoke suits, trousers, and shirts the traditional way, by hand, perfectly fitted to the customer's body, personality, and needs.

Tailors don't lie, nor do their suits. They simply embellish and hide the flaws of their client.

And that's exactly what custom mens suits should do, hide your flaws and embellish your strengths.

A crooked back, a short arm, a slumping shoulder - all are hidden by the exacting eye and deft fingers of a man whom can work in his chosen profession for 30 years and still be referred to as "a young tailor".

Tailor's are like painters, each one's style is distinct, yet each one works within the same medium using the same tools.

Some tailors, like the Italians, strive for a sense of "classical elegance" and distinctness in their client's lives and clothes. Others, like the English, strive for "correctness", a sense of "neatness" and belonging to a certain "class" in their fashions.

Of course, these are generalizations.

Yet classical men's fashion has been shaped by the English and Italian standards of dress, so we must examine both of them closely.

Tailors, like surgeons, must have an eye for detail: these are our classic rules for getting the best bespoke custom men's suits:

Shoulders - Think about how difficult it is to fit and sew a two-dimensional sleeve into a round armhole without bunching or puckering the fabric. In fine quality custom mens suits, the sleeves will fit evenly and without bunching all the way around the armhole.

Lapels - The edges of the lapels on custom men's suits are sewn by hand only after the fabric of the lapel has been pierced to mark where the thread should follow. This minimizes irregular distances between each hole. The fabric may pucker slightly between each stitch - this is okay - and the mark of a hand stitched lapel. Avoid a suit that has no visible stitching on the outside of the lapel - this is the sure sign of a machine made suit that has no personality.