The Bespoke Process - Part One - Designing and Measuring Up

In line with my recent post on the forward fitting of my new chocolate brown three piece cocktail suit, I promised an accompanying series of accessible posts on the bespoke process and the construction of a bespoke suit. 

Well, with this in mind let's begin at the beginning. Creating a bespoke suit can take some four months and the degree of thought and craftsmanship (around a hundred man-hours worth from start to finish) is immeasurable. In most tailors there is no set limit to the number of fittings a customer will have - it simply depends on the number required before both the tailor and customer are completely satisfied that the garment is fitting up to standard, and in certain cases, this can require around six fittings, or even more. A Savile Row suit is the finest of its kind in the world, and both the quality of craftsmanship and attention to detail is phenomenal - many fittings will often involve minute changes, (we're talking literally millimetres) and take place more for the benefit of the tailor and his technical eye, than that of the customer. 

  

At the start of the process, the client makes his first appointment (and note that even when visiting tailors which don't insist on the customer making an appointment first, it is considered polite) and walks into the shop for the first time. As soon as he walks in (and its not as scary sounding as you might think) the tailor will start eyeing-up his customer, getting a sense of his personal taste and dress sense. Most tailors' I've spoken to have said that they feel its polite for the customer to come dressed in tailoring, even if its just a basic off-the-peg suit or a formal jacket. It helps the tailor to get a sense of what the customer will want, and on the most basic level, it shows an interest in tailoring and a respect for the tailor's art.

Initially, the tailor will take time to talk with his customer and see what the customer wants on a general level. Has he come for a suit, jacket or overcoat for example? More specifically, the tailor will then want to establish how clear an idea the customer has about how he wants his garment to look. The customer's lifestyle and the purpose of the garment are also prime considerations as this knowledge will inform the choice of garment style or cloth even further. Cutting a business suit in a thin cloth that can't take much punishment can be a serious mistake and so knowing what the suit is for can make all the difference in creating something that lasts. A well made and designed bespoke garment can comfortably last 20 years, and often when well cared for can pass through generations. I currently wear my uncle's bespoke Irish tweed overcoat that is over 45 years old.

With these basic pieces of information forming a framework around which to design the garment, the cloth, lining and trimming options are decided upon, a process which can often take hours of discussion in itself. Most London tailors stock something like 10,000 cloths and it is the tailor's job to help the customer to sift through the swatch books and get the cloth choice right. Its not only durability of cloth that must be considered, but also weave, drape, weight and style - all of these things will help to determine how appropriate a fabric is for what the customer wants. This discussion will then lead into the actual designing of the garment's appearance, where the tailor and customer will consider exactly the same things (personal taste, the purpose of the garment, when and where it will be worn etc.) to make choices about the suit's shape and style.

Once this has all been achieved, we come to 'measuring up' - the first real piece of artistry in the bespoke process. Now the tailor knows what the customer wants he's ready to get making the garment, but before this can be done, it is the job of the cutter to produce the customer's unique paper pattern. This pattern is the individual blueprint that allows for the 200 odd pieces of cloth that go into a bespoke suit to be uniquely mapped onto the body of the wearer to produce a bespoke fit. To produce a pattern detailed measurement's of the customer's body must be taken (hence 'measuring up') and most tailors will take between 30 and 60 measurements to produce the initial pattern.

One thing that is really lovely about a good tailor, is the way that he or she will make decisions for the customer about things that he isn't even aware of, purely because they know their art so well and are in a position to size the customer up instinctively by eye. A good tailor will think of things that you'd never even consider - you may know that you'd like a high armhole on your jacket, but had you realised that your tailor will have sized-up the width of the sleeve and sleeve-head without your even thinking about it? The tailor thinks of everything, right down to the size and angle of the flaps on your jacket pockets, or subtly noticing whether you might naturally have one shoulder that's slightly broader or more built than the other.

With these measurements taken, its time for the tailor to order the cloth required from the mill, and to pass these measurements onto the cutter, who will begin producing the customer's pattern, this being the next stage of the bespoke process, to be covered in the next post in the series.