the cost of bespoke

[Guest]

what I'd like to know? what is the reason that bespoke suits and shoes are so expensive?
$5800 bank notes is what Frank Shattuck charges, that's $2000 for a pair of trousers alone, and it's not even a bullfighter suit with lights, it's a simple 20th century wool suit, well fitted of course.i mean, all my grandfather wore was bespoke, and i don't think he paid so much in his entire life. Now $6000 for shoes, with that i can go on vacation for 3 months. Was it always like this? how many bags of coins did the people of the past paid to their tailors?

[Cufflink79]

From my uderstanding, bespoke products have always been expensive.

Years ago I read up on Rolls Royce automobiles, and one of the questions brought up in the book was about why a Rolls Royce was so expensive. The answer stated how the cars were built one at a time from quality materials, and the time it took to make them.

I guess you could think of bespoke suits as a Rolls Royce. (The older ones, not the newer ones )

Also, prices have change with time.

In other words back in 1958/59 when Cary Grant stared in North by Northwest I believe his paycheck was $100,000. In today's market it might be more like $100,000,000.

In an old GQ from the early 1960s that I have there is an ad for Oxxford Clothes at Neiman Marcus's men's epartment, the cost for an Oxxford was around $245.00 compare to the $3,000 plus today. $245.00 was a big chunk of money for a suit in the early 60s.

In the 1968 movie "The Thomas Crown Affair" the suit cost around $350.00.

An Anderson & Sheppard bespoke suit around 1980 was about $1,500, that is stated from Alan Flusser's 1st book "Making the Man."

Flusser also has stated in his books that men's clothing has gone up dramatically over the years.

Best Regards,

Cufflink79

[Leonard Logsdail]

Sit down with Frank or any bespoke tailor and see what goes in to making a bespoke suit and you will probably want to pay even more thinking you are cheating him!!

[soupcon]

The real outrage is the cost of RTW.Many are close to par with bespoke.

[Frog in Suit]

To add a bit of data to this thread:

I have a May 1995 bill from Tom Brown's London shop (then one of the least expensive SR tailors -- I have no recent information, but suspect they are still at, or near, the bottom of the SR price range). The prices then were
- for a DB two-piece suit GBP 900 (ex-VAT, incl VAT was GBP 1,057.50). This was a 16 oz. charcoal chalk-striped H. Lesser which is still impeccable, and which I still wear. The cloth, by the way, is still referenced.
- for a SB three-piece suit GBP 980 (ex-VAT, incl VAT was GBP 1,151.50). It is a blue with pinstripe, cloth reference unknown, pretty heavy (16 oz. or more). Same condittion as the one above.
I do not believe that a thirteen year-old RTW suit could still be worn, even if compatible with current fashions.

For the sake of comparison, Huntsnman must have reached the GBP 800 mark in the early eighties. By 1995, they must have been in the vicinity of GBP 2,000 at least.

Let us put aside the outworkers, whom every SR house nowadays uses, at least from time to time,and concentate on salaried staff. In the early twentieth Century (up to WWII...?), the large firms employed in-house workers, perhaps not in the hundreds, but at least in large multiples of ten. I would be very surprised to learn that the larger houses (Poole, A & S, Huntsman ???) nowadays each have fifty people on their payrolls. I would guess twenty to thirty would be an absolute maximum. I think that Meyer & Mortimer/Jones Chalk & Dawson have between ten and fifteen. There just is not such a wide pool of qualified workers these days and I fervently hope that the wages are good enough to attract young people willing to learn. Higher wages plus higher rents (and we know that those have increased exponentially since the beginning of the twentieth Century) equal higher prices. I still believe that, given the longevity and timelessness of the resulting garments, bespoke is a cost-effective option.

Frog in Suit

[carl browne]

The real outrage is the cost of RTW.Many are close to par with bespoke.

Absolutely!

[Cufflink79]

The real outrage is the cost of RTW.Many are close to par with bespoke.

Absolutely!

I agree as well, the cost for many RTW products are very foolishly priced.

Best Regards,

Cufflink79

[JDelage]

It would be interesting to compare those prices removing the effect of inflation, pricing things in gold. So, a 2,500 BP (today) suit would be between 3 and 3.5 Troy ounces of gold (3.25 as of this minute).

In 1930, one ounce was slightly over 20 USD (since a "double eagle" 20 USD coin was slightly under one ounce). I'm not sure how it would work with BP.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the quality of RTW (for a given price) has probably increased tremendously in the last 25, 50, and 100 years, squizzing out all but the very top of custom-made clothes. There was probably a time when one could find tailors ranging the full spectrum of quality, of which many levels are now more efficiently served by RTW.

[Frog in Suit]

A useful comparison would be against average income or wages, or per capita GDP, corrected for inflation.
I would not be so certain about current RTW quality being higher than in the past. The technology is certainly better (with consequent production costs being lower) but I would not be so sure about the quality, especially the expected useful life (think cloth weight among other factors) of today's RTW garments. At least, in olden days, RTW would have been compared to readily available bespoke. Nowadays, it can only be compared to other RTW, bespoke being so rare.

Frog in Suit

[JDelage]

The way I think about it is two axis of quality and price (in gold, i.e., corrected for inflation). In the space defined by those two axis, you can find clothes available at various levels of price and quality. In some zones, there's only bespoke (top level quality, top level price), in some you find both bespoke and RTW (high prices, high quality), and in some you only find RTW.

I suspect (though I don't know for sure) that if you were to draw such a "chart" for today and 50 years ago, you'd find the two charts do not overlap completely. There's a level of quality available in the low cost area now that simply didn't exist then. Similarly, there might be a zone of top quality bespoke that was available then but not now (but to be fair, some fabrics available now didn't exist then).

With this said, I suspect that there's a zone of "pretty good quality", which was previously only covered y "pretty high price" bespoke, and is now only covered by "pretty low price" RTW.

All of the above is pure hypothesis...

[Frog in Suit]

It makes sense, but I would not use gold as a basis for comparison. The Gold Standard is gone and gold nowadays behaves like any other commodity (all right, almost like any other commodity, given the psychological baggage it carries and the existence of "gold bugs").

What we are seeing now is the partial displacement of (relatively expensive) bespoke by some (equally expensive) RTW. Is it the same quality? Of course not, as, for one thing, it does not last as long, but the RTW manufacturers use propaganda and manipulation (Ahem, "modern communication techniques", of course) to convince the unwary that brand X or Y is "What The Well-Dressed Man is Wearing" (pace, dear NJS) which is, of course, pure poppycock.

Frog in Suit

[RWS]

For what it's worth, I dimly remember a grandfather mentioning that he'd paid something in the neighborhood of US$175 for a suit made, probably in New York, in the mid or late 1930s. As the time was after the devaluation of the dollar, that price would have been equivalent to five ounces of gold, or about four thousand dollars today. It would also have been about a month's gross income for a typical American worker at the time, or about thirty-six or thirty-eight hundred dollars today. And a tailor-made suit today? About the same cost in constant dollars, no?

[Guest]

i agree that bespoke suits were always expensive, but the present rates 5000-6000 dollars, what if for some reason i happen to rip my trousers in some unfortunate accident, i. e. being bitten by a dog. i know it doesn't happen anymore, but easy could. especially since i like walking in the park and walking to the library. i would need some kind of insurance ( just joking.) Apart form that the suit could easily live for another 20 or more years.

at this rate in 5 years the last standing tailors will be charging $10000, so it's better to get a suit right now.

now $800 shirts that's ridiculous. shirts don't last very long and you sweat in them. plus they always look better when they are new.

for some reason i thought, that in the past everyone had a tailor, and difference between the poor and the rich was the rich could have more suits and finer materials i. e. silks dinner jackets, while the poor had one suit for something especial.

now what decent people can afford $4000 for some trousers and jacket. ready to wear is out of the question, it does not fit correctly, almost never.

i mean logic dictates that when you need a suit, you go to a tailor. not Macy's or brooks.

[storeynicholas]

I also think that one needs to have regard to the actual investment and long-term saving in having good bespoke clothes:
1.they fit and look better from the outset;
2. you should have exactly what you ask for;
3. with care, they last much longer - certainly suits and shoes - if you had 7 pairs of top notch bespoke shoes and rotated them and had them repaired just before it were really necessary, they should last, just about, your life time. If you paid £1,500 -£2,000 a pair now and say you are 30, going to live to 80 = 50 years. Total cost of shoes is at most £14,000 divided by 50 = £280 a year for life. Of course, you might well bespeak more as an indulgence. If you were to buy say four pairs of excellent readymade shoes now, at say, £400 a pair and add or replace 2 pairs every year for the same length of time, even at current rates and not allowing for inflation, you are looking at at total over 50 years of £41,600 for a lifetime's worth of second rate shoes. I did not allow for repairs of the bespoke shoes - but even so! But isn't this a crucial factor - even if the sticking point is the initial outlay. Looked at this way, as part of a life plan, bespoke clothes are cheaper than the second rate alternatives . But the spirit of the age is all for: the disposable; the replaceable: everything from computers to cars to housing. Men who think nothing of shelling out tens of thousands of pounds on a car that will be an out-moded, worthless heap in five years would raise their eyes in astonishment at the notion of spending £2,000 on a pair of shoes in which, ageing together in harmony, they could live out all their lives; every day to the nodding approbation of the few. But there we are: they might listen but they just will not hear.
NJS

[carl browne]

A friend of mine owns a restaurant, and he always tells me that the most expensive items on the menu are the best value. Foie gras simply can't have the same mark up as chicken, or no one would order it.

I suspect it's the same for clothes--and with bespoke, I'll bet the margins are really bad. They may be a bargain after all.

Bespoke clothes are the worst possible investment, except for all non-bespoke clothes.
(Apologies to Sir Winston)