Why choose tailors' cloths.

[alden]

As Concordia said, a cock-up in the cutting or tailoring room will lead to a rather sticky situation if the mill has sold out of the cloth in question. Checkered patterns, I think, may pose a slightly higher risk given potential errors in pattern matching.

It is always a good idea to buy a bit more cloth than you need, always, no matter the supplier, for that rainy day. I see that most of our most experienced members do so.

Cheers

[alden]

Many of us, over the years , have been working with tailor houses that simply are not interested in the CMT model and, either say no to clients who show up with a bundle under their arm, or discourage the practice in other ways.

CMT means a tailor loses out on margin based on the sale of the cloth. I have always found the easiest way around this problem is to offer the recalcitrant tailor a bit of a premium for his service. Works wonders...

Cheers

[Costi]

Even with tailors' cloths there is a high likelihood that an extra length ordered to replace a mistake will come from another bolt, with a slightly different colour. This may be more or less visible, depending on colour and pattern.
So far it never happened to me to have a piece of cloth ruined by a tailor.

[old henry]

Customers often bring me cloth that I just will not work with. It is weak , flimsy ,although expensive cloth, made for MTM. Any cloth in my shop, mostly vintage Lesser, is cloth that I have collected and it is worthy of old craft. It drapes and it stands the tests of time. Nowhere and never will you find a cloth as workable as The LL Flannel and LL Linen.
FS

[old henry]

Ps. If it is a grand old piece a customer brings, however, I am more than eager to sponge and cut.

[shredder]

and got a length of the navy Brisa.

Not that it makes any difference in this context, but I just remembered that what I got was Mistral, not Brisa...

[shredder]

CMT means a tailor loses out on margin based on the sale of the cloth.

I think this depends on the tailor's pricing structure. Judging from the variance in CMT pricing (delta between standard and CMT prices) amongst different houses, I think some are prudent enough to set the CMT price so that they retain some or all of the margin they would have realised through the sale of the cloth.

To put it another way, I think that customers who choose CMT in an attempt to save a bit of money is fooling himself. However, if one has an exceptional cloth that's not in any of the books...

[HristoStefanov]

For me it is also very difficult to decide on the fabrics because I can't afford to buy more than one suit per year and for this reason the choise is very hard to make.
Photos are obviously not always able to give a good impression on the colours - there were several cases in the forum where the same fabric looks totally different under different light conditions. And sometimes in the subscription threads you don't have photos and weights of the fabrics and you have to search through the whole forum.

For sure I would always recommend to buy extra fabric for an extra pair of trousers and for a waistcoast.