Need Your Advice: First Made-To-Measure Item

[jagdriver]

Gentlemen,

The time has come for me to change from RTW to a first made-to-measure suit.

As I am rather small and quite slim, hitherto several changes had to be made to my RTW items, which often spoiled the clothes proportions.

Can I expect to take a major step forward by commissioning a MTM suit?

Regarding their style, I am heading either for Zegna or for Caruso. Does any one of You have experiences with these manufacturers?

What mistakes do I have to avoid? What do I have to observe?

As this will be my first MTM experience, any information from your side will be a great help for me.

Sincerely Yours

jagdriver

[uppercase]

My advice would be to skip MTM and go straight to bespoke.

You can find bespoke at around the same price.

MTM will just needlessly eat up your money while you should be looking at bespoke right now; you will be end up there anyway.

No need to transition to bespoke through MTM.

Good luck!

[jagdriver]

Dear uppercase

Your advice of skipping MTM and going straight to bespoke is definitely worthwhile considering.

Now, can anyone tell me, if there is a good tailor working in the north of Germany and, if so, what the characteristics of his style are?

Sincerely Yours

jagdriver

[uppercase]

Sorry, personally don't know of tailors in Germany but I am sure that you can find good, experienced tailors in the major German cities.

[TVD]

Many of the Savile Row houses visit. Poole do I know for certain. Local tailors' style may be less flamboyant than SR or Naples.

[Cantabrigian]

No matter who makes the suit, I would recommend collecting photos illustrating what you want.

I have found that it is always much easier and much more helpful for the fitter or tailor to see what you are talking about rather than having it described to him.

[SouthPender]

It might be worth noting that sometimes the line between MTM and bespoke is blurry. A tailor may portray his work as bespoke when, in fact, he takes careful measurements and then modifies an existing pattern to your measurements to produce a good-fitting suit, which is not, by definition, bespoke, but instead MTM. With such a tailor, it would be important to see the cut of suits he has made in the past to judge whether his pattern produces a silhouette that is to your liking. This distinction between MTM and bespoke becomes blurred a little when the tailor is able to successfully incorporate other modifications to the pattern to move it in the direction of the silhouette you desire, even though he has started with a stock pattern. True bespoke implies that a completely original pattern is drawn up for you based on fit and style issues. My understanding is that one needs to find a very experienced and talented tailor to have true bespoke garments work out satisfactorily. MTM is much safer in this sense. Examples are legion of men unhappy with their bespoke suits made by less competent tailors, and this fact has kept me from seeking true bespoke tailoring here in Vancouver, a city of two million people, but no tailors (as far as I have been able to determine to date) capable of first-rate bespoke work.

[aus_md]

I would second uppercase's advice, having wasted a good deal of money on Zegna and Brioni MTM. Henry Poole visits Hamburg several times a year. The schedule of visits is posted on their website.

[jagdriver]

I have just been visiting Henry Poole's web-site and yes, he is visiting Hamburg a few times a year. As far as I can see, he is the only SR tailor to visit Germany at all.

By the way, is Germany really such a less-developed country in terms of elegant clothing?

Well, what I could not clearly make out from Poole's web-site is the characteristics of his style. Too few examples could be seen there.

It would be great if anyone of you, Gentlemen, could describe this for me (maybe even some pictures are available?)

[jagdriver]

I would second uppercase's advice, having wasted a good deal of money on Zegna and Brioni MTM. Henry Poole visits Hamburg several times a year. The schedule of visits is posted on their website.

Dear aus_md

you have spoken of your MTM clothes as a waste of money. May I ask you, if this is more because of
- the items not fulfilling your expectations in terms of representing your personal style or
- is it rather a matter of inappropriate quality or improper fit?

Sincerely Yours

jagdriver

[aus_md]

jagdriver,

I do not believe that MTM is neccesarily a waste of money, just that in my case the results never really met my expectations in terms of fit. When I was buying the Zegna and Brioni MTM I had not the benefit of fora such as this, and I swallowed the salesmen's line on what constituted good quality fabric. Consequently I purchased many 'supers' that were, in retrospect, not very suitable fabrics.

The fit of my suits from my tailor, John Cutler, is perfect, to the extent that I now really only have one fitting, the day I take delivery. I benefit from John's style and elan, something missing in the MTM service. In short, there is an additional dimension in the relationship with a bespoke tailor that I have not found with MTM or RTW.

That is not to say bespoke is always a great experience. My earliest forays into bespoke clothing was with a bespoke shirtmaker in another city that any attempt to describe fairly would expose me to a defamation action, yet by reputation he was the best in that city.

[DD MacDonald]

JAgdriver, my understanding is that Poole is classic Saville row. A little more structured that Dege, but very clean, high gorge jackets. Very much the right stuff.

From my perspective the biggest difference between MTM and bespoke, taking for the moment that you can get the fit fairly equivalent, is the choice of fabric. MTM will never have the access to the widest range of fabrics because the business model is to buy a price point at quantity and sell through the customization.

The problem is that the customization starts from pre-conceived patterns that need to be adapted to you as opposed to starting with a "house-style" that is developed for you through an individual pattern. Adding the fit of MTM as not being exactly right or as good as it could be to limited cloth choice leaves MTM with a low score.

I think that if you poled the memberswho have been in it for a while on the attraction of bespoke , the answer would be that they like the established fit and the relationship with their tailor. But having gotten that dialed in, the whole nuance of the game is the cloth and the differentiating details, perhaps even the idiosyncracies and, dare I say, imperfections of a handmade garment that make it unique. I never want to give that up.

Now, MTM is a better price point, no doubt or question. For me though, I'd rather save my nickels and buy two good bespoke numbers than 4-5 MTM jobs. I only have so many "slots" in my closet. Once the closet is full with whatever, stop added whatever and buy the best that you can afford without any attention to how long it takes.

DDM