the cost of bespoke

[Guest]

at present the salary of an employee is about $2000 per month, which means a months salary does not cover one pair of trousers and jacket.

only dandies of the past made loans to pay his tailors, but banks don't give loans for suits. wait, yes they do. that's credit.
but even those dandies wore suits, which were embroidered and extremely well fitted, made of silks. obviously worth thousands, some of those suits are still shown in museums.

now the modern suit how many thousands can they be worth?

[RWS]

at present the salary of an employee is about $2000 per month . . . .

In the United States today, the average working man's gross income is much closer to four thousands a month.

. . . . dandies of the past . . . . wore suits, which were embroidered and extremely well fitted, made of silks. obviously worth thousands, some of those suits are still shown in museums.
now the modern suit how many thousands can they be worth?

How many men buy any clothing with an eye to its worth to a museum? Most of us buy to satisfy desires and feelings that are not easily valued monetarily. If, however, financial considerations are uppermost, a man might do better simply to buy decent off-the-rack clothes or to frequent charity shops.

[Guest]

i hate arguing but i have respond. now with the "correct" amount an average worker receives. he has to work more that 200 hours a month and still can not afford a pair of trousers and a jacket. and why would he go to a charity shop, when in past times he could be well dressed, since he is a respectable worker. But of course the past does not matter.

[koolhistorian]

Gentlemen,
We have to take into analysis the fact that before WWII the cost of manual labor - and artisan labor is manual labor, even if it is a very specialized one - was, compared to now, lower, and the cost of intellectual labor higher. The revenue gap between blue collar workers and white collars was bigger than it is now - in fact salary for a blue collar was meant to insure survival, not personal development. With the "prosperity" society after WWII - the arrival of the "leisure class" and the inclusion of specialized manual labor into the middle class, thing that also fueled our economies (mostly yours in the capitalist world at that time) the cost of the manual labor had risen, so we had to go towards industrial mass made products in order to keep the price down.
Also our consumption patterns had changed - look at M. Alden's minimal wardrobe - in the old days a middle class person would had 2-3 working suits (maybe seasonal summer/spring, fall/winter) one "best suit" around one dozen white shirts and a dozen of ties, a great coat and a lighter coat. Few people owned a car (at least in Europe), a few people will dine out, a tiny minority would travel long distance, etc. Now houses have to have "walk in closets" and the "armoire" is becoming dressing. We pay for the apparent abundance of the society, and the cost of bespoke is driven up by the fact that it remains an aristocratic habit - see how a bespoke car, or even a MTM one like the Wiessman is costing!
My 2 cents!
Dan

[RWS]

i hate arguing but i have respond. now with the "correct" amount an average worker receives. he has to work more that 200 hours a month and still can not afford a pair of trousers and a jacket. and why would he go to a charity shop, when in past times he could be well dressed, since he is a respectable worker. But of course the past does not matter.

Our difference may be in measurement of income, "santy". You may be using a figure net of taxes; I am using a gross figure. My source (a current publication that cites the BLS) states that the average American worker's gross annual income is $43,500; taking a work year of 2,080 hours (52 weeks of 40 hours each), that yields an hourly wage of just under $21 (with the two-week annual vacation common for Americans, wage rises almost to $22 an hour). I can still have an American (read: expensive) tailor make a simple single-breasted, two-piece suit for little more that $3,200 -- or about 150 or 155 hours' labor -- and, doubtless, many other Loungers know of better prices, even from good tailors. We consistently read in these webpages of British tailors offering the same type of suit for less than a thousand pounds: about $1,500 at today's exchange, or seventy American worker's hours' labor. And there is good workmanship available in Buenos Aires, at least, for even less (read my postings in the subforum, "Elegant Living"!).

[Guest]

i wonder what i can buy with 5000 pesos? well actually 4000 dollars would be somewhere around 14000 pesos, if only there was a king. he would pay that much for a suit.

sastreria cheverny sounds like a very nice place, a real old/new world tailor. i guess in the united states the new modality is everyone wants to get rich, even plumbers.

[Guest]

don't get me wrong i admire a tailor's work, and i always say it proudly "my tailor shop is around the corner from here."
i also admire every type of manufacture which requires, years of learning and experience. that's not just because i hate walmarts and macy's. but because i like history and beauty. but please, i can't even carry that many bank notes in my pockets.
i say it like this because years ago, credit and interest was consider a crime.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 0256183936

[RWS]

i wonder what i can buy with 5000 pesos?

This August, you could have bought a very nice two-piece suit, made by a man who may be the finest tailor in South America. Inflation has continued apace since then, however, so I couldn't say what AR $5,000 would buy now.

. . . . sastreria cheverny sounds like a very nice place, a real old/new world tailor.

Exactly. Beautiful location, very nice people, fine creations.

i guess in the united states the new modality is everyone wants to get rich, even plumbers.

Not new, at all. Since late colonial times, just a few generations after settlement, the chief impulse for most immigrants to what is now the United States has been material acquisitiveness. Thankfully, the greed innate in human nature is tempered after awhile -- even if that takes a century!

[Concordia]

Let's not forget that today we are pricing Savile Row suits and the equivalent from elsewhere. What working man from 1930 got his suits in the West End?

One thing I do remember about a brief stay in London in 1985 is that a lot of people seemed to have tailor-made clothes. There was a range in price among good tailors, however, as there were a lot of off-Row options. Moving away from traditional British bespoke, there were still other shops run by Korean or Indian immigrants that were considerably less good, but also still less expensive.

Query for our London members: do the fabric shops on Regent Street still post improbable prices for suits to be made from their bin-end samples? There used to be a ton of that. Technically bespoke, and certainly individually made. Just not expensive.

[Cary Grant]

Now $6000 for shoes, with that i can go on vacation for 3 months.

The folks who don't blink at $6,000 shoes would be largely the crowd for whom going on vacation for 3 months might be a $100,000 expense, not $6,000.

[Cary Grant]

Mind you, scarcity has it's price, too.

In the US... the numebr of true bespoke master tailors is is very, very , very small. They take on limited work (work done at the highest levels of quality) and thus, like a fine car with a large percentage of hand work, you get what you pay for.

I cannot afford it but I very much appreciate that the craft is still even an option.

[ottovbvs]

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

I have to agree with this quote. The price of some of this OTP from designers like Ford is staggering. Since I was old enough to be able to start buying suits I've bought a mix of RTW, MTM and bespoke and had mixed experiences with all. Partly my fault no doubt. I've only really ever bought Chester Barrie off the peg in suits although I've had a couple of Brioni's but I've bought a lot of OTP blazers and sportcoats basically because one tends to see more interesting cuts in places like Italy or Paris. I can remember paying 1200 pounds for my CB's 20 years ago when a bespoke suit on the row cost close to 2000 pounds. Today I think they want around 1800 for an OTP CB so the gap has widened apparently. A Brioni in NYC costs around $4000. What's even more amazing about it are these fashion shoots one sees in Esquire etc where "stars" etc model a lot of this clothing from Armani, RL, Brioni etc and it doesn't fit properly.

[ottovbvs]

Let's not forget that today we are pricing Savile Row suits and the equivalent from elsewhere. What working man from 1930 got his suits in the West End?

One thing I do remember about a brief stay in London in 1985 is that a lot of people seemed to have tailor-made clothes. There was a range in price among good tailors, however, as there were a lot of off-Row options. Moving away from traditional British bespoke, there were still other shops run by Korean or Indian immigrants that were considerably less good, but also still less expensive.

Query for our London members: do the fabric shops on Regent Street still post improbable prices for suits to be made from their bin-end samples? There used to be a ton of that. Technically bespoke, and certainly individually made. Just not expensive.

It depends how you define the working man. Surely we're talking about the lower middle, middle and upper middle classes who were the market for tailored clothes in London or the provinces. In the early fifties every large and small town had tailors and hatters on it's main street ranging from chains like Burtons and Dunns to smaller locally owned shops that would make you a suit. When I was about 22 I had a marvellous covert suit made by a local tailor. It wouldn't wear out and I ultimately gave it to someone about 20 years later.

[Frog in Suit]

I can remember paying 1200 pounds for my CB's 20 years ago when a bespoke suit on the row cost close to 2000 pounds.

The £ 2,000 you quote would have been Huntsman's price. As late as 1993, a suit from Tom Brown (on Princes Street, not on Savile Row itself, but part of the SR universe) cost about GBP 1,000. I am sure they were not the only SR house in that price range. Even today, Meyer & Mortimer's suits are (about) £ 2,200 for a two-piece and £ 2,600 for a three-piece.
Too often one hears reference to SR prices in general, without mentioning the fact that there is a range, based on overheads, whether or not the address is on Savile Row itself, fame, etc...I won't even mention the prices outside the West End, or outside London. A bit of preliminary research can yield sizeable savings, and no loss in quality, as far as I can tell.

All the prices I quote include VAT at 17.5 %. I wonder whether the recent rate reduction will be passed on to customers.

Frog in Suit

[Guest]

well i shouldn't be surprised since all my life i 've heard commentaries, how the quality of things decrease while the prices increase, from houses, cars and i think clothes too.

sadly i feel stupid, why would i expect to find good tailors in the united states, even if you look very hard. you realize their prices are outrageous.

Savile row has it's history, their prices are somehow anticipated by the people who go there, even if it's not the same anymore. But in the states, what could possibly be the reason bankers, bosses, capitalist, i don't care if they take $100000 vacations.

My father once told me that the company he worked for during the 60's and 70's, used to give him 3 cashmere cuts, every year. i think this is some northern Italian tradition, that's why their cities were once filled with stylish men, wearing jackets and ties.