January 27, 2005
so you can’t afford “bespoke”…
Tom Mahon, Bespoke Savile Row tailor-turned-blogger, writes about the four main hierarchies of suit-making:
1. A totally machine made, off-the-peg suit.
These cost around
Hugh MacLeod
I'm a cartoonist.
I sell limited-edition prints.
I wrote a book.
I'm CEO of Stormhoek USA, which markets South African wine in the States.
I also draw private commissions.
Prints |
Opening | Current |
|---|---|---|
Bluetrain |
$900 | |
We Need to Talk |
$650 | |
Portfolio #2 |
$300 | |
NY NY |
$275 |
So true. I once did some temp work at a tie manufacturing company.
They produced ties for various knightsbridge stores, british and french designers and high street stores. All were made by the same women on the same production line and the final retail price was no indication of the quality of silk used.
I remarked to the Finace Director that the most valuable asset in their factory was the rickety, unlocked cabinet we had just walked past. It housed huge bundles of designer tags to be fitted to the various lines.
It remains the most powerful metaphor for the true “worth” of brands/branding that I will ever see.
Similar story here: I know someone who makes clothing in Indonesia for several mid-priced and upper-mid brands in the US and Europe. They all come from the same line, cheap or expensive. The distributor gets to pick the material and approximate design, but the rest stays the same. The runs that aren’t shipped (rejects, surplus) are sold on the local market at cost — pennies on the dollar.
It’s funny, with brand name tech and media companies being attacked by off-brand but equally worthy competitors, when will fashion consumers revolt and cut out the clothing middlemen?
P.S. I’s a pity that M&S pulled out of Canada a few years back.
Hugh, this is the fourth post dedicated to John the Tailor in the last couple of weeks. The posts have stood out because you broke from your business card standard and placed a photo image in your post.
Is this a Hughtrain deliverable? Are you getting paid to pimp on the GV Blog? Is he outfitting you for your Malaysian trip?
I’m always looking for a handmade conspiracy…
–peter
Heh. No, Peter, Tom is a friend of mine. We meet for lunch about twice a week and trade stories.
It was me who got him to blog. I also put him in contact with my webmaster, Jonathan Alstead at launchsite.co.uk, and got the latter to design Tom’s blog around roughly the same specifications as my own.
I also made Tom read The Cluetrain. I assure you, of all the bespoke tailors in the world, he now is probably the world’s only Clurtain-savvy one.
I have no financial stake in what Tom is doing. We take turns buying each other lunch; that’s about it.
That being said, even if I didn’t know Tom, the idea of a traditional English “artisan” craftsman like Tom keeping a blog is interesting to me.
And even more so, the idea of an artisan turning his rather obscure, anachronistic little business into a Cluetrain-savvy, “global microbrand”, without diluting the actual quality of the product is EXTREMELY interesting to me, for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who reads this blog regularly.
That’s about it, really. But yeah, sure, conspiracy theories are good