January 27, 2005

so you can’t afford “bespoke”…

4 Comments

BAR scissors tom.jpg
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

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4 Responses to “so you can’t afford “bespoke”…”

  1. john dodds says:
    January 27, 2005 at 8:30 PM

    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.

  2. quanta says:
    January 27, 2005 at 10:20 PM

    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.

  3. Peter Meddick says:
    January 27, 2005 at 10:34 PM

    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

  4. hugh macleod says:
    January 27, 2005 at 11:48 PM

    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 ;-)