March 9, 2005
gapingvoid suit buyer
I know, I know, “Metablogging is dead” yada yada yada, but I thought I’d show you this e-mail English Cut got this morning:
Hi Tom,
I have been interested in having bespoke suits/coats made for a while now (I am very slim and off-the-peg fits are near-impossible to find), but have been unable to rustle up the knowledge required for me to walk into a shop on Savile Row and ask for one (without feeling embarrassingly ignorant). The English Cut website has gone a long way in educating me about bespoke, and therefore I’d like to come to you(as someone familiar) as a first port of call.
I’d imagine your waiting list is absolutely huge by now, so I was wondering how long it would take before I could get a meeting arranged?
I live in London and can meet at Savile Row if that suits (no pun intended…).
Additionally, I won’t be ordering twenty-eight suits (as some of the clients Hugh talks about on gapingvoid have done!), but probably would start with just a jacket. But on the basis of that, and how I feel it values up, you can expect my custom for a good twenty, thirty years hence.
Thanks for your time,
Jason P.
This is the first documented case I know of an regular gapingvoid reader offering to shell out cash for one of Tom’s suits. Thanks, Jason!
Jason and Tom have an appointment this Saturday on Savile Row. Rock on.
But I’d say it’s a pretty textbook case of The Hughtrain and “Smarter Conversations”.
Re. The twenty-eight suits. I mentioned in the comments recently about some of the larger Savile Row customers walking in off the street and ordering four suits at a time. Say, two pinstripes, a navy blue and a charcoal grey.
Oh, but they want one set of each, in each of their seven houses. Easier to just buy seven sets than to do all that packing.
I know. It’s sick. But I kinda like it.
[KER-CHIIIIING:] Tom’s arriving in London as I write this. There till Monday. If anyone fancies a [KER-CHIIIIING] new suit while he’s there, zap him an e-mail and he’ll meet you on Savile Row.
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still working on being able to afford even a tie tack or cuff link worthy of such a suit, let alone the suit itself.
speaking of which, does your man recommend any cobblers? i figure if i end up making the dosh to get a decent suit i should damn well get some decent tack to go with it.
Uh oh, you’re seducing them into the luxury lifestyle, next they’ll be asking for names of good custom watchmakers
Lobb’s of London.
About $3000 a pair. Maybe $4K.
They take plaster casts of your feet, and use the casts to hand-carve your own personal pair of wooden “lasts”.… the shoe-tree-looking thing that the cobbler builds your shoe around.
http://www.exero.com/mastergate/secured/fashion/lobb.htm