A NY Times article from 1987.

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/22/magazine/suits-behind-those-high-prices.html

Here, I'll do it Formby style:


SUITS: BEHIND THOSE HIGH PRICES
By William R. Greer; William R. Greer reports on consumer affairs for The New York Times.
Published: March 22, 1987

Clayton K. Yeutter, the United States Trade Representative, once boasted at a State Department lunch about the bargain he had found last May in a tailor's shop in Seoul, South Korea. The two suits he bought there cost only $150 each, he said, adding, ''They would be $500 apiece here.''

Anyone who has shopped for a quality men's suit recently knows how difficult it would be to pass up such a bargain, even if, like Yeutter, his job was to limit textile imports. A man's suit from a highly respected maker, such as Oxxford or Hickey Freeman, frequently costs over $500, a price that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago. Even the cost-conscious Consumer Reports magazine, which reviewed the quality of 29 men's suits in its August 1986 issue, gave its highest rating to a $710 Oxxford Exmoor N2 suit and ranked second a $715 Giorgio Armani suit. The ''best buy'' was a worsted wool Daks Tyne suit costing $300, nearly double the price of the best suit a man could buy at Brooks Brothers in 1965.

Why pay these prices? In fact, most men don't: As of 1984, more than 80 percent of the suits sold annually in the $4 billion American suit business had a retail price of less than $200. In this price range, men's suits have remained a bargain. The Consumer Price Index, which has recorded the cost of men's tailored clothing since 1977, shows that the annual average price of suits, sport coats and jackets has increased by about 21 percent in this period, as opposed to an overall annual average increase in the Consumer Price Index of 68 percent.

''You take a chance when you go below $200,'' said Endre Lukacs, one of the textile experts for Consumer's Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports. At that price, he said, the interfacing and padding of the suit are far inferior, its fabric is not as likely to be high-quality all-wool, it is less likely to retain its appearance and it will not have the soft, supple feel of more expensive clothes.

But consumers willing to pay as much as $1,500 for a Giorgio Armani suit or $850 for an Oxxford often wonder what they are paying for.

Certainly not improved quality, says Clifford Grodd, the energetic president of Paul Stuart, one of the more expensive men's-wear stores in New York City. ''Nobody will say it, but people are not getting as much bang for the buck as they did 20 years ago,'' he said recently, sitting in his cluttered Madison Avenue office with his chocolate Labrador retriever, Amos, at his feet. ''We can give them the same quality, but the cost has risen disproportionately. I sell Southwick suits for $430 today that 20 years ago, I sold for $125.''

Alan Flusser, the clothing designer who recently opened his own shop on 52d Street in New York City, believes that quality has actually declined. ''There's no question that the quality of clothes has not increased over the last 20 years; it's decreased,'' he said.

Although some feel that suit quality does not justify high retail prices, men's-wear manufacturers point out that their own costs have increased. The high cost of labor and of fabric, they say, are the two most significant factors in rising suit prices, but trade restrictions, construction costs, store markup and the emphasis on prestigious labels and designers also play a role.

First, suits are the most labor-intensive product in the apparel industry. The average wage paid to the men and women who make men's tailored clothing has increased from $2.16 an hour in 1965 to $6.65 an hour in 1985, according to Ronald Blackwell, an economist with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union. He said, however, that the increase in United States wages has not kept pace with the country's rise in the cost of living, and would not explain high clothing prices. Furthermore, said Blackwell, approximately 25 percent of the men's and boys' suits sold in the United States are manufactured overseas. The proportion of wool suits made abroad is even higher: 40 percent, according to Carl H. Priestland, chief economist for the American Apparel Manufacturers Association in Arlington, Va. (These suits include some blends. The U.S. Commerce Department classifies a wool/synthetic suit as wool if more than half the cost of the fabric comes from wool.) These suits are imported primarily from Italy and South Korea, where wages are lower. In South Korea, for example, apparel workers were paid the equivalent of approximately 98 cents an hour in 1986. Clothing manufacturers, however, contend that many in the higher end of the market still make suits domestically and that the cost of overseas production is not invariably cheaper.

They also emphasize the high price of fabric, which, they say, accounts for one-quarter to one-third of the wholesale cost of a good, hand-tailored suit. Whereas manufacturers who offer less-costly styles may use only 3.4 yards for a two-piece suit, the Hickey Freeman Company, for example, uses 4.2 yards for one of its patterned styles. Most of the fabric used to make such fine men's suits in the United States is also woven overseas, particularly in England and Italy. William Flink, a vice president of the Hickey Freeman Company, believes that new trade restrictions, the declining value of the dollar and increasing inflation rates in the fabric-manufacturing countries have pushed up the price of the goods.

''Twenty years ago, you could buy fine imported worsted suiting from Huddersfield, England, that would land in the U.S. for $8 a yard,'' Flink said. ''Today, the same fabrics are at least $20 a yard.''

Flink said he noticed the impact of the new trade restrictions with South Korea during the first week in February, when he was buying the company's fabric for its spring 1988 suits. By Feb. 3, South Korea had already reached its quota for fine worsteds for all of 1987. Since United States manufacturers were not allowed to import any more of these goods, buyers had to turn to Japan, where they paid $15.50 a yard for a grade of fabric that was selling for $13.50 in South Korea.

Construction is another variable. It has become more and more expensive to include hand tailoring in suits. In the past five years, manufacturers have turned almost exclusively to computer-assisted machines to mark and cut cloth, and some manufacturers, such as Brooks Brothers, make some of their styles entirely by machine. Manufacturers have also reduced production time to a matter of hours, through both increased automation and the fusing of cloth - a process in which heat and resin, instead of hand stitches, are used to secure the interfacing that gives the front of a jacket its shape. Some clothing designers and tailors say these cost-saving measures have reduced quality, but manufacturers defend them.

''There are certain types of fabrics, like lightweight tropicals, where fusing is an advantage in that it cuts down the puckering around the edges in humid weather and it always has a clean appearance,'' said A. Marc Zoilo, a Brooks Brothers vice president. ''Everything is dependent on the quality of the fusibles used and the quality of the application.''

Lukacs and Flusser, however, asserted that handwork is usually superior. ''In general,'' Lukacs said, ''garments produced with expert hand-tailored construction details will fit better and retain their like-new appearance for longer periods.'' The reason, he and other proponents say, is hand stitching's looseness, which lends it more give than machine stitching. The hundreds of threads connecting a sleeve, for example, act like hundreds of tiny springs that expand and contract as the jacket is worn.

''Fusing is like taking a fabric and gluing it,'' said Flusser. ''It removes its spirit. However, you can't dismiss it. The future of clothing is not having people do things by hand.''

Finally, retailers mark up the price of clothing more than many consumers realize. A typical markup is 108 to 122 percent of the wholesale cost of the suit. A suit whose wholesale price is $200, for example, will probably sell for about $444 on the rack. According to Flink, the most expensive suits are marked up slightly less. An Oxxford that wholesales for $450, he said, retails for about $820.

If prices are sometimes inflated, it may be the cachet of a designer name that is encouraging consumers to buy. According to Lukacs, ''the accent on design and name designers has tended to upgrade suits beyond the merits of their tailoring.''

Alan Flusser agrees. ''In the 1970's, it was the designer business that introduced new clothing and tended to inflate the cost,'' he said.

According to retailers, consumers have remained undeterred. Linda Hopler, the men's fashion merchandising director and a vice president at Saks Fifth Avenue, said that her store is doing ''astounding'' business with its highest-priced suits, which include Oxxford, Giorgio Armani, Hickey Freeman and Gianfranco Ferre.

''We don't sell suits that are $250 or $300,'' she said. ''Our average price point is $575 and $600, and we do an everyday business in $1,000 suits.'' Hopler feels that customers really are getting a better-made suit at these prices.

''I think now you have a whole generation of people who can afford and who want quality,'' she added. ''That's what we're attracting.''

Murray Pearlstein, owner and president of Louis, Boston, the exclusive men's-wear specialty store, feels that a quality suit can seldom be found in the lower price ranges. ''It's difficult to find a suit today that I could sell for under $600,'' he said. But price, he emphasized, is not the most important consideration.

''I think the ultimate satisfaction is having a suit for a few years, and every time you go to the closet and pick it out, you like it. It makes you feel good. Then,'' he added, ''you've got your money's worth.''