A word of caution with Cheo, if you ask too many questions of him (2 questions would be getting dangerously close to that threshold), which habitues of these MBs have a propensity for doing, few words will be bespoken. 

Marc

There are tailors not set up to machine pad a lapel, but none who are not set up to hand pad.  All it takes is time, a needle and some thread.  I would just make sure to mention it one more time and perhaps bring a picture or something.

I think that it is generally considered apprentice work.  I would bet that the people in any shop can do it.

I was there this weekend and Frank told me that while they usually do the lapels by machine, the can do them by hand if the customer asks. 

Great selection of cloth - I looked through the Porter and Harding Hartwist book in the short time I was there.  In the next couple of weeks, I am going to have them do a blazer for me (or rather re-do something that I stupidly had done at LS) and then maybe try a more complicated request.

Thanks for the advice.

Last edited by Marc Grayson (2006-11-01 17:10:49)

Putting the tailor through 30 fittings would also be a tad excessive.

For whatever it's worth, my rule is that I'll specify style, look and feel in detail.  Of course some of that will involve talking about construction - canvass weight/stiffness, shoulder padding, and type of sewing (i.e. there are some things that, tailored clothing philistine though I still am, I think ought to be done by hand and that it makes a visible difference).  But the mechanics of construction, I necessarily leave to the man with the shears or needle or the guy who talks to the guy with the shears or needle.

All I know about that famous suit is what I have read on AAAC but it seems as though Frank is the one who wanted to keep doing fittings until he considered it good enough to hand off.  Personally, I would not be able to take going to that many fittings but it doesn't sound like a form of tailor torture, of if it was, it was self-inflicted.