i have a tailor who is brilliant at cutting and understanding body shape .. but has literally no interest in cloth or pattern or anything of this nature whatsoever .. infact they seem to glaze over on discussing anything on the topic ..on discussing something on the minutia of fit which nobody in a million years would spot they seem quite fascinated in discussing at legnth .. in the big houses a saleman will usually shoot the proverbial sh9t on cloth but smaller tailors usually help pick cloth themselves as well as cutting .. on the occassion that a suggestion has been made by the tailor the recommendations have been so bizarre as to make me question whether he is suffering from some form of colour blindness .. brown horseblanket type cloth and so on .. i have been forced to just peruse books myself and then just make a decision independently .. anyone else had this sort of experience?
fruity
Last edited by Oldfruit1 (2013-01-29 11:01:45)
Maybe he has cloth that is not selling well that he wants to get rid of?
Outright color blindness is very prevalent and even moreso reduced color percption, such as not percieving smaller differnces in hue or shade. So that is a definite possibility.
I visited a shirt maker locally that started to go on about how crappy some of the shirts previous clients had left for repairs and how all these superfine cotons were rubish. It turned out he had the most boring selection of sandpaper shirtings possible. I can,tbelieve his attitude or selection attracted potential clients even though he had a good reputation.
It is not a given that a tailor should have great taste in cloth. Some do of course.
This has never bothered me though because I have great taste in cloth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9cP-1kC3So
definately find this sort of attitute amongst some of the west end menswear shops (not just tailors but other traditional english 'high end' menswear shops) .. most of which have few and far between cutomers anyway .. but still are self important & pretentious regardless. english service .. without a smile.
oldfruit
Last edited by Oldfruit1 (2013-02-03 03:25:14)
bishop, personally im not that fussy about pattern matching either, infact i would go as far as to say that mismatching in the case of pockets can actually look better for the simple reason that you can see the pocket clearly defined , whereas pattern matching means all the features of the jacket blend into the background as they are sort of camoflaged.
yes the tailor does seem to pattern match well .. although for reasons mentioned im not too concerned about this too much, im usually more interested in the structure and shape of the jacket so this is at the bottom of my list of things to fret about!
fruity
Last edited by Oldfruit1 (2013-02-03 07:43:34)
Who did JS recommend to you? I'd be interested to know.
John at Stitchcraft, off Oxford Street, Molton Street I think. He is an alterations tailor and he and his staff are really good; he considers alterations and other kinds of tailoring to be totally different arts, he told me anyway. John is 'on holiday' a lot these days; his staff are excellent though and that doesn't matter I found. This is for alterations though of course.
I got an alterations guy called Mario recommended by someone else in Jermyn Street, Mario Hidalgio I think though I am not sure I got the surname right. He took up some replacement Rohan washable suits for me; they are made of a tricky fabric I think and Rohan's own tailors made a total mess of them and I made them give me new suits. Indeed the alteration tailors that a lot of merchants are using in London are a real problem or were when I left a couple of years ago.
A staff member at a Jermyn Street store where I bought a good suit on sale for about 40GBP told me " well you don't want to pay 50GBP for a suit and then 70GBP to have it altered do you?": "well" I said, "Actually, yes I do".
Last edited by Oldfruit1 (2013-02-05 09:50:51)
^ The worst experience that I have had in London was at John Bray in Jermyn Street. His sales "pitch" is to slag off what you are wearing and to promise that he can dress you properly. Bray's arrogance was beyond belief and I warn others off.
Thanks Oldfruit1 What you say makes a lot of sense, and your more charitable 'defensive' interpretation of their behaviour seems cogent. The West End really is a jungle though: I must say I was impressed by the difference in attitude I found at John Simons. I got there quite late in my UK career.
Now I come to think of it, Clothes shops in Wales could be very strange, but then all shops in Wales are like that, they don't want you there basically, especially if they are cafes; those close for lunch down in my birthplace! I ain't kiddin'
ha ha... "looking like a mechanic who has won the Pools"
yeah, actually Mario the tailor did an almost impossible job on that Rohan Suit. I love them actually, they are 60%wool but have some weird synthetic things in them too. One of the best suits I ever had was an off the shelf Tesco washable, 100% synthetic costing 25GBP about a decade ago. I think they ripped off an Armani, a couple of years later the 'same' suit was a lot worse style wise, I think they were pulled up on it. I used to get compliments on it would you believe.
Why I wanted a suit that would take the semi-tropics when I lived in North London I will never fathom, Hepcat 4F; spookily I moved to Philadelphia a couple of years later where they come in really useful. Oh and the salesman in Jos A Banks nearly spat at me when I asked them if they did washable suits. All the dry-clean ones they had there were vile and cheap looking. So I am reminded of another 'tailor story', well, sort of anyway...
I accept the Ivy rule of natural fibres in general though I suppose; I am, I suppose a modernist...? I still can't see why hand stitching is such a big deal, though I see where it would be useful and better sometimes?