Guide · Guides
What to ask a tailor before you commission
Eight questions to ask a tailor before ordering tell you what you are buying, who is making it, and what happens if it goes wrong.
Commissioning is a several-month relationship costing several thousand, and most customers ask nothing. These questions establish what you are actually buying, who is making it, and what happens if it is wrong.
The questions
- Is a paper pattern drafted for me alone, and is it kept? The operative test of bespoke.
- How many fittings are included, and what happens if it is still wrong afterwards? The willingness to keep going is what you are paying for.
- Where is the garment made, and by whom? In-house or an outworker; in this city or another country. All are legitimate; not knowing is not.
- What is in the chest? Full canvas, light canvas or nothing. A good house answers precisely.
- What is included in the price and what is extra? Cloth beyond the house bunch usually is; tax frequently is.
- How long, realistically? And if you travel to me, how does that change the calendar?
- Can I see finished garments? Work in progress and coats awaiting collection tell you more than any photograph.
- What happens in five years when I have changed shape? A house that alters its own work indefinitely is offering something different from one that does not.
On the first commission, order one thing
Order a single garment, in a plain cloth you will wear constantly, and see it through before ordering anything else. A first commission is a test of a relationship as much as of a tailor, and the failure mode is committing to a wardrobe with a house whose cut turns out not to suit you.
What their answers tell you
Precision is the signal. A house that says 'we use the finest materials and traditional methods' is telling you nothing; one that says 'a wool-and-horsehair canvas, pad-stitched by hand, made by a coatmaker in Kent, three fittings, four months' is telling you everything.
Vagueness about where a garment is made is the single most useful warning sign, because the answer is always known to the house.
And what to bring
The shoes and the shirt you will wear with the garment. A photograph of something you like, if you can find one; describing a silhouette in words is much harder than pointing at it. And an honest account of what you will actually wear it to.
- Standard size
- Bought
- Altered, maybe
- Existing block
- Modified to your measurements
- One fitting, or none
- Pattern drafted for you
- Cut and basted
- Fitted, unpicked, recut
- Two to four times
Images
Licensing →
At a glance
Picture credits 2
- A fitting room with a basted jacket: Original art · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale original art
- Measuring rod, tailor's: Photograph · API data Catalogue record Photo · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 4.0