Men’s Classic Style

What’s So Special About Bespoke?

For the man used to buying clothes in a brick-and-mortar store, ordering a custom-made suit online may seem a little strange.  But if you think about it, doesn’t it make more sense? 

Many men have figured out that custom clothing looks better, feels better, and lasts longer than the clothes sold in stores, and thus makes for a good investment in the long run and the short run alike. Besides, customization is the last luxury, and the unique details you select for your bespoke put it head-and-shoulders above anything retail–even designer suits that cost many times more.

A man can expect to get a decade of wear from a bespoke suit, and several decades with proper care and occasional minor repairs. He will be lucky to get five years buying off the rack, for several reasons. First, since a store-bought suit will never fit you as perfectly as a bespoke one, there will be points on the the fabric and seams that get stressed by your movements, like where the sleeves connect to the body of the coat. Secondly, retail clothes are inevitably imbued with the particular trends of their time, and are thus more susceptible to style obsolescence than garments ordered by a man who knows the classic proportions. Finally, men who invest the time and energy to acquire bespoke suits tend to take better care of them, not least because they enjoy wearing them so much. If the price tags on bespoke offerings have you smarting, think about how much you spend clothes now. If you stopped buying suits, shirts, and shoes at the mall, how long would it take you to save up enough to order your first custom suit? If the suit lasts you ten years, isn’t it worth more than whatever else you would have bought?

Of course, the obvious reason to bespeak a suit is the opportunity to get a perfect fit. The particulars of fit having been discussed at length elsewhere, I will mere say that a well-fitting suit looks good and feels good, and the men’s suit leaves but a small margin for error. For the majority of men who do not have ‘average’ builds, whether portly, slender, muscular, tall, or what have you, custom clothes offer the only hope of getting it right. Your bespoke tailor starts from scratch, drawing out every line of your garment from your unique measurements (some made-to-measure services adjust existing patterns based on your measurements, saving time but sacrificing individuality). Once he (or she) has your pattern and you are happy with the fit, you can order more suits without additional measurements and be assured of an identical fit. Nothing can compare to the experience of donning a bespoke suit, and feeling how it really does fit perfectly.

Besides getting a perfect fit, ordering bespoke lets you control everything else about the suit, including fabric, cut, and detailing. There are thousands upon thousands of fabrics out there, so that there are bound to be a few that are exactly what you want in terms of material, weight, color, and pattern. Since retail stores offer so few options, a suit you buy at a mall store may be instantly identified by many as, for example, that-suit-from-Banana-Republic. This distracts from whatever the suit was supposed to convey, and helps people to apply stereotypes to you. When you wear a bespoke suit, few people will have ever seen a fabric quite like yours before, and the suit is thus free of baggage. The proportion and cut of a suit are essential to the look you achieve in it, and bespoke lets you get these right every time. Finally, you may like slanted pockets, ventless jackets, high-rise pants, or any other of the myriad options available in a suit. As you buy or order and wear several suits over the years, you will find things you like and things you don’t like. This may be for convenience’ sake, like a special cell phone pocket in all your jackets, or for style, like ordering all of your suit trousers with single reverse pleats. Finding a sartorial quirk that fits your personality and ordering it on all of your suits gives your duds some originality, and shows anyone who observes your dressing habits closely that your superior style is no accident.