You may be looking for suits online and see the term "Bespoke suits" on some websites that claim to make custom suits for you from scratch. Though custom-fit and custom suits may be similar to Bespoke suits, it is easy to trick you into thinking you are getting something you are not. In this article, we want to help you avoid false claims about what you are getting, and hopefully save your wallet.
Truly Bespoke suits could not be done without you present. The Bespoke suit process requires you to go in with your tailor multiple times to ultimately create a custom suit that was made for you from scratch. Your tailor will sew in unfinished parts of your suit while it is on you and take careful measurements while it's on you. A Bespoke suit will be made from very high-end materials. These features include 150s - 200s Italian wool, have functioning sleeve buttonholes, have a pure silk lining, and have a horsehair canvas. Of course, these high-end features are ultimately up to you to decide upon, but these should be some of the options you have. A Bespoke suit shop will generally not have many already made suits. This is because each suit is individually made for the customer, so you might only see a few samples to see styles and quality. At a Bespokeshop, you will generally see a large catalog with dozens to hundreds of material choices that your tailor can get from their manufacturer. Alternatively, there might already have a large collection of in-stock fabrics to choose from. All of these materials alone could be very expensive alone and considering that about 30-60 hours of labor goes into a custom Bespoke suit, it is easy to see that a Bespoke suit will be costly. Depending on exactly what types of materials are requested and the complexity of your suit, a custom Bespoke suit will run you $1300 - $8000, and even more in some cases from popular designers. Clearly, a Bespoke suit is not something that everyone would need in their wardrobe. If you find a company that says that they offer low-cost Bespoke suits, this should raise some eyebrows and questions.
What many online companies do is what is known as a custom suit, made-to-measure suit, or custom-fit suits. This is actually what we do at Gurcan Tailor. However, we do not take online measurement submissions for reasons we will talk about shortly. This process is a lot quicker, cheaper, and more convenient for most people. With this style, you would come into a business like ours and have your chest size measured by a tailor. You will then pick out a suit from in stock or through a catalog. If the color and style suit you choose is in stock you will try it on and have it custom-fitted to you. If you order through a catalog you may have to wait for your suit to come to arrive for measurement. In some areas like us at Gurcan Tailor, we can actually take measurements with a sample suit and tailor your suit to the sample suit measurements. With many online suit services, you will be asked to submit a measurement sheet with different measurements. The company you are ordering through will use these measurements to alter a finished or mostly finished suit to your body without you present. However, not all tailors take measurements the same way, and we see the consequences of this every so often. We get customers who come in saying they had custom-made suits made from an online company that does not fit them properly. This is actually the very reason why do not sell custom-fit suits online, but rather only send out a finished suit in our customer's chest size. This ensures that our customers get a suit that will roughly fit them and could be altered by a local tailor for a custom fit.
So if you are shopping for a new suit and see something along the lines of "Cheap Bespoke Suits", this is not a good sign. In this case, you are either getting a poor quality item or something that is not Bespoke. Additionally, a Bespoke suit will require you to come into a shop or come directly to you, so if this is not the case, you are probably being lied to.
So why do some companies claim to make Bespoke suits when they are not? For beginners, they want you to feel like they are getting a superior product, when in reality you may not be. Since you are given to illusion of a superior product, they can charge more. For example, we charge $200 - $400 for any suit that is purchased from us which includes alterations if coming in the store. We are very upfront that our suits and tuxedo process is custom-fit, where we fit an already made piece on to you instead of making one from scratch. Companies and individuals know that a Bespoke suit will be much more expensive so they may charge a lot more for the perceived quality and expectations. Clearly, this is not ethical and you the customer deserve to know about such practices.
We hope that you found this article to be helpful!