Charlie Watts - great Tailoring comments

[Greger]

A block can be used for bespoke. According to skill mark the cloth with pattern. Make all the changes. Cut with inlays. Bast and fit. After the fitting use the tool (needle point tracing wheel) to trace the corrected pattern on card for permanent pattern for the customer.

From my perspective MTM can be very nice depending upon how good they are and the person taking the order. If the person is lousy at reading the body that is the best you can get.

Bespoke has fittings where a whole lot of things can change. MTM doesn't give a lot of embellishing. Bespoke does. Bespoke doesn't have to. Some customers don't want it. But you can really enhance a persons appearance. You can add canvases, felt, wadding, etc. to put in shape and seem to take away shape. You can play with optical illusions to make the person look better. Pad stitching adds options for shaping. Every part of every curve is to enhance the figure and hide blemishes. The human dimensions can be changed a lot. This one customer, don't remember which century, said that his tailor made him look far better than his body really was. When you start playing with curves, shapes and dimensions, etc. it really becomes an art like sculpture. When looking at the male naked body how many flat areas are there. If not, why are some tailors doing some finishing pressing on a flat surface, with coats? Sleeves pressed on the flat. Some of the back is pressed on the flat. And other parts. Another advantage is the coat can be designed on the person. What MTM  gives that option? Playing with the imagination is fun.

MTM are all the same. None are really made for the owner. It's just a coat. Bland. MTM company may have an excellent designer, sometimes.

There are a few excellent designers. Designers are artists. Tailors are supposed to be artist. Artists quality varies from artists to artists. So, a MTM company could get an exceptional artist. If that artist became a real tailor his art would go much further. Tailoring art should most times be guided by words like elegance, splendor, magnificent, grandeur, regal, authority, majestic, brilliance, dignity, and so on. There are other categories of words that tailor are asked to make for.

Some tailors are rather bland. If you want a bland coat, as some people do, find one of those tailors. Bland coats are good for some settings. It's part of art, too.

[Hendrick]

Going back to what I was talking about earlier in this thread, made to measure was just a generic term for tailored, as is exemplified by this advert:
https://youtu.be/96t6lODGTE0?si=VDvv6G4v5lMhpUnL

I thought "made to measure" was basically "bespoke without fittings".  Am I wrong?

I know "bespoke" is supposed to involve a personal pattern.  But - if the client is of average or neutral figuration, why wouldn't the cutter start with a standard block and make any needed adjustments?  Why "reinvent the wheel" and add the possibility of inadvertent error?

(ducks for cover)

No, you're right... In the past though, in popular speak so to say, many people used the term "made to measure for going to the tailors"...

Generally i believe the "grade of formality" these days plays a greater role than the fashion content in tailoring. I I were the conductor of the Wiener Philharmonic and in need of a tailcoat "bespoke"would be the only real option...

Cheerio, Hendrick

[Hendrick]

A block can be used for bespoke. According to skill mark the cloth with pattern. Make all the changes. Cut with inlays. Bast and fit. After the fitting use the tool (needle point tracing wheel) to trace the corrected pattern on card for permanent pattern for the customer.

From my perspective MTM can be very nice depending upon how good they are and the person taking the order. If the person is lousy at reading the body that is the best you can get.

Bespoke has fittings where a whole lot of things can change. MTM doesn't give a lot of embellishing. Bespoke does. Bespoke doesn't have to. Some customers don't want it. But you can really enhance a persons appearance. You can add canvases, felt, wadding, etc. to put in shape and seem to take away shape. You can play with optical illusions to make the person look better. Pad stitching adds options for shaping. Every part of every curve is to enhance the figure and hide blemishes. The human dimensions can be changed a lot. This one customer, don't remember which century, said that his tailor made him look far better than his body really was. When you start playing with curves, shapes and dimensions, etc. it really becomes an art like sculpture. When looking at the male naked body how many flat areas are there. If not, why are some tailors doing some finishing pressing on a flat surface, with coats? Sleeves pressed on the flat. Some of the back is pressed on the flat. And other parts. Another advantage is the coat can be designed on the person. What MTM  gives that option? Playing with the imagination is fun.

MTM are all the same. None are really made for the owner. It's just a coat. Bland. MTM company may have an excellent designer, sometimes.

There are a few excellent designers. Designers are artists. Tailors are supposed to be artist. Artists quality varies from artists to artists. So, a MTM company could get an exceptional artist. If that artist became a real tailor his art would go much further. Tailoring art should most times be guided by words like elegance, splendor, magnificent, grandeur, regal, authority, majestic, brilliance, dignity, and so on. There are other categories of words that tailor are asked to make for.

Some tailors are rather bland. If you want a bland coat, as some people do, find one of those tailors. Bland coats are good for some settings. It's part of art, too.

Thank you, I agree to the full. The nuance is in the mastery of expresiveness in the cut that can totally change a person's appearence. The distinction between that and a garment that "just" fits well could not be greater. I think that is also the area where cutter becomes an artist, similar to couture for women. The paticularities, sometimes to the excentric, ad to that (like the needleworkers in couture btw).

Cheers, Hendrick

[Gerry]

I thought "made to measure" was basically "bespoke without fittings".  Am I wrong?

That was pretty much the level of service one could expect from wholesalers like Burtons, Hepworths, Colliers etc. It's also what the term has come to mean nowadays. In the past, however, an independent tailor would likely call themselves 'made to measure' too. It simply meant tailored. Obviously 'bespoke' was being used in the Edwardian era, but it fell out of fashion and (IMO) has only been revived to distinguish high-end tailoring from MTM. The term bespoke may have been dropped during those intervening years because wholesalers had used it. And when tailors started using MTM instead, the wholesalers followed suit. All speculation on my part, but it makes sense.

Wholesalers dictated what was on offer, whereas the customer dictated what they wanted when using a 'genuine' tailor. And people had realistic expectations when they walked through the doors of a high-street chain. They knew they weren't going to get the cloth and style choices, or level of fit, but the pricing was attractive and the end product was good enough. Sometimes better if you believe the advertising! 

It's also worth pointing out that the cheaper, independent tailors of that period might not offer a ton of fittings either. You pays your money, you takes your choice.

I know "bespoke" is supposed to involve a personal pattern.  But - if the client is of average or neutral figuration, why wouldn't the cutter start with a standard block and make any needed adjustments?  Why "reinvent the wheel" and add the possibility of inadvertent error?

Some tailors do use blocks. There's no shame in it if they understand how to manipulate them for each customer. If it gets them up and running quickly, they can keep the cost down and remain competitive. With bespoke, what you're really paying for are the fittings, alterations and the expertise required to do both.

PS, if you're reading this Hendrick, how's your hangover? 

[Hendrick]

I thought "made to measure" was basically "bespoke without fittings".  Am I wrong?

That was pretty much the level of service one could expect from wholesalers like Burtons, Hepworths, Colliers etc. It's also what the term has come to mean nowadays. In the past, however, an independent tailor would likely call themselves 'made to measure' too. It simply meant tailored. Obviously 'bespoke' was being used in the Edwardian era, but it fell out of fashion and (IMO) has only been revived to distinguish high-end tailoring from MTM. The term bespoke may have been dropped during those intervening years because wholesalers had used it. And when tailors started using MTM instead, the wholesalers followed suit. All speculation on my part, but it makes sense.

Wholesalers dictated what was on offer, whereas the customer dictated what they wanted when using a 'genuine' tailor. And people had realistic expectations when they walked through the doors of a high-street chain. They knew they weren't going to get the cloth and style choices, or level of fit, but the pricing was attractive and the end product was good enough. Sometimes better if you believe the advertising! 

It's also worth pointing out that the cheaper, independent tailors of that period might not offer a ton of fittings either. You pays your money, you takes your choice.

I know "bespoke" is supposed to involve a personal pattern.  But - if the client is of average or neutral figuration, why wouldn't the cutter start with a standard block and make any needed adjustments?  Why "reinvent the wheel" and add the possibility of inadvertent error?

Some tailors do use blocks. There's no shame in it if they understand how to manipulate them for each customer. If it gets them up and running quickly, they can keep the cost down and remain competitive. With bespoke, what you're really paying for are the fittings, alterations and the expertise required to do both.

PS, if you're reading this Hendrick, how's your hangover? 

Running it off... thereby vastly increasing lokal relative humidity...

Cheers, Hendrick

[Gerry]

Victorian social commentator Henry Mayhew mentions the 'slop tailor' in his summary of the tailoring profession. According to this contemporary account, they worked for "the slop shops or warehouses, and they keep a large stock of ready-made goods.":

https://cuffay.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-slop-workers-of-london.html

A quick overview of their history here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slop_(clothing)

Although clearly aimed at the lower classes, they had an impact on tailoring and this led to trade disputes in the mid 19th century.

Some related links:

https://ranawayfromthesubscriber.blogspot.com/2016/05/what-we-actually-know-about-petticoat.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://udspace.udel.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/7bb19c0c-14c9-4a8c-b399-347d851878a5/content

[Gerry]

I was thumbing through my copy of The Tailor of Hereford earlier, which is about five generations of tailors at Pritchards (a small-town tailoring shop). Interestingly, during and after WWII the proprietor was using the suit making factories to almost fully assemble their suits. Fittings and final adjustments were carried out on premises, but they started doing less and less work in-house.

It was possibly out of necessity that this started. There would have been a shortage of staff during the war plus rationing of cloth and fewer male clients. Outsourcing kept costs down and helped to maintain profit margins. Interesting that things continued in this vein after the war, though. What is clear from the early chapters of the book is that staff were unreliable in the olden days; so this may also have been a factor. Furthermore, there was increased competition from the likes of Burtons etc as they expanded their empires and dominated the high street. Tailors played them at their own game and started to utilise the factories themselves, by the look of things. Finally, this genuinely was the era of the impoverished aristocrat. The firm had fewer customers who could afford a full bespoke service.

Things weren't black-and-white in either the chain-stores or the bespoke world after WWII, either. Both camps could offer a combination of tailored and RTW. Which shouldn't really surprise us, because some West End bespoke tailoring firms do exactly the same thing, to exploit as many markets as possible.

[Gerry]

Some extracts from Mayhew (cut and pasted from Project Gutenberg facsimiles):

The greater part of the Irish artizans who have arrived within the last five years are to be found among the most degraded of the tailors and shoemakers who work at the East-end for the slop-masters.

The old coats and trowsers are wanted for the slop-shops; they are to be "turned," and made up into new garments. The best black suits are to be "clobbered" up—and those which are more worn in parts are to be cut up and made into new cloth caps for young gentlemen, or gaiters for poor curates; whilst others are to be transformed into the "best boys' tunics." Such as are too far gone are bought to be torn to pieces by the "devil," and made up into new cloth—or "shoddy" as it is termed—while such as have already done this duty are sold for manure for the ground. The old shirts, if they are past mending, are bought as "rubbish" by the marine store dealers, and sold as rags to the paper-mills, to be changed either into the bank-note, the newspaper, or the best satin note-paper.

The waistcoats now sold in Smithfield market, or in the public-houses connected with it, are, I am told, and also by a tailor, very paltry things ... The shilling waistcoats are only fit for boys—or "youths," as the slop-tailors prefer styling them—but 1s. 6d. is a common price enough ... The trade is, moreover, very small. There are sometimes no waistcoat-sellers at all; but generally two, and not unfrequently three ... The material is of a kind of cotton made to look as stout as possible, the back, &c., being the commonest stuff. They are supplied by a slop-house at the East End, and are made by women, or rather girls.

In other mills the rags are not only ground, but the shoddy is worked up into coarse bad cloth, a great proportion of which is sent to America for slave clothing (and much now sold to the slop-shops).

The slop trade even affected the second-hand market - an important source of clothing for the poor, and a lengthy, fascinating account of it is included in the second vol. of Mayhew (though too long to post here):

I'll tell you how them slops, if they come more into wear, is sure to injure us. If people gets to wear them low-figured things, more and more, as they possibly may, why where's the second-hand things to come from? I'm not a tailor, but I understands about clothes, and I believe that no person ever saw anything green in my eye. And if you find a slop thing marked a guinea, I don't care what it is, but I'll undertake that you shall get one that'll wear longer, and look better to the very last, second-hand, at less than half the money, plenty less. It was good stuff and good make at first, and hasn't been abused, and that's the reason why it always bangs a slop, because it was good to begin with.

Confirmation of the slop trade's maritime roots is seen in an account of London's docklands:

The corners of the streets, too, are mostly monopolised by slopsellers; their windows parti-coloured with bright red-and-blue flannel shirts; the doors nearly blocked up with hammocks and "well-oiled nor'-westers;" and the front of the house itself nearly covered with canvas trousers, rough pilot-coats, and shiny black dreadnoughts [a type of heavy coat for sailors, from what I gather].