Bespoke Cutter And Tailor

I call them "Wal-Martians" 

That's right. Bogans = "An uncouth or unsophisticated person regarded as being of low social status."

"Comfort" today seems to be equated with oversized, loose and sloppy, or stretchy.  How is a tailor supposed to compete with that?"

Yes. For freedom of movement. But, what people don't know is that move freedom of movement and better comfort is putting the goods where they belong. It can still be loose and baggy. When the shoulders are right and the balance, straight and crooking, the comfort and freedom of movement is better. And, the collar sits nice. People don't know this. But when they get something that is they learn by wearing it. After that they want it. A cheaper shirt doesn't need high quality method of making. The sleeves can be sewn in the scye with a overcaster (serger). The side seam and sleeve in one go. The collar and yoke and placket and cuff use a sewing machine. The bottom edge however. The outside looks professional and the inside details don't matter for a cheaper shirt. The object is a better fitting shirt at a price ordinary people can buy.
Some people's posture is terrible and these shirts make a huge difference.

Everything has been done to death. Even jeans. It seems hard to come up with anything new. Younger people like something never done before. Each generation wants to leave its own mark. I wonder what will grab their attention next.

Quote from: Greger on May 12, 2025, 06:33:58 PMEverything has been done to death. Even jeans. It seems hard to come up with anything new. Younger people like something never done before. Each generation wants to leave its own mark. I wonder what will grab their attention next.

Trust it to be something that brings in the most cash the fasted! But also remember that most teenagers and twens never lived trough or have ever seen the trends we have... As an example, I have waded through -at least- five waves of flares, simply because the appear "new" to every new generation of teens...

Look at Gucci. Originally a typical Italian luxury brand, quiet in a sense but with a slightly "oblique" taste to it, especially under Tom Ford. Allessandro Michele arrives and goes all in retro 70s, with crushed velvets, crochet, fringes, "off" colours and what have you. Had nothing to do with the Gucci that we all knew but it was a huge succes, because it was clicked to heaven and back by youngsters on the internet who couldn't even afford the stuff.

Don't forget styling... How people put their outfits ("the sum of parts") together is evermore important than the individual item of clothing. Tiktok and other social media has propelled "self styling" into unseen before media power. Teenage girls and boys are "dipping their toes" in ever increasingly "risqué" self styled "fashion" imagery with jaw-dropping results and clicks&likes. Important fashion houses are astronomically huge amounts of their marketing budgets in influencers.

This "media hairball" leaves the consumer increasingly confused and insecure. Funny consequence of all this is that players like Shein and Temu actually use these images and "mash them up" to recrate AI generated "pictures" of the stuff they sell. An explosive mix of inflated lips, oversized butts and huge breasts the result, the taste level is at least questionnable. A friend, who works in marketing, told me that to her it looks like "a perpetual garden party for callgirls". These images are then injected into Instagram, Pinterest and what have you to create demand for the containerloads of polyester stuff that just hit our shores.

So, I suppose the fashion revolution, once "owned" by the young has become a system. Compare it to fast food, where you can "tap in your order" on a screen these days and can "ad any choice", as long as it is a burger!


Cheers, have a great day, Hendrick

Quote from: jruley on May 12, 2025, 11:32:32 AMI call them "Wal-Martians" 

Brilliant!

Quote from: jruley on May 12, 2025, 11:32:32 AMI call them "Wal-Martians" 

We call them Cousins

Quote from: Steelmillal on May 13, 2025, 01:15:56 AMWe call them Cousins

"If your family tree runs straight up and down — you might be a redneck..."

I can honestly say, "Hi! My name is AL; this is my brother Steve and my other brother Steve." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YTE8QjCw2U

Quote from: Greger on May 12, 2025, 06:33:58 PMEverything has been done to death. Even jeans. It seems hard to come up with anything new. Younger people like something never done before. Each generation wants to leave its own mark. I wonder what will grab their attention next.

It's also the 30-year generation swing. Lack of what came before allows most everything to be recycled/reset.

"Trust it to be something that brings in the most cash the fasted!", but I meant "fastest"

Quote from: Steelmillal on May 13, 2025, 01:15:56 AMWe call them Cousins

        

Quote from: Hendrick on May 13, 2025, 08:53:53 AMthe most cash the fasted!", but I meant "fastest"

Da Guinness is getting the basted of Hendrick 

Quote from: Hendrick on May 12, 2025, 08:03:03 PMDon't forget styling..

Timeless style should be bedrock IMHO. But is that simply good balance? I always default to fit by way of ease and cut. It may simply follow, and I'm spitballing, that the artisan skill that most accurately accents the body with balance AND time cheats is the art we seek to streamline to compete with ready-made. I just bought a vintage Ike jacket from 1967 that has the most amazing sleeve fit, for ME. The coat body is too small, but the sleeve will be dissected and captured for future use.

Quote from: Schneiderfrei on May 12, 2025, 12:11:12 PMThat's right. Bogans = "An uncouth or unsophisticated person regarded as being of low social status."

Still looking for k-leather cheap 

Fashion interest is so short and it takes so long for Mass-production which leaves a huge chance of buyers are not interested when it hits the shelves and racks.
Styles are more steady and profitable. Except, it seems people lost interest in styles.
What is the answer?

Quote from: Greger on May 13, 2025, 12:42:02 PMFashion interest is so short and it takes so long for Mass-production which leaves a huge chance of buyers are not interested when it hits the shelves and racks.
Styles are more steady and profitable. Except, it seems people lost interest in styles.
What is the answer?

No one knows... But, the length of suppy lines has increased multiple times over, say, the last 30 to 40 years. But profit margins have also massively increased, at least here in the olde worlde... When in my first job, the multiplier in retail was x2. The came VAT, it went to x2,2. Soon to become 2,5 early 80's. Nowadays x2,75 is a minimum and rising. Retailers aim for x3 to x3,5 on private label goods... The increase has mainly to do with the costs of goods unsold, or sold at reduced prices. So, the full price consumer pays top for unsold and discounted merch. All this means that on branded goods, over the whole distribution line (including wholesale margins), a consumer pays 6 to 8x the initial cost of goods.

France, Germany and Italy had huge "fast fashion" systems in the past. Supply lines were incredibly direct, and weekly input came directly from the retailer. In fact, their orders were more or less sold before they were delivered. Clearly this was also a boon for local textile industries. Our "outsourcing" mentality has become a form of economic prostitution and only now we are starting to realise that with sharing knowledge, we also share wealth...

We know that many of the asian fast fashion products are damaging (lead, chemicals etc.) and impossible to recycle, yet our markets are open for these products. Regulations in Europe are very stringeant. There are campaigns against the use of plain sugar (...), a bottle of liquor costs the equivalent of 25 usd. and a pack of cigarettes 15, mostly through taxes. All for our "protection". So maybe it is time to have a look at other imports as well.

Cheers, Hendrick

Quote from: jruley on April 24, 2025, 04:42:44 AM

Quote from: Greger on April 24, 2025, 03:39:14 AMThere are always those who want more than average. Some people want above average and start a business or two or three. Some achieve more.

I thought you were selling the notion that everyone went to the tailor, and everything was bespoke. Now you're saying that tailored clothing is for the above average.

Which is it?  You can't have it both ways.

I understand I'm a little late to this discourse but I thought I'd share my two cents.

Jim, in all due respects, Greger's memories of "everyone going to tailors" in the US may not be as far fetched as it appears.
I was able to find a merchant of Pendletons and their wool apparel cloth is $40 per yard; granted, they specialize in flannel, but considering that in the 60's there were a lot more American mills than today (that also sourced their wool from inside the US), I don't think it be much of a stretch to assume that wool could have had a comparable price back then. Compare that $40 of flannel with a VBC flannel that costs about $200. From what I remember reading, a yard of wool in the 50's was about $3-$5 (about $35-$60 in todays money), that is still more affordable then the more "prestigious" companies.

I've also been doing quite a bit of research on a tailor named Clarence Poulin, who conducted business in rural New Hampshire. He wrote "Tailoring Suit's the Professional Way" (1953), and describes RTW "greatly depleting the ranks of the tailor" as something of a past but recallable memory (he was born in 1912).
I'm not denying RTW existed a century before, that's obvious, but it seems it didn't become a widespread norm until WW1. Until then it was usually reserved for military, workwear, or shirt-making.
Heck Jacob Davis, the tailor who invented jeans (and patented it with Levi Strauss, his denim supplier), only went into mass-production because he couldn't keep up with the high demand. This was early 1870s, and him making pants for a woodcutter shows tailors did in fact make clothes for people who weren't rich, and were very much essential.
Something I read about the OK Corral shootout is that it was common in those days for tailors to make gun pockets in coats, and would have some kind of canvas to easily take the gun out. So they would have actually shot out of their coats which is a little funny to think about. Not really on the point but thought I'd mention it.

RTW was a little popular in urban areas along the eastern coast, but even then there were tailors. The period during and after WW1 is when RTW became more of a norm for people getting their clothes. I'm assuming this is due to the US's rise in wealth and immigration, it only makes sense that RTW became "norm" when it was the more convenient option to meet the rising workforce's need for clothes ASAP.

This is corroborated in the MTOC (1928), which on page 3 that had an essay by F. Chitham named "Some Problems of the Tailoring Trade", presumably written in the late teens to early 20's, as the book was a collection of writings and drafts by the Tailor & Cutter to meet the modern needs of the 20's tailor.
On page 7, he describes RTW as "said to still be in its infancy", and on page 8 he advises tailors to "take an active part in this [ready to wear] trade." He also mentions that the overcoat and hat trade had became fully ready to wear. Notice that in the entire paragraph he describes ready-to-wear as a recent or new happening, despite having been around for a century.
Media also seems to support tailors as being more common. Films such as the Chaplains "The Count" and Lloyds "Girl Shy" all present tailors as something common and relatable. Now, are silent films a good clear representation of past life? Not necessarily, but they certainly open a view into what town life was in the late teens to 20's.
And Stanley Hostek learned the trade from his father. They both lived in Lewistown Montana on his grandfathers horse ranch. The population was only 5,000 in 1930. You have to admit a miner's town would be an odd place for a tailor to be in business if they only catered to the wealthy.

I can only presume the reason you and Greger had such different experiences with observing community tailors just comes down to regional and periodical differences. Greger seems to have grown up during the late 60's in a western area; most tailors in general closed in the US by the middle 70's when the synthetic serge and department stores like Sears became common, so that might line up with your mention of not seeing a lot of tailors during the 70's and 80's. It shouldn't be extremely surprising that tailors went out when a majority of American mills went out too. Or it could just be a Baader–Meinhof phenomenon, who knows...

I think the catching on of RTW is like computers. They were invented during the 50's; had a slight surge in the 70's and 80's being a niche interest of some geeks; but became popular and widespread in the 90's with the rise of the internet. Most families didn't own computers until that last decade.