Tailoring
More and more people are looking to tailors as a means of stocking their wardrobes with one-ofa-kind wares. Isabel B. Slone traces the rise of modern bespoke clothing.
Meet four tailors offering endless possibilities and a perfect fit.
When Anita Clarke donned her first-ever piece of custom-made clothing—a green plaid peacoat with a removable fox fur collar—she compared the feeling to the addictive high of extreme sports. “Bespoke clothes just give me that rush,” she says. Since experiencing that initial surge of satisfaction in 2016, she has had Toronto-based tailor Philip Sparks create five more pieces, including multiple tunics and a pair of military-inspired sailor pants modelled after a vintage pair she owned in university. “It’s never a compromise when I’m making something with Philip,” says Clarke, who is the engineering storyteller at Shopify. “I get exactly what I want.”
If you find buying clothes off the rack to be a wholly unsatisfactory proposition—whether it’s due to not being able to find the right fit, poorly constructed clothing or the item you had in mind simply not being available— having a garment custom-made represents a space of endless possibility. Tailoring, formerly seen as a gentleman’s pursuit, is beginning to open its doors to people of all genders. Ironically, as professional dress codes continue to relax and a suit is no longer a prerequisite for the nine-to-five workforce, bespoke tailoring is in the midst of a new renaissance.
Every time someone like U.S. senator Kamala Harris wears a dusty-pink suit in public, Rae Angelo Tutera, a partner at Brooklyn tailoring company Bindle & Keep, notices a small jump in her business, with more women coming in. “They’re here after seeing a few babes in suits and are like, ‘This should be something I have, too.’” Bindle & Keep describes its services as gender-blind and primarily caters to a clientele of queer and trans folk who wouldn’t necessarily feel comfortable walking into an old-school tailor shop. “Our approach to these timeless pieces of clothing is very progressive,” says founder Daniel Friedman. “We don’t consider what we do fashion; we consider it a necessity.”
Custom clothing not only offers the confidence boost of a perfect fit but is unparalleled in terms of the uniqueness and creativity it offers. Part of the reason Clarke commissioned a green plaid winter coat was to avoid the “black parka mafia” that descends on Canadian cities each winter. “Everyone looks the same; I don’t want to look like any of those people,” she says. “Winter is always so grey and miserable. I want something that I will enjoy putting on in the morning and that will make me happy when I look at it.”
Though getting a piece of clothing custom-made certainly isn’t cheap—factoring in the cost of materials and labour, a completely bespoke suit, which means the pattern is drafted from scratch, runs upwards of $2,000 and a made-to-measure suit, which means it has been created from an existing pattern, starts at around $695—the rise of tailoring may be related to society’s growing distaste for fast fashion. “People are turning away from a throwaway culture, and that’s where bespoke tailoring comes in,” says Jake Allen, co-founder of King & Allen, which has a shop location on London’s Savile Row—the most famous address in the world of tailoring. “When you buy a bespoke suit, you’re investing in something; it’s a timeless piece that can be worn for many, many years.” »