I spent Wednesday afternoon walking around Manhattan and dropped into 9 East 53d Street with a friend to visit bespoke tailor Leonard Logsdail (no web site). A transplanted Londoner, Logsdail has been offering New Yorkers a Savile Row styled suit (many of them cut and sewn in England) since 1991.
Logsdail's use of remote Savile Row tailors pioneered a system similar to the one London's Kilgour uses today to make bespoke suits in China. The pattern is made near the customer and sent to the tailors, wherever they may be. Garments are returned needing only minor finishing. 
The advantage of this system is that the work can be done where the skilled tailors reside, a considerable advantage for recruiting and training compared to firms like Oxxford whose staffing strategy relies on relocating tailors thousands of miles to higher cost locations.
It makes a lot of sense to me that the garment should travel instead of the customer. And if the results are consistently as good as the tartan smoking jacket in the photo, bespoke customers everywhere may owe Mr. Logsdail a debt of gratitude.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Savile Row in New York
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10 comments:
If I can afford to buy a bespoke suit, I can afford to do so without having it made of the sweat of poorly paid and overworked Chinese laborers.
Style is a way of acting as much as a way of dressing.
If only some of the Savile Row tailors would work in or visit Melbourne, Australia once every now and then. It is dashed hard to find a decent tailor in the antipodes. There is atleast one decent English cut bespoke tailor in the city but I have not had a chance to personally appraise their quality, and even if it is good, it is not Savile Row.
Agree with mark
Mark and PabloJ,
So you'd rather the Chinese laborer not work at all?
So, Mark/pabloj, I can see two choices. First, pay more in hopes that the "poorly paid and overworked Chinese laborers" will have some of that money handed to them, or don't buy the suit in which case the "poorly paid and overworked Chinese laborers" will become "unemployed Chinese laborers." Or, we could let the free market system work as it does.
Fortunately, poorly paid and overworked laborers of any nationality cannot make men's tailored clothing. Skilled tailors in emerging economies have a better life relative to their peers than do most tailors in the United States.
That is one nice looking jacket....
John always make an intelligent comment...
A tailor is an artisan, not an engineer, nor an artist. He is a craftsman that that sweats years of his life to learn his trade...if he is good he also learns salesmanship,marketing, fashion (gads!), and is a businessman. In effect, a rare breed.
Like, great barbers, tailors get to know you...you exchange jokes, stock tips, talk about women, and yet, keep it all professional....
My best tailor told me that an informed, passionate, and liquid client is important to keep the world afloat... Gotta agree. New York needs its own Saville Row. London's is a drag and the food is bad.
@turling
I'd say pay better (and probably more) supporting great artisans everywhere rather than sweatshops.
I was under the distinct impression tat 'bespoke' was supposed to mean that the suit was as hand made, hand cut, hand stitched, etc., as possible... This method seems to stray from the original intent, though I do remember reading a bit about a recent lawsuit regarding the term 'bespoke' over at Simon Crompton's Permanent Style blog.
And as far as third-world tailors go, I've met a few and had the opportunity to meet their families and dine with them in their homes, and in places like Cambodia they stand to make (with overtime, which puts them in the 60 hour/week range) over four times what a policeman makes in the same month. I guess that helps to explain government corruption at least. And frankly you'd be surprised how far 80 dollars a month can go in places like Phnom Penh if you're a local, though that is likely to change drastically very soon.
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