MEN'S SUITS 'Special-make' service provides affordable custom tailoring

Savile Row tailors retooled the very expensive "bespoke" concept.
SCRIPPS HOWARD
LONDON -- What's in a men's suit?
If you happen to be walking down London's Savile Row, over 200 years of "bespoke" tailoring that's world-renowned -- but increasingly pricey and out of range for most customers.
Bespoke is the term for a suit that's hand-made to fit a man's individual measurements and taste. More than 65 man-hours go into each suit, and the customer usually comes in for at least three fittings along the way.
They say, once you order a bespoke suit, you can never go back.
"It's like a second skin," said Mark Henderson, the chief executive of Gieves & amp; Hawkes at No. 1 Savile Row, one of the street's premier tailors that's been in business since a few years after the American Revolution.
But a second skin doesn't come cheap. At over $5,000, a bespoke suit is a bit much for even well-to-do customers -- a fact not lost on Savile Row's tailors.
Once the prices started hitting the two-thousand-pound range in 1995 -- about $4,000 -- "it was very clear even for my successful friends it was too much to pay," said Hugh Holland, managing director of Kilgour French Stanbury, another renowned tailor that's been at No. 8 Savile Row since 1882.
Henderson echoed that sentiment: "There's so many other things people spend their money on now than 50 years ago."
New service
So the bastions of men's tailoring, which have clothed everyone from kings to Saudi sheiks to Cary Grant to P. Diddy, are changing their ways.
In an effort to attract new -- and younger -- customers, Gieves & amp; Hawkes and Kilgour both offer services that strike a middle ground between off-the-rack and bespoke. Americans can take advantage of these services as well, as both tailors make several visits to the states each year.
Kilgour began offering a "special make" service in 1996. It still offers all the attractions of bespoke -- personal measurements, a suit pattern drawn especially for the customer -- but the fabric is shipped to a workshop in Shanghai, where tailors there can stitch it for a fraction of the price of Kilgour's highly paid London tailors.
"We wanted to have an entry-level price bespoke suit," Kilgour spokeswoman Lara Mingay said.
Holland said the service has increased Kilgour's customer base from about 2,000 to 5,000.
Kilgour's special make service is so popular that the Fine Living Network featured it in the June 29 premiere of its new show, "Best for Less," a program on how to find top-quality items for surprisingly low prices.
Compare: A bespoke suit at Kilgour starts at about 2,700 pounds, or almost $5,400. The same suit done under the special-make service starts at 950 pounds -- less than $2,000.
A couple weeks before "Best for Less" aired, Fine Living's "Genuine Article" program featured Gieves & amp; Hawkes in a segment on the most exclusive (and expensive) men's bespoke designers.
But even Gieves' Henderson admits he owns only one bespoke suit in his wardrobe. Three of his suits, however, come from his shop's personal tailoring service.
Personal tailoring
The service is more limited than bespoke, but it's all relative: personal tailoring offers six patterns and styles, where bespoke is unlimited; personal tailoring gives the customer 2,000 fabrics to consider, where bespoke offers 10,000.
And after the initial measurements are taken and the fabric cut, the personally tailored suits are made by machine at the same London factory where Gieves' ready-to-wear suits are made. Bespoke suits are stitched by hand in the shop's basement.
The price of personal tailoring is becoming much more attractive than Gieves' bespoke service: 650 pounds (less than $1,300) compared to the starting bespoke price of 2,500 pounds (about $5,000).
This year, Gieves' personal tailoring work exceeded bespoke for the first time since it was offered in 1995.
So, are you a man salivating for a made-to-measure suit from Savile Row, but can't quite afford bespoke? Your options are expanding.
And who knows? Once you get used to this kind of service, and start earning a bit more money when you're older ...
"We hope what we're doing is getting people hooked on bespoke," Kilgour's Holland said. "If they fall in love with bespoke tailors, they'll want the very best."