Men's fashion tailoring - history and future

Today we are going to tell you a little bit more about the tailoring profession.

A tailor is a person who makes, repairs, or alters clothing professionally, especially suits and men's clothing.

The first use of the word 'tailor' dates to the 13th century - 1297 according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

In the late 18th century 'tailor' became a popular name and nowadays it refers mainly to a person who makes men's clothes that are measured to fit a particular person.

In the United Kingdom (where the heart of the trade is London's Savile Row tailoring), they call the traditional tailoring 'bespoke tailoring', while it's called 'custom tailoring' in the United States and Hong Kong. The bespoke suit is completely original and unique to each customer. Hong Kong and London are the most famous for high quality bespoke tailoring.

Today, there are different methods of tailoring and every tailor may practice one or a couple of them:

- Local tailors - they usually have a showroom or shopfront where the clients can choose fabrics from samples and the garments are produced locally. This is the most traditional form of tailoring.

- Distance (online) tailors - clients order garments from an out-of-town tailor (for example via e-commerce websites) enabling cheaper labour to be used. Customers should take their measurements by themselves and choose fabrics from an online catalog. When the garments are ready they are shipped to the customer.

- Traveling tailors - they travel between cities to provide to the customers a more personal service (than distance tailors) by giving them the opportunity to see the fabric samples and meet the tailor in person. They stay in local luxury hotels for short periods of time, where they meet the customers and take their measurements. After 3-4 weeks the order is shipped to the client. Today, most traveling tailors are from Hong Kong, traveling to USA, UK, France, Australia and Japan.

The future of men's fashion tailoring

According to Italian master tailor Sebastiano Montella: 'Fashion in the context of traditional custom tailoring does not have a very promising future. The traditional methods of a quality hand-made suit are being replaced by factory quality items. It saddens me to see that this art is vanishing, but it is not completely gone'.

And he is right.

What we, from Be Global Fashion Network, can do to improve the situation is to popularize the fact that attention to fit and detail is the difference between a well dressed man and the ordinary guys. And that can be achieved only by traditional custom tailoring and made-to-measure services.

See also: Give them exactly what the customers are asking for -
perfectly fitting hand-made suits - an interview with Italian master tailor
Sebastiano Montella