Are you a Bespeaker?
A small selection of my personal stock, just to wet your appetite
As I’ve explained elsewhere on this blog, the word bespoke originated in the 17th century. Back in those days, a tailor would have a stock of fabrics available for his customer to choose from. Nowadays this rarely happens anymore. For a tailor to keep a decent choice available, would cost so much that it simply isn’t feasible, and besides, there is such a vast amount of fabrics available, that a tailor woud never have enough choice for his customers. Finally, travelling tailors such as myself cannot haul around rolls of fabrics wherever they go. So we resort to swatch books/sample bunches. The disadvantage of that, is that a customer can’t see a whole length of fabric as it drapes, but it does allow for a choice from practically all that is available.
So when I visit customers I have an ample supply of swatch books with me. Usually too many, as I often find that the more types I show, the harder the choice will become.
Now here is a nice thing: I recently had the opportunity to dig through the warehouse of a very large cloth producer here on the continent. They had closed down a part of their business, limiting from then on to military clothing, so they were selling out. Actually they wanted to sell their 30.000 meters stock to one buyer, which of course was no option for me. What on earth would I do with 30.000 meters? But by very kind permission they let me rummage through it and pick whatever I liked. Well, did I have a ball! Like a kid in a candystore. So I selected 80 different types of fabric, from ultra thin to wintercoat-material, classic designs and contemporary, flanels, tweeds, what have you. All things which I like so much that I just couldn’t resist. I had been planning to buy some 15 kinds, or maybe 30 if I’d get real excited. I ended up shipping 700 meters (sic!) to my home.?
So obviously I take my personal swatch-bundle with me, and because I was able to get these materials at quite a good price, I can now offer you exquisite cloths of such quality that it would substantially raise the price of a suit or a coat if I were to order it from any well-known producer. But when people select from my own store, I won’t have to add anything to the price. Heh, if you catch me on a good day I might even throw in a little discount. Say ten euro’s off ;-)))
?And all that fun for the same price as the standard worsted’s and S120’s. How’s that for a deal?
Leave a Comment
If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the form below.
Interesting post, thanks for sharing