Stitches Tailoring

Traditional Tailoring

This is called bespoke tailoring here in the United Kingdom, where the heart of the trade is in London's Savile Row, and custom tailoring in the United States and Hong Kong. This is unlike made to measure which uses pre existing patterns. A bespoke garment or suit is completely original and unique to each customer.

Bespoke clothing is traditionally cut from a pattern drafted from scratch for the customer, and so differs from ready-to-wear, which is factory made in finished condition and standardised sizes, and from made-to-measure, produced to order from an adjusted block pattern.

This opposition of terms did not initially imply that a bespoke garment was necessarily well built, but since the development of ready-to-wear in the beginning of the twentieth century, bespoke clothing is now more expensive and is generally accompanied by a high quality of construction.

Bespoke Clothing

The word bespoke itself is derived from the verb to bespeak, to "speak for something", in the specialized meaning "to give order for it to be made". The term bespoke in fashion is reserved for individually patterned and crafted men's clothing, analogous to women's haute couture, - (French for "high sewing" or "high dressmaking"; refers to the creation of exclusive custom-fitted clothing. Haute couture is made to order for a specific customer, and it is usually made from high-quality, expensive fabric and sewn with extreme attention to detail and finish by the most experienced and capable seamstresses, often using time-consuming, hand-executed techniques.