Originally Posted by IndyDavid

Gregg -- if you choose someplace Thursday morning, they could have something for you to try on by Friday noon & you could pick things up Saturday night (most are closed Sunday). However, beware.

My partner and I had suits made in Bangkok in January: a total of 8 jackets, 5 pairs of pants, 8 shirts and 3 ties from 2 different tailor shops. None of them fit very well. One tailor (the famous Rajawongse) only offered 1 fitting and didn't make any of the changes I requested. The sleeves are too long, there's a ton of unnecessary stiffening in the chest so it doesn't drape right, etc. He grudgingly agreed to fix the 3 suit jackets and ship them to me after I refused them at final pickup. The versions that arrived in the US were still not very good. He promised the shirts with the too-big necks would shrink too. Not true. The Rajawongse suit fabric also has some slubs in it and is starting to pill after about 8 wearings. Very low recommendation there.

The other place (Raja's on Sukhumvit down & across the street from Rajawongse) offered us a fitting every day for 4 days in a row, and those jackets fit slightly better. But the big problem for me on any suit jacket is the collar & they nobody adds the collar until the last second anyway. By then it's too late to fix -- the jacket's done & your plane is leaving. My Raja's collars never sit up at my neck in the back -- they always slide down a little, leaving a gap and forcing me to constantly tug on my lapels to keep the top of the jacket against the back of my neck. Annoying.

I have a suit that was 90% off at Macy's that fits better and cost less than the clothes we had made in Bangkok. My off-the-rack Joseph Abboud suits all fit like a glove in comparison. So I'd never do it again. Both those shops keep prices down by giving every customer the same suit and refusing to fix anything, especially if it would mean recutting fabric and starting over.

Remember too that since everything is made by hand, no 2 are ever alike. Two of my 3 Rajawongse shirt collars are fine; the other is 1/2" too big. One of my Raja's suit jackets fits better than the other. Even things like the depth of the breast pockets in the jackets varies significantly -- one is so deep I can barely fish out my Blackberry; the other is so shallow there's an unsightly bulge when the jacket is buttoned. So even if you do succeed in getting 1 garment right, your others will all be different and will never fit the same.

Caveat emptor.

David