OT recommendation on tailors
 

i will be traveling to bkk and hkg soon. in the past i have hade suits made in hkg. i am pleased with the quality. i am wondering if i am better off getting them in bkk this time? i have been told by a friend that bkk is cheeper but i want to make sure that i can find a decent tailor in bkk, if any one has any recommendations?

also when i am in hkg i try and go to shenzen for a day or even a couple of hours to go shopping in that huge mall. is there anything like that in bkk?

thanks

Not sure about BKK, but avoid Shenzhen at all costs!

One time I had a cheap suit made in Shenzhen (my uncle convinced me to do so), and I was very disatisfied.

I think with suits... you definatly get what you pay for. If you have a tailor in HK and are happy with them, I would continue ot use them. If you need one, I can recommmend one in Central I am happy with, but they are not cheap.

my intentions were not to get a suit in Shenzhen i just wanted to do shopping for all the cool crap that they have there,

The Sheraton Royal Orchid has a taylor who does me every year or so. Excellent fabrics, good craftsmanship, does't have the usual taylor problem: loose buttons. He is fast. I am especially impressed with the shirts. 1x00 baht for plain white shirts, i bought 10 in june for 9000. He is not the cheapest, but I haven't found a better one yet. Avoid the once that advertise, and my experience is that Chinese taylors offer better quality than Indian ones (sloopy stitchers).

What sort of suits are you looking for? Western styled or ethnic styled?

is this in hkg or bkk

western suits

how stupid of me, sorry. The Sheraton Royal Orchid is in Bangkok.

http://www.starwood.com/sheraton/sea...propertyID=172

IMO, you definitely get what you pay for. The basic difference in the cost between tailors is the number of man hours they put into a suit and if they do hand stitching.

Obviously, the material you select varies widely in the cost, but not necessarily between tailors, as they all have to buy the same fabrics (a Zenga fabric, for example, costs them all the same and will cost more than a non-branded fabric), but the labor is where the difference between tailors lies -- and utlimately the construction, look, feel, and durability of your suit.

What I learned is that most tailor shops in HK are "fronts" in a very literal sense for common tailor factories in Shenzhen. The actual people who do the tailoring of the suits are not their employees, and the suits are literally thrown together. That is how/why you can get a suit in a day (convenient, but not necessarily a good thing in terms of quality).

Only a few tailors actually use their own employees to make the suits, and make sure everything is down by hand.

After years of bargain hunting, I sought out and bought from one of the "big 3": WW Chan & Sons (see: www.wwchan.com) in Kowloon.

For those that care, the are supposedly also the only tailor of the Big 3 (H. Baroman and A-Man Cheong Co. are the others) who make women's clothing.

My recollection *from a couple of months ago) is that Super 130 suits were about $1,000 and Zegna suits were about $1,200. They also have their own shops in Shanghai.

IMO, they are a cut above the previous tailors I used, who were supposed to have been very high quality, but whom I found only "so so" when it came to the feel of the clothing.

I use A Man Hing Cheong, which is consistently excellent. The attention and care these guys put on the product is very high. I'll go through 3 or 4 fittings before they can declare themselves satisfied. The suits fit so well that I feel I'm not wearing anything, and when I wear my regular off-the rack, I can feel a marked difference in fit and comfort. I have my shirts made at Ascot Chang, but I'm thinking to switching to them for my shirts too.

It would be very difficult to have anything made for the first time without sufficient time for 3-4 fittings.

Of course, you pay for what you get...

"A-Man Cheong" is supposed to be one of the other of the Big 3!

I agree and think you need a minimum of three fittings:

1. Initial fitting for measurements;

2. Mid-construction fitting, which can be later that same day or the next day; and

3. Finished suit fitting, when they still need to make minor refinements.

A fourth fitting would be necessary of you still see something you want to adjust after you get the clothes back from the 3rd fitting.

There was a long discussion about tailors a year or 2 ago (so it would be in the archives, making it harder to find) and the net was the consensus that HKG was too expensive now while BKK was not as good but much better value and a couple of specific tailors in BKK were almost as good as the best in HKG but for 20% of the price. I forget which forum but it was a travel forum, not airline (maybe Hong Kong) and don't have time to find it now.

I agree with nologic about the impossibility of getting a good custom suit for a cheap price, and also about the quality of WW Chan. If you do go to Chan, expect a minimum of 2 fittings and a minimum of 4-6 days for a suit.

WW Chan also makes several trips to the US each year. I recently saw his rep Raymond Kiang in Boston, and the prices are (inexplicably) less than when I ordered clothes at his shop.

Yes, I had the same experience as I had just bought suits in HK, so I didn't meet with Raymond in Boston...(also, he was in Boston on July 5th which was a holiday and I was on the Vineyard).

When they do their US tours, they feature certain fabrics and provide a 30% discount on those fabrics. On this trip they had wonderful Super 130's for $733, including shipping and duty, a savings of $309 off their regular price, while blazers were $514 (vs. $720), pants were $219 (vs $322) and shirts were $78 (vs $110).

These list prices are higher than HK prices because they do include shippping and duty.

I understand their next US tour will be in November.