Tailored shirts
 

OK, last question for the night :).

What is an appropriate charge for this? I found a very entrepreneurial tailor close to the Taj in Mumbai and am thinking of getting a shirt made. He has a set fee of Rs 850. Does this seem about right? I have no fashion sense at ALL, but I figure a casual shirt and a shirt to go under a sport jacket, all for 20 quid isn't bad! He showed me a couple of 'western' catalogues (e.g. Arrow) and will basically clone anything. The cottons that he showed me felt pretty nice! As an academic, fancy isn't the most imporant aspect of a shirt :)

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Dr. PITUK

Always had bad experiences with Tailors in India. They simply can't manage a nice cut. For 850 Rs plus material you can buy wonderful 'readymade' branded shirts in any of the many shops. Why bother?

I'd recommend doing it for the experience more than for great clothes. (Not that it will do you any good, but there used to be a tailor I used in Delhi who did good things for me; he's passed on.)

Because not all of us come in 'readymade' sizes. :rolleyes:

Thanks for the info. I decided to pass.

Thanks,

Dr. PITUK

Good decision. The worst thing that happens to tailored shirst in India is the shape of collar and cuffs. It depends on the quality of material used for cuffs and collars. They can cut well, get good quality cloth but the quality materail for cuffs and collars is just not available to these guys. And I am saying this with personal experience. You will be much better going and buying yourself a Zodiac, Luise Phillip or a Van Heusen shirt. Costs anywhere between 1000-1500INR but they are worth it.

When it comes to trousers that is a different matter all together. Taillored trousers and much better than any readymades tha money can buy. I paid about $140 ($35each) for 4 trousers made out of best quality fabric (Raymond Terewools) availble in India and one of the most popular and expensive tailors in Pune. Trousers of that quality are not avaiaolble in any stores in India. And in US It will cost upwards of $100 and may still not fit your shape.

A reputable tailor would have access to the material that goes into cuff or coolars of shirts. If it weren't available, cufs and collars of branded shirts would lose their shape too. A successful tailor also called "master" as in "master tailor" does the cutting and workers do the sewing. But a really sucessful (financially) tailor just uses his name and someone else vuts the material. That's when the quality starts to go down.
Many years ago I took my own interfacing and material for suit and used a tailor in a Raymond's shop. I know for sure, he did not sue the interfacing, instead he used some local material called bookrum which is bulky and does not have a sharp look. As a saying goes in India, never rely on tailor's ETD and on a goldsmith to not mix baser metals with your gold.

That siad, I have used two tailors in Connaught Place, Delhi in the last few years, who have done a decent job and always deliver on time. Both the tailors are on the left of Regal Bldg.

If that was true then the market for "tailored shirts" among mid to high salaried Indians in Metro cities will be as large as tailored trouser market. If you look around the group that I am talking about, over 70% of them today wear branded shirts. However less than 50% buy branded trousers. The main reasons are quality and finish and other reason...in most cases one can easily find a shirts that fits him well, but the same is not true for Trousers.

And as you rightly said tailors in India can only make "decent shirts". They can't give the quality, feel and finish equivalent to branded shirts....atleast not yet.

I think it largely depends on the tailor too. Some of them are really good and
can do an excellent job, but they are rare and hard to find.

If you get a recommendation from someone who lives outside of
India and tells you someone does a better job compared to branded
shirts, I think you may have found the right person.

But in general, it not worth going out of the way for this.

In past I've done this and I've had excellent fit (for shirts and trousers)
but its been a while since I've done this.

The market for "tailored shirts" among mid- to high-salaried Indians is what it is today not mostly because of the quality of what the tailors produce but because preferences of that segment of the market has changed in favor of getting a "western" shopping experience when it comes to shirts and because of the increased demand for brands and non-"dress" shirts. That change (actually not a change, but a realization of pre-existing demand) has been in the works for decades now; what has changed is the availability (i.e., supply) of prefab clothes.

If "western" shopping experience means shopping at shopper's stop or large Malls, then this phenomena is no more than 6-8 yeas old. Where as shift from tailored to branded shirts started at least 15-18 years back. By the time the first mall came up the branded shirts had already made a substantial dent into tailored shirt market. Most of the people I ever spoke with moved from tailored shirts to branded shirts because of the cut, look, finish and stitch quality. Get a Van Heuse and the best quality stiched shirt and any one will tell the difference without even looking at the label.

That's because brands are western brands. Tailor made is ordinary in India as that's what the ordinary pople wore. Branded clothes is a status symbol in India much like tailored clothes in the west. Fitting is more crucial for trousers than for shirts.

Not all brand are western. There are many local brands also and these hold fairly good share of the market. Example Zodiac, Park Avenue, Charagdin.... In fact these are the brands that started the culture of branded shirt culture in India and western brands pushed it further. Some of the local brands have quality comparable to western brands and some a step lower. But alomost all of these give better look and feel than a tailored shirt.

That is precisely what I was trying to drive at as the underlying reason for popularity and acceptability of branded shirts but not trousers.

I'm pretty familiar with India going back decades as well, and your accurate enough about the time frames about market changes (although most malls are generally a bit more recent than that).

That said, my experience is that the deceased tailor I used in Delhi over the years made clothes that far exceeded most readywear clothes in India, Europe or the US then and even today.

The reason for that is most good tailors are gone today and their family traditions of tailoring have largely been wiped out as their children became socially upward mobile (to some degree, compared to where they themselves started), because of increased "brand awareness", less time/patience on part of customers, and increased cheap mass manufacture capacity (in India and elsewhere in the region).