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Thick days

Two Fridays ago, I attended a semi-formal event wearing a suit I don’t like. That same night, I hopped online and started investigating options for bespoke (made-to-measure) suits. I figured I could make price work one way or another, but was concerned from the start that my limited sartorial vocabulary would render me unable to communicate to an American tailor the sort of fitted, European cut I wanted.

I first considered an option I’d noted here at Work + Play about a year ago. For the record, I think that the Mark Shale/Coppley option is a good one for bespoke tailoring. But I happened upon a second option that beat Mark Shale on price and left little doubt that the tailor already understood the finer points of a fitted cut.

Based in Southern California, Thick as Thieves uses a consultative e-commerce model in a space that many would have considered the poster-child for the limitations of online ordering. The company’s site, though not well designed and somewhat difficult to navigate, showed me what I needed to see—that their standard cut was slim. The price for the standard suit—one, two, or three-button—is $435, which beats by more than $300 the price I was quoted last year at Mark Shale. But the question remained: if I wasn’t standing on a carpeted platform while a man with a tape measure flitted around me, what kind of suit was I going to get?

Thick as Thieves requires 12 measurements and suggests that you and a friend, rather than a tailor, do the measurements. Many tailors, the site says, “pad the measurement since they are probably used to a looser fit being ‘correct.’” Just what I was worried about! So I took my measurements with a friend’s assistance and sent them in. [Full disclosure: I padded the inseam measurement by an inch. I just wouldn’t have been able to stand it if the suit arrived and the pants were too short.] Everything else I measured as instructed (the tape should be “snug,” the site said), taking each measurement a couple of times to be sure.

The next day, the tailor and I exchanged an e-mail, and I made a payment through Google Checkout. Just like that. My reasoning for taking the risk was threefold: a) the Thick as Thieves cut is very much what I want, b) the measurements they asked for seemed to be the right ones, and their warning about tailors aligned with my own experience and suspicions, and c) the prospect of getting a made-to-order suit that fits the way I want for less than I would pay for an off-the-rack suit was too good a pitch to take. Plus, if this first suit fits, I could order another in another color, pattern or material and have reasonable assurance that it would fit just as I’d like it. The process frontloads risk. I’m dealing with most of it right now.

If the result is pleasing and not crushing, I’ll post an update when the suit arrives in a few weeks. For now, read the return policy and cross your fingers for me.