Because It Suits Him

So the gown is the hard bit right? Its the one item of clothing that gets agonised over the most in a wedding. Theres the line to be considered. Do you want to go empire or perhaps princess? What sort of neck do you want? Are you more inclined towards the sweetheart or the square cut? When considering the shape of the skirt are you a fan of A-line or the increasingly popular mermaid? Would you suit something that is cut on the bias? If you could wear a hoop would you wear a big one, a small one or none at all? Are straps necessary? Is wearing supportive underwear a priority or can you go backless? Do you have the kind of shit hot body that is going to look fantastic in either a sheath or a burlap sack? And don’t even get me started on the colours, the materials or the additions to a gown that are all sewn on by hand! The boys on the other hand are easy. Shove them in a suit. You can choose between a morning coat, a tux, tails or your normal suit and for those who don’t favour black, you can have navy or charcoal. Thats about it isn’t it?

Well that is more or less what I thought before I went to visit a tailor. As The Boy and I have been vaguely looking around at suits over the past couple of months I am aware that there is not a lot out there in fine quality materials or any colour faintly resembling a plain dark brown. It seems that even for the higher end suits, you are still paying 20% of the retail price for the suit and 80% for the 2 inch label on the inside. And the prospects for hiring suits was not much better. Due to The Boy’s colouring we decided we wanted to go with warm rich tones, avoiding blacks and greys, but the only browns we seemed to find could be best described as tan or what I would refer to as poo. Neither of which were appealing in the slightest. After several discussions we decided that since I am having a jacket made for the wedding outfit, The Boy may as well get in on the action too and have his suit tailor made and the first appointment was an eye opener.

I wasn’t sure quite what to expect from a tailor of men’s fashion. I know that good suits don’t come cheap so I had half formed images of pencil thin grey-haired men with perfect elocution, sardonic eyebrows and sticks up their sphincter who were for all intents and purposes camp as a row of tents. The sort of men who merely tolerate the plebeian hoards of Sydney such as myself who would deign to wander into a store such as theirs in my faded jeans and thongs – and for everyone who is not Australian, I am talking about my shoes, not my underwear. I figured I would either be faced with a personage such as this or a short, fat, balding man, obsequious in nature to the point of terminally irritating and perhaps also a little shifty. Unfair stereotypes I know and fortunately I was wrong. We were met by the owner of the business who was at first glance an average, rather unassuming sort of man but one who I actually think is knowledgeable, helpful, down to earth, friendly, a little quirky underneath and a very astute judge of character. He happened to remind me very of The Boy which is probably why they hit it off too.

I am quite sure that Tailor Man could quite seamlessly go from catering to The Boy and I who are at the limit of our budget as we retain his services to another client for whom the purchase of a bespoke suit is merely a drop in the ocean. I did have to smile however when he picked us as the kind of people who would appreciate a “Pardon my French, but why the f*** would you spend that much on fabric” from the person with whom we are doing business. If I were to be cynical and think it was a sales pitch, it was a very good one. As much as I’d like to have a far better taste of the good life, there is a small part of me that is still grade A bogan. I got the feeling however that it wasn’t just a pitch and Tailor Man loved what he did. He was happy to cater towards the more unusual requests (although why one would want a flannel suit I don’t know) but at the same time he personally felt that some of the excesses in the industry were a bit ridiculous. Did you know that you can get suiting material that is flecked with real gold or have a mill actually weave in words of your choice into a pin stripe?

While The Boy and I took turns running out to the car to put more money in the parking meter because we still weren’t ready to leave, I learnt a lot. When you buy any suit, there are four generic types. Off the rack (where what you see is what you get), Made to Order (where you can decide of the options available which you want for yourself), Made to Measure (where of the options available, certain measurements can be altered to suit your person) and the pièce de résistance, Bespoke tailoring (which basically means they mould the garment on you personally and every single measurement is what you want it to be). And should you choose to go for a bespoke suit, then the fun really starts. Do you want single-breasted or double-breasted? How many buttons do you want on the front? How many buttons on the sleeve would you like? Do you want them all to be functioning for that matter? What kind of lapel do you want? How wide do you want it? Where do you want the jacket to cross over your chest? How long should the jacket be? But I’m getting a little ahead of myself here. A lot of people pick their material first. So are you after a summer weight or a winter weight? Do you want to wear the suit a couple of times or at least once a week for the next 2 or more years?...See, men are lucky. Depending on the suit, they can get decent wear out of it afterwards. I sure as hell can’t wear my dress that often without appearing slightly deranged (its definitely not corporate wear for work or casual wear for the weekend) or well...even if I only chose to wear it to every “event” I attend over the next year I’ll still appear slightly deranged. If I had the social life to support a ball gown, it would be poor form to wear the same thing again and again and if I just wore it to all the parties and dinners I attend now I would be exorbitantly overdressed! But I was speaking of material...

It was quite amusing to us that in the space of at least an hour and a half, we managed to come full circle and arrive back where we started from. Which apparently happens quite a bit. When The Boy was first on the phone with Tailor Man’s partner in the business (not to be confused with “partner” as the partner was male and Tailor Man himself is also engaged as it happens), it was mentioned that we had in mind the colour brown. Not a tan brown or a chocolate brown (or god forbid a poo brown – he didn’t really say that though) but more like an espresso brown or a black-brown. Although they’re all still rather subjective and open to interpretation aren’t they? When we went in, we were quite pleasantly surprised to see that they had already begun looking into suitable material swatches for us and had earmarked a few for our consideration. We were free to go through all of their swatch booklets though, which we did, and mark out any other fabrics that took our fancy and by the end of it, there were about 8-10 that made the finals. We then took all the swatches outside to look at the fabrics in daylight and at a distance for themselves and in conjunction with the swatches from my dress and The Pussycat’s dress. We finally narrowed it down to make the executive decision on the most suitable fabric for the suit and the purposes for which it was to be used. We ended up choosing one of the first fabrics we saw and which fitted our first description of what we were looking for in the material.

And that was our first trip to the tailor. It won’t be our last however as I have been assured that the suit will require at least four to five separate fittings. Especially as he is going to make the shirt and the tie too. The Boy’s outfit is going to be more effort than my dress in the end. It amuses me no end that its more expensive too. To be fair, I did buy my dress at a clearance sale and had I bought it retail I would have beaten him hands down. One might also consider that since I am getting a jacket as well, the cost of that has tipped me over the price of the groom’s outfit. I choose to take comfort in the fact however that he can’t complain about how much of the budget I spent on my outfit as a whole because his suit did indeed cost more than my dress.