Can Indian tailors rival Savile Row in the creation of bespoke trousers? In this interview with Suresh Ramakrishnan, owner of Whitcomb & Shaftesbury, we uncover the strengths of each tradition and explore the meticulous process of crafting custom-made trousers.
Video Transcript [Lightly Edited for Clarity]:
Raphael: Welcome back to the Gentleman’s Gazette. We are here once again at Whitcomb & Shaftesbury. I’m here with one of the owners of Whitcomb & Shaftesbury, Suresh Ramakrishnan.
Suresh: Nice to meet you, Raphael.
Raphael: Likewise, thank you for having me.
Suresh: Welcome. You know, it’s a pleasure to have you. And such a lovely forum you guys have. I’ve been a big follower for a long time, so it’s an honor for us to to have you. And I hope I can answer any questions you might have.
Raphael: Thank you very much. So, one of the things, Suresh, that you do that is different than with other Savile Row houses is that you have a workforce in Chennai, India.
Suresh: That’s correct
Raphael: But you have also employees here on Savile Row. So maybe walk us through how you got started and how you had this idea?
You also have employees here on Savile Row. So maybe walk us through how you got started and how you had this idea?
Suresh: Yeah, absolutely. Well like you said, that’s very – we have a fairly unique model. We are the only house on Savile Row in the West End that has our own production from start to finish. And that’s controlled both here in London and in a workshop in India. And we went about this in a completely unique way by having a workshop in London, making our suits over here, and then opening a workshop in India.
And we trained all of our tailors from scratch in India. That came about after 2008 when there was a tsunami that hit Sri Lanka and India, and we were friends with a gentleman called Jean-François Lagesse, who introduced us to the French Blue Cross. They had a program called Children of the World where the idea was to rehabilitate families who were affected by the tsunami.
And what happened was a lot of fisher folk were affected. They didn’t have the courage to go back to the sea, and they wanted alternative career options. So, the idea was to train them in new skills – leather work, metallurgy, digital processing, embroidery, and hand tailoring. So we came in, and we started training all of these people, men, women, and younger children about 17, 18.
“And what happened was a lot of fisher folk were affected. They didn’t have the courage to go back to the sea, and they wanted alternative career options. So, the idea was to train them in new skills – leather work, metallurgy, digital processing, embroidery, and hand tailoring. So we came in, and we started training all of these people, men, women, and younger children about 17, 18.”
Suresh Ramakrishnan
I think 16 was the cut-off age that we had in hand tailoring. And we started over time having all these people capable of making beautifully handmade garments to a West End standard. So fully canvased, done beautifully. There was a problem, though. It’s great to have all these skills. What are you going to do with these skills?
Raphael: You need a market
Suresh: You need a market. You need a market for the garments. You need people who are willing to buy and you will need people who are willing to employ you. The problem in India, you know, there are tailors and people go there to buy suits but it’s very much like the sort of East Asian market with like Hong Kong, parts of Hong Kong in those days and Vietnam, Thailand where people go for a quick suit or it’s a wedding based market which means you need a suit overnight, not in 16 weeks.
So no one had the time or the disposition or the budget to afford a West End quality suit and wait for four months to get it. At that time, there was a gentleman called John McCabe who was working with us. John worked at Kilgour, French & Stanbury was known at that time and they had a very successful program called The Shanghai Bespoke where they would make a pattern for the garment over here in London and then they would send it off to Hong Kong to a workshop in Hong Kong to be made.
Raphael: So it was proper Savile Row styling. It was all the knowledge, the patterning system, and all of that went on here.
Suresh: Yes
Raphael: Sent over there. Is that correct?
Suresh: Yeah, exactly. The pattern was done over here and then shipped overseas to Hong Kong. The garment was then basically finished up, and brought back to London where they would do a final fit and delivered. And I thought that was a really incredible program. They were very successful and it was it was a really lovely program.
But I thought, well, can we do something a little different? Because what I didn’t really enjoy about that program was, you meet with a cutter, they make a pattern and it’s gone. And then it comes back and you have a finished garment.
Raphael: So there’s, you adjust the sleeve length, but maybe it doesn’t have the button. It’s mostly done.
Suresh: It’s mostly done. Exactly. And what we wanted was we wanted to give people an opportunity to have an actual Savile Row garment. What that means is not just the fit of a garment; it’s not just the quality of the garment, but it’s also the entire experience. Because one of the beautiful things about Savile Row, and the larger West End is, people come in. You have a conversation about what you want, you go through multiple fittings and the whole idea is through those fittings, you end up with a beautiful experience and a beautiful garment.
Raphael: That fits well. Because the first fitting was made by the tailor’s fitting, right? It’s not about the sleeve length; it’s more about the balance, left to right, front to back.
Suresh: Absolutely. You are spot on. And I think that’s what people missed. It’s not about you can just go away and make a perfect suit because perfection doesn’t exist. What’s important is to understand what’s in the client’s mind and then try and deliver a garment that meets those expectations.
I’m a naturally slim person so I like a garment with a little bit of volume around my chest. Someone who’s bigger might want something very different. They might want a closer-fitted garment. And you can only do that through a series of fittings, not just through one conversation. And I also think a lot of people enjoy coming in, talking to their cutter, talking to their tailor and looking through fabrics, and having a bit of a conversation around a garment rather than just an in and an out.
So we said what we wanted to do was to go back and recreate that process. So what we do is we actually go through multiple fittings where the garment is basted and fitted, rebased and refitted, and then it’s finished, and then it’s fitted again.
Raphael: And it’s also done with, you know, proper British tailors.
Suresh: Yes, absolutely.
Raphael: It’s not like you just, you know, train a salesperson.
Suresh: No.
Raphael: To take a few measurements but these are actually properly trained craftsmen.
Suresh: Everyone that a customer deals with over here is actually a cutter or a tailor or, in almost all cases, both. So they have experience of both how the garment is made and how it’s cut. And I think that’s incredibly valuable because it helps produce a unique product.
You understand what needs to be done and you can advise the client properly. A salesperson will never have that experience. They’re looking to just get rid of the next thing, not always, but sometimes they’re looking to get rid of the next thing on the shelf.
Raphael: So one thing I thought was really interesting you said was – quite early on, you said “we’re the only house that owns the entire production chain.” ‘Cause, you know, if you walk on Savile Row, you just look down at the basement sometimes. And you see, there are tailors in the workshops, but in London also because crafts around here are still existent, there’s almost like an economy of workers and tailors who do things from home.
Suresh: Yeah, correct. Absolutely. And there are people working from home. The people you see in these workshops, if you walk down Savile Row, you walk down bits of the west end, and you see people working the workshops. They don’t just work for that company; it may look that way, but they don’t.
They could be sitting over there working on a coat for someone else and they just rent what’s known as board space. They rent a board, and they come in, and they work. It’s just WeWork for tailors! That’s what it is. So that’s what they’re doing. But for us, it’s unique because everyone who makes a suit for us works for us.
We actually have full-time coat makers, we have full-time cutters, and we have a full-time team of trouser makers and waistcoat makers, all of whom work for us. Now that’s important because it allows us to control the quality and allows us to control the consistency of the garment. If I wrote my name twice, it would be ever so slightly different but there is a consistency.
If I wrote my name once and you wrote my name, it would be different. And it’s the same thing with the coat. If you have one coat maker making a coat for a customer, and the next time the customer comes back and a different coat maker makes it, the fit would be the same, but the manifestation could be different.
Everyone is properly trained on the house style, and everything remains the same, right?
Raphael: I mean – also, everyone is properly trained on the house style, and everything remains the same, right? The stitching quality that you want, all the details that you do, it’s much easier in a production flow to to ensure consistency.
Suresh: Absolutely, absolutely. And I think that consistency and the control is critical. At least, it’s critical to us. When you’ve got a team that works for you, you can train them in a way that you want, you can train them to do things in a certain way, and everyone starts off from ground zero, and they’re all trained to do exactly what we want.
So we’ve had people now working with us for 20 years, and they’ve been making coats in exactly the same way and the next lot and the next lot, so they’re all working in exactly the same way. So that’s always been our goal. You should know that you got a suit made by Whitcomb & Shaftesbury, but you shouldn’t know who made the suit. We know, but you shouldn’t.
Raphael: Nice
Suresh: That’s very important to us.
Raphael: Well, you know, I like that there’s a passion I sense here and you know, I went to law school, and I found this – you were in Venture Capital.
Suresh: That’s correct
Raphael: And you decided to leave that behind you and so you’re driven by more than just making money.
Suresh: Yeah absolutely. I always say if I was looking to just make money, I’d have stayed in my old job. This wasn’t that. This was a dream, it was a passion, it was an interest to share what I love about tailoring with my customers and with other people. That’s the vision and that still is.
Our goal is always to be the best, not to be the biggest. We want to make beautiful garments; we want people who work with us and people who work for us, and people who come to us to be our friends and be happy.
“Our goal is always to be the best, not to be the biggest. We want to make beautiful garments; we want people who work with us and people who work for us, and people who come to us to be our friends and be happy.”
Suresh Ramakrishnan
That’s something I keep telling our team, and that’s something we always do.
And so, it’s not about mass producing and producing things quickly and cheaply because we can. We can produce more, we can produce more cheaper but we never want to do that. We’re all always reinvesting our money; we’re always reinvesting in quality, improving the product. And that’s our vision. It’ll always be the way we want to be.
Raphael: You’re a man after my own heart! Because that’s kind of similar philosophy that we try to do with our products. You can always go lower, and people are like, “Well, could you make it cheaper?” It’s like, yes, but frankly, I’m not interested.
Suresh: Exactly. And I think it takes a lot of guts to do that and I think it takes a lot of soul searching as well. And I think this is the challenge for for entrepreneurs. You’ve got to understand what it is you’re in for, what is your vision. If you don’t have a vision, it becomes very hard to actually deliver a product or a process around that product. So yeah, we’re lucky that we’re aligned in this vision.
My brother relocated to India to manage the workshop, that’s very important. Every garment that comes out of the workshop has a signature on it, so you know, he’s checked it. Every garment that comes here, I personally press. In fact, two minutes before you came in, I was pressing a garment for a very important client coming later today. But that allows me to check every garment coming that allows him to check every garment coming, and then we’ll have a conversation every day saying, look, we saw this. Is this okay? Are you happy with this?
So that’s the way we keep that quality constantly improving. I was very inspired by the Japanese system of Kaizen, that constant improvement. Constant improvement. We’re never inventing anything; we’re doing everything that existed 200 years ago. As Bob, one of our coat maker, says, “There’s nothing new in this trade.” It’s all the same techniques, but what we can do is take something and make it slightly better, slightly better, slightly better.
So what comes out finally should be exceptional, and I always say: “Look, you may go elsewhere, and you may find a coat you prefer. You may find a pair of trousers you prefer, and that’s fine”. Because style is personal and these things are very personal. But what I always want people to say is they will not get better quality than what they get over here.
Quality in terms of the product, in terms of the materials used, and quality in terms of the service and support they get, that we can control. And our mission is to make sure that we can offer all of that, consistently.
Raphael: Interesting. So I was talking to another guy, his name is “The Chaps Guide” – Ash – and he was talking about, you know, the older he gets, the more important it is for him to support a local economy. So you had a client that said, you know, this sounds like an incredible operation, the product is great, and I’m 100% with you. I’m like, “I don’t care where it’s made if the product is really great and people are treated in good conditions,” but if someone comes and says, “I’d like a 100% British-made suit”, what would be your reply?
If someone comes and says, “I’d like a 100% British-made suit”, what would be your reply?
Suresh: We can do that. Because we offer two makes in the house. One is our Savile Row bespoke and one is our classic bespoke. So the Savile Row bespoke is, as it says, completely made on premises in the West End. So we offer that, we have our own coat maker in-house, we’re one of the only tailors on Savile Row, like I said, possibly the only one who has full-time employed coat makers who will make all our suits in-house. For example, the suit that’s being cut in front of you is being made entirely in London on the row.
Raphael: So, price point-wise, you’ll probably pay more.
Suresh: Yes. You’d pay more, and we will leave that to the customers. We are open, transparent, and honest about what we do and how we do it. And the customer can decide if they want the classic bespoke or the Savile Row bespoke. But even with the classic bespoke, a lot of work is done in London. The pattern work is done in London, the cutting is done in London, we baste the garment together with the canvases in London, we rebaste it in London, and it’s only after that second fitting that we send it to the workshop in India to finish.
So there’s a lot of work that’s being done in London for both garments; in one set, it’s entirely done in London, and in one set, there’s a hybrid of work. In either case, we always hope that you can’t tell the difference. And I always tell people, the difference is when you’re buying a Savile Row product, you’re paying for the providence, you’re paying for the privilege of someone who’s had 40 or 50 years of experience, who’s at the peak of their skill, working for you.
It’s a bit like a Rolls-Royce and a top-end Mercedes. You’re not going to tell me the Rolls-Royce is the better car. What the Rolls-Royce has is that heritage, that history, that connection with an old world. It’s a connection with a different time, and that’s what Savile Row is.
But we can offer you the same thing, and it’s up to you to decide how much you want to spend. But yes, we can certainly offer that to customers, and we do that.
So, if I take a Savile Row garment and a classic garment from India, and put them next to each other, your goal would be that I couldn’t tell the difference.
Raphael: So, if I take a Savile Row garment and a classic garment from India and put them next to each other, your goal would be that I couldn’t tell the difference.
Suresh: You shouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
Raphael: Because my guess would be, sometimes when you are in countries like India where there may be – in certain towns- a tradition of handwork has kind of been kept alive. Sometimes the quality output may be even higher than what you get in more traditional countries like, you know, Italy or England.
Suresh: Well, the handwork is fantastic. I think the skill and the handwork are fantastic. I think what’s so good about London, in particular, and the West End is there is a set of standards. There is consistency around it, there is a training process, and there is an apprenticeship.
So you have a lot of confidence that someone you give a coat to or a pair of trousers to will make it to the same standards. And I think that’s not always the case in India. You have people with fantastic hands and fantastic skills, but they may not have a complete training background. So, we’re not always sure if every garment is going to be as consistent.
And I think the combination of the training that we offer to the coat makers and trouser makers in India and sort of the – their skill works really well. In our case, it’s a really nice marriage of the two.
What is it that makes your trousers special?
Raphael: So now often people talk a lot about the jacket and the detailing and everything that goes into it. Not so much about the trousers. What is it that makes your trousers special?
Suresh: I think there’s a few things that make our trousers special. I mean, I think with trousers, it’s slightly different. Because with jackets, I think people talk about house style and a certain aesthetic. With trousers, there isn’t that sort of opportunity to impose a house style unless we say we’re going to have everything so high with pleats. And no, some people want flat fronts, low-waisted, and some people want high-waisted; that’s entirely up to the customer. I think there are a few things. One is, I think our fitting process is quite unique.
Raphael: How so?
Suresh: In that, we spend a lot of time looking at balances in the trousers. I think a lot of tailors may just look at how the trouser fits around the waist and the seat, the length and the shape but we look at how it’s sitting on the front and the back. So, if someone’s got a very prominent seat, you might need more balance at the back.
Raphael: I do!
Suresh: Someone may have, you know, a big tummy, so you need more length through the front. So we spend a lot of time working on that. We also have a few unique things, well, maybe not unique.
Raphael: May I interrupt you there? When you talk about balance, maybe explain to our viewers what exactly is that you mean by that.
Suresh: Yeah. So you, if you think about the line that joins the front of the trousers to the back of the trousers, you can think of it almost as U, right?
Raphael: Correct. It starts here, it goes through my crotch area and comes up the back.
Suresh: So if you pull the U at the back, it’s like giving you a wedgie. If you pull it at the front, it’s like giving you a reverse wedgie. So that its manifestation in a trouser will affect how a trouser looks. Sometimes you’d see creases running through the back of the trouser, you’d see creases running through because it’s not properly balanced, you know, and people try and eliminate this by either making the trouser wider or very fitted so you can’t see any crease.
But that’s not the right way to do it. And what you end up getting is an incredibly uncomfortable trouser. Or you could get something where there’s not enough room, so it feels really tight. It looks good, but it feels really uncomfortable. Ideally, it should look really good and feel incredibly comfortable, you know, and that comes down to how you control these balances of the trousers.
The other thing is people’s shapes are different. So we spend a lot of time constructing a waistband where – we had a customer in earlier today saying, “Look, one of the problems I have with my trousers is always I feel a bit of a gap through the back…small of my back”, and it’s because he’s got a fairly large seat.
Raphael: Yeah. So what happens is really you need darts, right? You need a tighter waistband. You need darts to get that space.
Suresh: You do, you do. There are other ways to do it. So for example, if you think about a belt that you’ve worn for a long time and if you look at it, you’ll find the top is a lot smaller than the bottom. It almost looks like like a U.
Raphael: It gets curved, usually
Suresh: It gets curved. So, we try and create that curve on our waistband by a system of stretching, shaping, and shrinking. So the top is smaller than the bottom, you know, so to accommodate that sort of physique and it requires a lot of work. And not everyone does it. You can just make a waistband and then nip it in the top. We don’t, we actually..
Raphael: Some bespoke shirt collars, right, if you look it’s straight but if you take them apart, there’s actually a waveline in there.
Suresh: Yeah, exactly. And that’s that’s exactly the sort of idea. The idea is through a lot of steam and iron work and tailoring to create this sort of thing without adding a lot of bulk or volume or something to the customer. So we do that a lot, you know, I think there’s a lot of hand work that goes into our trousers for that reason. Some of it hidden like this waistband and things like that, some of it a little more obvious like the tacks which go to secure the trousers, make sure they sit nicely.
Raphael: Do you think we could get a pair of trousers here and talk through those details?
Suresh: So some of the work you don’t see, like the waistband that’s inside here. But that’s curved, you know, and shaped. You can see already the top is smaller than the bottom which is why it’s got a little bit of a wave already.
Raphael: I can also feel there’s there’s quite an interlining in there.
Suresh: Yeah
Raphael: What do you put…
Suresh: That’s a canvas. That’s a canvas inside the waistband.
Raphael: It feels quite stiff.
Suresh: Yeah, yeah.
Raphael: So you do that so you don’t it doesn’t flap over.
Suresh: It doesn’t flap, it doesn’t curve, it doesn’t roll and then we can manipulate it and it holds your body really well.
Raphael: You mentioned, you know, the customer decides where they want it to sit.
Suresh: Yeah.
Raphael: I love it to be really high-rise. Like when I wear different trousers and pants, I’m like “oh that feels odd”, and you get used to it, right, it would be the other way around too. But where do you wear your trousers?
Suresh: I tend to wear them much higher. Typically, I tend to wear braces. I would say, you know, all the time.
Raphael: Yeah.
Suresh: So yeah, my trousers always tend to be on the higher side. And I wouldn’t say I’m an evangelist, but I certainly do try and encourage people to try it out because once, I always say, once you wear trousers that are higher-waisted, you almost never go back to anything that’s a low-waisted pair of trousers.
Raphael: And I can see all the lining here. Very neat.
Suresh: All are attached by hand. And you can see the quality of the work here
Raphael: And you add the deep pleats in here which is more like a…
Suresh: Exactly. Requires a lot of work. Well, it allows it to slip over the body and stay nicely. You can see even the pockets, all of that is beautifully attached by hand.
Raphael: So the overlock, this is the machine-stitched overlock which is totally fine, you know, there has to be…
Suresh: There’s no value in doing that by hand because you need strength on those seams too
Raphael: And sometimes you have companies like, you know, 100 Hands who make the shirts and like their credo is, “we’ll do everything by hand” versus you’re like, “we’ll do a lot by hand but we use machines where it makes sense.”
Suresh: The only things we do by machine are these overlocking seams and the straight seam along the side of the trousers. Everything else is done by hand, including this stitch. This whole stitch, the seam, seat seam stitch is done by hand.
The reason it’s done by hand is that it gives it a little bit more give and a little bit more flexibility, which is why it doesn’t tear, and it sits nice and flush through the the seam of the body. All of this is done by hand. It’s only the overlocking that the machine does better than than by hand. That’s done beautifully by hand, as you can see.
Raphael: Yeah, cut in, metal but then you have a little reinforcement stitches
Suresh: Even the fly tack, that’s all done by hand. You can see through the edges.
Raphael: What – something I’m noticing too here, it’s a relatively deep pleat. It’s probably at least a centimeter, maybe even more, which is like two-fifths, like half an inch.
Suresh: Yeah
Raphael: What’s the thought behind that?
Suresh: The idea is, we like a nice full deep pleat. I mean, I always say if you’re going for a pleat, go for a pleat. It’s like a pinstripe, if you’re going for a pinstripe go for a pinstripe. If you’re going for a check, go for a proper check.
And I think it looks really nice, that is a preference, but it just really comes down to the customer. When we cut it, we ask the customer if they have a strong preference. If they don’t then…and these are some of the things you can catch at the fitting.
Raphael: Yeah
Suresh: And that’s why we always feel that multiple fittings make a huge difference because a customer can see the pleat and if he likes it or not. In this pair of trousers, you can see again, these are again, this is overlocked seam but you can see these side seams are done by hand because this is..
Raphael: Pick stitching
Suresh: Pick stitch, exactly. Because we’ve got what we call a swell edge over here along the side.
Raphael: Ah yeah. Interesting. I mean, here, you see the pocket because it’s angled. But sometimes, if the pocket were in the seam, it would look exactly the same. And I think you have a different pair of trousers we can show it later. How it…
Suresh: Yeah, a lot of my trousers tend to have that. Let me see if I can find one of the trousers. But you’ve got that beautifully done swell edge. It’s like a lap seam, I think, that’s the term for this.
Raphael: So I’ve also seen, like, one of your tailors having it on the back.
Suresh: Through the back, yeah.
Raphael: Do you sometimes do it also on the side of the sleeve seam?
Suresh: We do that a lot. I mean, I’ve got a jacket here, which is quite an extreme example of this. Here, you can see the lap seam done along the side, along the back, but also along the curve of the sleeve. If you see this, it follows the shape of the sleeve.
You’ve got a curved sleeve here, and the seam is also at a curve. It’s almost impossible to do that while matching all the checks vertically and horizontally, so you’ve got a curved lap seam going along the sleeve
Raphael: And enthusiasts will notice this, a lot of people. I mean, this is quite obvious. They’re like, “Oh, this is different”. What happens but what goes into it and the reasoning is different. Very beautiful, very fine handwork.
Suresh: And that’s something which is really important; I always want people to feel – I want to feel proud of every garment I give out to a customer, you know when they feel and wear one of our garments, they should feel that they cannot get a better quality garment anywhere.
They may like other garments; that’s for them to decide, but we always want to feel that in everything we do – and how we maintain control in every single garment we have, the name of the trouser maker is in there. So we can always go back to every garment and…
Raphael: It’s a bit like if you have like an AMG, you know like you open the motor and was like, this engine was assembled by this one person, and you then sign it, and you’re like, “okay they were proud, of making this,” and you can go back if there’s something wrong with that engine.
Suresh: Exactly. So there’s always that personal thing, and we always give the same trouser maker or the same coat maker the garment to make the next time for the customer. Because they remember all the little peccadillos, all the little things they did, all the little things. It’s really important, you know, small details make a big difference to – at least to us.
Raphael: So the trouser maker doesn’t know Bob but he certainly knows..
Suresh: He knows the name; he knows the customer. Yes.
Raphael: He knows if Bob lost weight.
Suresh: Yeah. We know because Sian will recut it. After all, that’s the cutter’s thing, but they will know exactly what they did and how they shaped a waistband or how they did something that the customer really liked.
What other details that you focus on in your trousers?
Raphael: What other details that you focus on in your trousers?
Suresh: So the details obviously are, you know, there’s less for a pair of trousers than there is for a coat. I mean, that comes down more to the fit. So we’ve got, for example, one of the things we do is we like to put the side adjusters in between the waistband, and the rest of the trousers are right on the seam because we feel that’s where you get the right kind of tension and bite.
If it’s too high, it’s no good. If it’s too low, it’s no good. So we would like to have a nice long side adjuster, not too long. Some people go all the way, which makes no sense. People want the tightness just on the side, so we did quite a bit of experimentation, trying out different combinations ‘til we found a good sort of ratio.
Raphael: It’s also like, you know if you have a 40-inch waist, it’s easy to place it. If you have a 28-inch waist then you’re like, “Oh, I want two pleats. I want this pocket. I want, you know, a ticket pocket and a side adjuster”. Well, now you’re running into just like space concerns!
Suresh: Yeah, absolutely. Now, the other thing we do, which is quite unique about ours, is that if you look at our side adjusters, there’s no seam over here. That’s slightly different from what most people on Savile Row do, where you’ve got a seam running along the middle, and I just don’t like that look. This is nice and clean and flush.
Raphael: So you have the seam in the back, then?
Suresh: Then the seam is on the side. So it takes you to create two seams, and it takes a lot more work.
Raphael: …to match
Suresh: Yeah. But it looks beautiful, it’s nice and clean, and it’s tidy; you don’t have that. We have the bar tacks over here to secure the pocket. Make sure it’s really thin and then it’s top stitch, you can’t really see it.
Do you use silk thread, or what do you use?
Raphael: Do you use silk thread, or what do you use?
Suresh: Silk thread, yeah. Because silk is strong, you need the strength of silk to do that. This doesn’t have a back pocket, but sometimes, when we do the back pocket, we jet the back pocket. This is just a regular pair of trousers, you know, so it doesn’t…
Raphael: Same waistband
Suresh: Same waistband, yeah, exactly. So, but..
Raphael: It’s the same trouser maker?
Suresh: You see the same trouser maker, making it for the customer. So it’s the same person doing it every time. So we never have…
Raphael: Beautiful. Yeah, so here that’s the same style, and that’s what the customer wants. You do..
Suresh: So we don’t always line the trousers. It only comes down to whether the customer wants it. It’s a very Savile Row thing to do to not line trousers. In America, I think people are quite used to having lined trousers.
So sometimes we have customers who have sensitivity to wool. So in which case, we have to line the trousers completely, you know because obviously, they find it difficult to wear trousers which are unlined. So it’s a conversation we have with customers.
Raphael: What lining do you put in?
Suresh: So typically, we would use a material called cupro bemberg, which is a vegetable rayon, which is really lovely, and it’s really…
Raphael: Durable
Suresh: Yeah exactly. So that’s usually, you know, our preference. We use a fairly sturdy pocketing material that is built for for durability. Now, another thing we do actually talking about pockets is we always put in, unless a customer doesn’t want it,
Raphael: Ticket pocket, yeah.
Suresh: I find an extra pocket on the inside particularly useful. This is based on my experience in sitting in taxi cabs in New York, where I’d find my phone constantly falling out. So I said, “We’ve got to start doing that!” So we started putting in an extra pocket for all our trousers.
Raphael: I like it for keys, like small items.
Suresh: It’s very useful. So I think, again, these are small things that require more work, not always noticed, but you know, that just goes back to our philosophy of making sure that everything is absolutely the best it can be.
Raphael: So you mentioned…
Suresh: ..with our control. The other thing that we do Raphael, apologies, is we shrink and shape our garments quite a bit. These are not huge amounts; it depends on each customer. So you can see over here that it’s shrunken through the hamstrings and it’s stretched out a little bit through the calves. It depends on the customers who are very big and have massive calves. We have to do quite a bit of manipulation of the garment.
Raphael: Also, if you have more of an X leg or an O leg or if you take the profile view, sometimes the calves really protrude out, and so if you don’t have a super big pair of pants, it can look awkward.
Suresh: It can look really awkward. And it’s not as straightforward as saying calves just protrude. It’s like, where do they protrude? Some people have it on one side – most people have it at the back but you’ve got to be aware of all of these things. And then apply the manipulation right where that is. And these are things that we do on the garment.
Raphael: Yeah. Here, we can see this nice.
Suresh: Yeah, this lap seam
Raphael: And you just fold it over here. And this a customer obviously, it’s the same style.
Suresh: There’s a similar and that’s always nice. You have a certain sort of consistency in an aesthetic and subtle variation. So lap seam for the flannel, but something is a clean fabric. So something a bit cleaner, but he wanted this wide waistband and these wide turn-ups, which are slightly wider than a normal turn-up.
Raphael: About 2 inches, right? 5 centimeters.
Suresh: Exactly. And that’s sort of echoes the width of the waistband. So they just sort of stay in harmony.
Raphael: Yeah. And I think, you know, personally, I think it’s fun to experiment. I like to try different things. I look at the fabric and say, “Ooh, what style would be nice with this?’. Yesterday, we met a gentleman, Bob, and he had found his style and every garment, no matter whether it was a solaro or a cotton suit or a needle head, had the same silhouette. There’s comfort in the kind of having the same thing. I’m always like, “Ooh, I love this!” enthusiastic. I want different.
Suresh: And that’s the beauty of bespoke, right? You can get whatever you want that makes sense for you and it’s an opportunity to try different things or try some. We have a lot of customers who get exactly the same thing, a blue suit.
But they’ll get blue in velvet, in cotton, in tweed, in a navy surge. Just all kinds of different manifestations but there’s a visual consistency but the garments are all ever so slightly different. So that’s also really lovely and others got something completely different.
Raphael: Do you do crotch linings in yours?
Suresh: Yeah. So we have this sort of what we call it like a saddle piece which is over the crotch. But we don’t we don’t really line it all the way through unless customers want. So that’s also something we do sometimes. We’ve got big customers with big thighs, so you’d want to reinforce that because that’s always an issue.
Raphael: Yeah, it’s an issue for me. That’s usually where my stuff would wear out. Excellent!
Suresh: Yeah. It just depends on the customer, on their body type, on their needs.
Raphael: So you always keep a little V-shape here?
Suresh: No. Again, this is for this customer. This very wide, high waistband, he wanted this, he liked the style of this notch, plus it does make sense, and you’ve got a very high waistband too. There’s only a limit to which you can shrink the difference between the top and the bottom, so it works better.
What was the most unusual trouser you’ve done?
Raphael: What was the most unusual trouser you’ve done?
Suresh: The most, well, we did one quite interestingly recently, which was, I think, it was an Austrian hunting trouser.
Raphael: With a Loden fabric?
Suresh: With a Loden piping. There was a chocolate brown canvas cotton, but it had a special pocket for a knife. The pocket was on the side, and it was a little squiggle, so it had the shape of almost an S, which was piped in that sort of like a sheath. For a sheath to put that in. So that was quite quite interesting to make that.
Raphael: I once met a guy, you know, he was like a magician.
Suresh: Yeah?
Raphael: And so he had his bespoke suit made in a way that he could take something, and then through a channel, it would go and come down his leg. It was like, it’s quite ingenious.
Suresh: We’ve done lots of hidden pockets in garments to put all kinds of items. Some good, some nefarious for customers. We have customers who we believe are, let’s just say, engaged in activities that might require handguns to be carried. So you have to conceal that, so you have to cut the garment too,
Raphael: Well, in the US, it’s much more common than here.
Suresh: Exactly. So, of course, we can’t test that over here, but it works really well. So we’ve got all kinds of really unusual requests. With trousers, they tend to be slightly more straightforward. It has more to do with the fit and the style of the garment and pocket shapes. We do sometimes quite interesting pocket shapes, we do lots of shooting trousers recently. People want shooting-style trousers, so that’s something we’ve done quite a few times. So yeah.
So if I’m in the US and I wanted to commission a suit and a pair of trousers from you, what would I have to do?
Raphael: So if I’m in the US and I wanted to commission a suit and a pair of trousers from you, what would I have to do?
Suresh: Well, you’d have to write to us and show up. We visit America four times a year at a minimum, sometimes five times a year. And we go to New York, Washington DC, Boston, LA.
Raphael: Okay
Suresh: And we’re starting to do a bit of San Francisco as well. But remains to be seen if that’s a regular stop. And so customers would just get in touch with us, and we would schedule a meeting for them, and we do exactly, everything is exactly the same as it is in London. We have a lot of American customers and customers from overseas who will come here for a fitting, but then we’ll see them on one of our shows as well for any follow-up support, tweaks, and adjustments.
And we take great care to try and make sure that the time frame is fairly consistent, and that’s why we have these five trips so that whether you get it over here or in America, you’re getting a suit in more or less the same amount of time.
Raphael: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for your time, Suresh. It was super interesting!
Suresh: No, thank you, Raphael. It was an absolute pleasure. It’s really nice to meet a fellow passionate person. I could see your eyes light up when I was talking about a few things and as someone who’s changed from one career to another.
Raphael: Yes, it’s great!
Suresh: Things of passion are wonderful, and it’s always nice to meet kindred spirits.
Whitcomb & Shaftesbury offer two types of bespoke. Which would you choose and why? Let us know in the comments!
Whatโs their address? Do they have an email if we want to make a SF appointment?
Hi Michael, the website is linked in the first line of the article above the video, but you can visit it here: https://www.whitcombshaftesbury.co.uk/
I have most of my suits, trousers and jackets done in India, New Delhi, where I lived for 7 years. Until now these are the best of all my wardrobe. Maybe apart one suit from Canali.
So for me the answer is yes, no doubt.