When you own a bespoke suit there’s a lot you feel and see in the final product that makes it unique.
Below are some details and processes that go into our garments.
The basted fitting or “Try-on”
After your bespoken cloth has been “cut” the sport coat, suit or coat is assembled together with basting stitches (by hand) for a fitting.
Many people assume that this is a half finished garment that will then just be worked on further, but this is not the case. After a fitting at Reeves, David will note any adjustments needed to the garment using chalk and pins, photographs and good old fashioned pen and paper. The garment then goes back to the “cutter” with precise instructions from David on how to adjust the piece. The cutter then completely disassembles it into all of its component pieces and recuts them again before they go to a bench tailor who begins the reassembly and construction of the garment proper. The cutter will also log these adjustments on your stored original paper pattern for future reference and orders. Typically David will require only 1 or 2 fittings and subsequent orders can often omit this stage for the client’s convenience and time. This is one of many stages in custom and bespoke tailoring that is often skipped for matters of cost, however it is a process 100s of years old and although time consuming, in the hands of a good team it produces a great fitting first garment and ensures that subsequent orders are smoother and fit just as perfectly.
Exacting Tradition
Trousers are made with hand cut and hand sewed “hem guards” to protect the internal back of your trousers from wear on the heel. Traditionally these were made using the selvedge of the cloth which contained the cloth houses name, as this was all about utilizing as much cloth as possible from a cut. Of course cloth is not rationed like it was in England after the Second World War but we still keep this tradition alive for its functional use and for sake of tradition and attention to detail. What was once a cost saving measure is now often omitted in other suits for the sake of saving time and labor.
Handstitched and Unique
Turn over the lapel of a Reeves garment and you will see a huge amount of irregular stitching because our suits are not fused or glued together, you can see the handwork, the beauty of the imperfect made by the human hand. A hand padded lapel done correctly is one of the hallmarks of fine tailoring, no two lapels are made the same but our bench tailors can identify who did the work on each garment by identify they style of the stitching. You can also see here the back of a hand stitched lapel and a flower loop again attached by hand using silk thread, all are standard issue on a Reeves garment.
The Finest European Fabric
All of the cloths we use are sourced from the finest cloth houses in Europe. We examine these fine cloths at different stages ourselves using magnification, strong lighting and black light for imperfections or damage caused accidentally during make. When an imperfection is found it is assessed by David Reeves and the cloth is replaced from the same piece at any stage until it leaves with the customer. Here you can see an entire sleeve that was first built and then removed from a finished garment because of a minor flaw, a new sleeve was made and then attached to the finished suit. This skilled and painstaking operation took approximately one day of skilled labor.
Perfect Fitting
Pattern matching on a suit or sportcoat is not only balanced and symmetrical but done so with attention and flare. This is achieved by the skill of our cutters but he or she is also helped because we have a “spare no expense” attitude to buying our cloths which gives the cutter an abundance of cloth to work with. At the basted fitting stage we also use a “false sleeve” in a plain cloth, remove it and cut the patterned cloth from scratch after this fitting and then attach to the garment. Even with a first time client we can achieve a perfectly fitting sleeve with symmetrical pattern matching through this process.
Handmade Feel
Sometimes you may see a finished suit from us with hard to see chalk marks left over from the cutting process, these can be removed by us if the client wishes but they are more evidence that our suits are made by a human hand, these marks will wear away after a several wears.
Luxury Hardware
Our zips are made are made from heavy duty brass and our buckles, “hooks and eyes” are made from steel, you can feel the weight and the sturdiness. Every trouser we make is hand felled at the waistband from the same material as the suit lining. In this case a purple silk. All our buttonholes are hand stitched even on our trousers and come with suspender buttons (whether requested or not) and Mother of pearl buttons. All trims are sourced and shipped from our various suppliers in England.
Expert Tailors
A Doctor in tailoring terms is a highly skilled alteration tailor.
We work with several in New York and within the small but well equipped shop in our showroom. All of our alteration tailors have decades of experience as bespoke tailors themselves from either a Savile Row house or comparable such as Brioni and Armani couture.
These alteration tailors perform “surgery” on a daily basis that some tailors will tell you is impossible, such as narrowing or widening shoulders at the points seamlessly or making a garment 2 sizes bigger or smaller. The Doctors generally do minor adjustments to our finished garments or work resizing them years later. The Reeves shop is also capable of producing trousers and vests onsite or specialized detail work like recutting lapels to create different shapes or widths.