Going back to my hometown, Hong Kong, is always an exciting experience. It is particularly fascinating this time, however, as I finally had a suit which I have planned for months commissioned.
For this next series to be featured on my blog, I will be sharing as much details as possible regarding my bespoke-tailoring experience with Tai Pan Row. This will include my early creative-designing process and my first visit there, the reason why I am choosing this tailor house, the various fitting processes, as well as how I feel about the suit when I have received the suit.
In this particular article, I am going to address some of the early designs or concepts I have for the suit, as well as what I finally settled with after my first visit to the house. Without further delay, let's begin this journey.
Some say the interesting thing about getting a suit tailored is that -- you bring in an idea, have it molded by the experience of the artisans, and let the final product be a perfect combination of both.
I started off picturing either having a reddish or a burnt orange suit in my mind, for the purpose of having them match with my other navy and cream suits. Ultimately, I intended to create a color pallet which each suit would work well with one another. (More about that in a future article)
Keeping that in mind, I tried to keep the design as simple as possible while remaining some unique character for the purpose of stating it's a bespoke suit. This is best exemplified by the 3-roll-2 which would otherwise be too long for a shorter person like me if it's a RTW or perhaps even a MTM.
On top of that, I also had a functional breast pocket added to the waistcoat, for the purpose if I fancy pairing a pocket square with it sometimes.
Of course much more actual details were to be modified and confirmed once I finally got to Tai Pan Row.
One of the decision is the cloth that I have decided to use. Though I had been searching for mostly burnt orange fabrics over the past months, visiting various fabric merchants for the ideal cloth; many of them weren't what I was looking for. The really good quality ones are either linen or flannel, which just doesn't align with my plan of creating a year-round suit.
Thus, the final decision for the cloth was a Super 130's from the Italian mill Reda. (Picture above) The color, I would say, is a garnet-red. It has a subtle shade of orange in it under certain lighting, however, making it more of a flame-red to some extent.
Another important detail is the trousers pleat.
Given that the trousers would be a high-rise one, sitting at the level of the bellybutton; trousers pleat are necessary in order to go over the hip bones area neatly.
What's interesting, however, is my decision to have the pleat facing inwards rather than outwards. This is because it not only could make my thighs look smaller, but also it could make the trousers more elegant considering I also decided to add a buttoned flap coin pocket.
With all that said, nothing is certain until I receive the garment. For the next article of the series, I will be talking more about the first-fitting process. Please look forward.