Do You Know About Suits?

[Soju]

Forget all the Indian Tailors if you're looking for a good quality suit. The Indian Tailors all produce garbage, including Raja and Rajawongse. Those two, along with Pinky's, may be among the best of the Indian Tailors, but they're still garbage. Shirts with stiff collars that feel like cardboard and start bubbling after the first wash. No selection of high-end fabrics at either Raja and Rajawongse. Pinky's has a limited selection of somewhat better fabrics, but he doesn't even know anything about the fabric itself, other than the price he charges. These guys are not tailors, they're simply shops that measure you and take your money and outsource the work. The same as all the Indian tailors do. Most of them are great salesmen with very pleasing personalities, which fools a lot of people into thinking they are actually tailors. They are not.

I can only recommend two good tailors in Bangkok: July Tailor and Art's, both nearby to Sala Daeng BTS station. They are not run by Indians and are frequented by the higher echelon of Thai society. July does most of the work for the Royal Family. Art's only does suits, no shirts. There are probably a couple other decent Thai/Chinese tailors around town, but I'd personally stick with July or Art's if you're looking for good quality. They are definitely not cheap, but then a good custom made suit of good quality never is cheap. I know July has Zegna fabircs available as well as Cerutti. Excellent fabrics, but as I said not cheap by any means. There's a couple of shops along Sukhumvit that also carry Zegna fabrics, but I went into one of them around Soi 47 (Milano I think was the name), and the owner tried to steer me away from the Zegna and to some cheap local fabric that he said was just as good. At that point he completely lost all credibility and I walked out. Obviously they make a lot higher margin selling you cheap garbage fabric where they can mark it way up, whereas if they make a mistake with Zegna fabric, it will end up costing them or at least lose all their profit.

If you don't know the difference between a low quality suit and a high quality suit, as is the case with most people, you'll likely be happy with Raja or Rajawongse. But if you know good tailoring, you'll laugh at everyone who raves about them or any of the other Indian / Sikh tailors. Anyone who tells you they can make a good quality suit for $100, $200, or even $300 is lying to you. The fabric alone costs way more than that for what I'd consider a good suit. All you get from the cheap tourist tailors is roughly the equivalent to a cheap department store suit, albeit if you go to one of the better tourist tailors it should fit you a bit better.

Edited March 5, 2007 by Soju

[Svenn]

^Is this old post a veiled advertisement or do many readers agree with this? How much is July's suits?