A Commission, Beginning to End

A commission begins with a conversation. You come to the workshop on East 61st Street and we spend an hour together — measuring, looking at cloth, discussing what the suit is for and what you already own. No tools come out in the first ten minutes. We want to understand the context before we start taking numbers. If this is a first suit, the conversation will be broad: what kind of work do you do, where do you wear a jacket, what has never fit you well in the past? If you are returning for a third or fourth commission, the conversation is faster and more specific. We already know your body and your taste. We are refining an understanding that grows with every garment.

Once we have a clear picture, the measurements are taken — approximately thirty in total, including the individually sloped shoulders, the two chest circumferences, the precise rise from waistband to crotch, the back and front lengths measured separately. A bespoke pattern is then drafted by hand from these numbers alone. No base block is adjusted. The pattern that results could not be used for anyone else, because it was drawn from geometry that belongs to you. The cloth is not cut until the first fitting confirms the pattern is correct.

The first fitting is on a basted shell — a rough assembly of the jacket and trousers, held together with long white tacking stitches, in a plain canvas or a remnant of similar weight to your final cloth. It looks nothing like a finished suit. The lining is absent. The pockets are marked but not cut. The purpose is to test the pattern on your body in three dimensions before we commit to the actual cloth. We check every seam, every angle, every proportion. Adjustments are marked in chalk and cut back into the pattern before construction begins in earnest.

The second fitting — sometimes called the forward fitting — takes place on the nearly completed garment. The cloth has been cut, the canvas basted into the chest, the lining tacked in place. The buttonholes have not yet been cut. At this point the suit is recognisable as a suit, and most of the fit adjustments should already be resolved from the basted fitting. What we are checking here is the fine tuning: the precise set of the sleeve, the final length of the jacket, the break of the trouser, the way the collar rolls. Minor chalk marks are made and transferred to the pattern. By the time you leave this fitting, both you and we know what the finished garment will look like.

The final delivery appointment is, ideally, straightforward. The suit is complete — hand-sewn buttonholes, pick stitching, sleeve heads set, buttons attached, trousers pressed and hemmed to the shoe you have brought with you. You put it on and it should fit. Not approximately, not with the caveat of a small further alteration. It should fit because the pattern was built from your measurements, checked on your body twice, and adjusted until it was right before the cloth was ever committed to the final construction. This is what the process is for, and it is what the process produces when it is followed completely and without shortcuts.