What's a $4000 Suit Worth? • Hacker News Board

Re: What's a $4000 Suit Worth?

#161

Post by mjwalshe » Wed, Sep 05, 2012, 11:22 AM UTC

nl wrote: post #61

dredmorbius wrote: post #40

Yet another submarine: http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html The suit is dead for any number of reason, dittos bespoke clothing. $4000 is several times what I spend on clothes in a year. It's several times what I spend on clothes in several years. There's a far less expensive option that's highly satisficing. Suits, once an inexpensive, practical, standardized alternative to more ornate and expensive clothing, are now…

The suit is dead for any number of reason, dittos bespoke clothing. Why do you think the suit is dead? I wear a suit (not always, but often enough to have an opinion). I've never bought an expensive suit, but I nor do I buy cheap suits. I guess I generally spend around $500. I work with people who spend $2000 on suits though. These aren't bespoke, but are from nice fabrics and cut very well (eg, Hugo Boss etc). I'm n…

Even the quaility on Hogo Boss is not that good - I recall my Mum who did dabble in fashion looking at my cousins (he was a senior sales guy for Oracle) HB suit and noticing the shoddy workmanship.

Re: What's a $4000 Suit Worth?

#162

Post by christensen_emc » Wed, Sep 05, 2012, 11:26 AM UTC

Game_Ender wrote: post #87

There is one economy of scale which eventually hit the bespoke suit industry: robotics/automation. Eventually you will be able to make tailoring robots to do each step of the process, much like they do in car factories. With the proper software you could step into a booth, get a 3D body scan and have the suit finished in hours or minutes.

This may work for crude made to measure suits, but bespoke is often more about trial and error than incredibly precise measurement. It also has a lot to do with the preferences of the client, particularly with regards to the shoulders and armholes.

As for automation, a large number of MTM tailors currently email the measurements to a factory in Asia where the suit is cut by a worker getting paid pennies. The cost isnt necessarily in the making of the suit, its more the measuring and interactions between the tailor and the client that can take hours. For this reason alone I dont think we will see tailoring robots anytime soon.

Re: What's a $4000 Suit Worth?

#163

Post by mjwalshe » Wed, Sep 05, 2012, 11:27 AM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #60

Frew, who apprenticed with a Savile Row tailor, can — all by himself, and almost all by hand — create a pattern, cut fabric and expertly construct a suit that, for about $4,000, perfectly molds to its owner’s body. In a city filled with very rich people, he quickly had all the orders he could handle. You don't have to be Wall Street to figure out the bleedingly obvious solution to being a starving artist who has so m…

But I savil row they have the apretices who do the cutting out and the basic tasks this chap is doping it all him self

Re: What's a $4000 Suit Worth?

#164

Post by noahc » Wed, Sep 05, 2012, 11:59 AM UTC

SatvikBeri wrote: post #123

noahc wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patio11, Tptacek, Danso, and SatvikBeri I don't read pg, because a lot of his comments come across as babysitting HN, which is necessary for him to do, but not something I want to spend my time on. I believe that what you put before your eyes, becomes what is in your brain, and you can only think about what you've seen before. What you think about is what gets written on your heart, and our actions are based on our h…

Holy cow, I'm flattered! And, uh, I'll try to diversify my comments a bit.

One thing to keep in mind is that that comment is what made me start following you in the first place, so it does get folks attention. I wouldn't worry about comment diversity too much, after all I keep coming back!

Re: What's a $4000 Suit Worth?

#165

Post by matthiasb » Wed, Sep 05, 2012, 12:51 PM UTC

The shoemaker's children always go barefoot. Les cordonniers sont toujours les plus mal chaussés.

Re: What's a $4000 Suit Worth?

#166

Post by yummyfajitas » Wed, Sep 05, 2012, 1:07 PM UTC

wisty wrote: post #98

noahc wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And maybe it just might work... He doesn't have to jump from $4k to $10k. There's a demand curve and by raising prices from $4k to $5k and up he'll figure out where he can sit. More importantly, he's already at $4k. The person that spends $4k on a suit isn't going to sneeze at $8k. The person who spends $120 for a suit, throws a fit at $240.

> There's a demand curve That's commonly believed by mainstream economists, as an article of faith. That there is a demand curve, and it always goes down. It's not always true, unless a huge number of axioms hold (none of which are true). It's most obviously not true for prestige goods, which go up in demand as price rises (and then go down as no-one is able to afford them). Demand curves can be wacky, even discontin…

You need only one axiom to get a demand curve:

The universe of potential purchasers consists of a set of agents (i=1...N) and each agent has a reserve price R[i]. If a good is priced R[i], Agent[i] will not.

Re: What's a $4000 Suit Worth?

#167

Post by pc86 » Wed, Sep 05, 2012, 1:08 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #40

Yet another submarine: http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html The suit is dead for any number of reason, dittos bespoke clothing. $4000 is several times what I spend on clothes in a year. It's several times what I spend on clothes in several years. There's a far less expensive option that's highly satisficing. Suits, once an inexpensive, practical, standardized alternative to more ornate and expensive clothing, are now…

No offense, but just about everything in your comment is wrong. Your argument that suits are dead is way off the mark. Maybe in San Francisco it's not expected to wear a suit to a job interview or to meet with clients, but in every job I've ever worked at the men were expected to wear a suit and tie more often than not.

Your 1% comment doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever. Are you saying that only households making over $340k a year[1] would spend that much on a suit? My first job out of college was for $28k a year in a city. I had to spend much of that first year buying $600-800 suits because that's what I was expected to wear. I have friends that make what I make now and gladly drop twice what I would on a suit. It doesn't have anything to do with income.

I believe this was mentioned elsewhere, but a $4,000 suit isn't mainly about income or wealth, it's about taste. Pick up any $4,000 suit from a custom clothier and hang it up next to a $350 suit from Men's Wearhouse. You will absolutely be able to tell the difference from the other side of the room.

[1] http://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/top-1-percent-earn.asp...

Re: What's a $4000 Suit Worth?

#168

Post by wolfhumble » Wed, Sep 05, 2012, 1:08 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #89

asr wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense, but this could be really bad advice. Maybe the customers who'd pay 10k for a suit won't go to some guy's living room for fittings. Or maybe the price of top bespoke tailors in town is comparable, because they make better use of lower-paid assistants. Or maybe, to convince a bank to make the loan he needs to move into a nicer place, he needs to show the bank he has a large backlog of orders. Or maybe he's…

Totally not offended by that comment, but I strongly disagree. It is entirely possible that he's found the correct price for a suit: two hours' labor for his core customers. It is entirely possible that the devs who tell me their clients won't pay more than $20 an hour for Rails programming are accurate, and that they're correct in thinking that they're not skilled enough to work for better clients. It is entirely po…

From the last part of the article I quote the following: "Even the richest customer simply has to wait — sometimes months — before the new suit is finished. No wonder so many pass up a $4,000 bespoke suit for a ready-to-wear Kiton version at twice the price."

So customers are clearly willing to pay more, but they are not too keen on waiting two months for the suit.

I guess there are clients that buy a given amount of suits every year and have time to wait, but there are other clients that buy a suit when they need one and do not think 2+++ months up front.

The question is if the former group is large enough to sustain his business, and if they are willing to pay more than $4,000. The latter group have clearly the dough, but don't want to wait, so they are really not a segment he can focus on.

So while hiking the price might work, it might be that the real problem here is time to market.

Edit: Spelling

Re: What's a $4000 Suit Worth?

#169

Post by pc86 » Wed, Sep 05, 2012, 1:12 PM UTC

fusiongyro wrote: post #133

bradleyjg wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it may not seem that way sometimes, but NoCal is not the entire world - nor does the entire world take their cultural cues from NoCal. The suit is very much alive in NY, in London, the entire legal world, and in many other places. That's just during the day. For formal events / outings it is SF that is the extreme outlier. In the rest of the country if you are going to a fancy restaurant, a wedding, an awards…

"Extreme" outlier may be going a bit far. I live in the Southwest (NM). I found myself at a formal, Conservative Jewish funeral a couple weeks ago and half of us were wearing jeans. I was slightly overdressed just in slacks and a nice button-up. One out of the last four job candidates that's interviewed here came in anything fancier than that. I've been to four or five weddings out here, and never seen a shortage of…

Maybe it's just me, but wearing jeans to a wedding or funeral and not wearing a jacket and tie to a interview immediately signal disrespect and that the guest/candidate is too lazy to put in the requisite effort.

Re: What's a $4000 Suit Worth?

#170

Post by stupandaus » Wed, Sep 05, 2012, 1:16 PM UTC

Spending a significant amount of time in Shanghai the past few years, I've frequented the Shanghai fake market many times. While some portions sell knockoff goods, the fabric section is quite spectacular. I can get a bespoke 2 piece suit for $100 or 3 piece for $150. I get custom dress shirts for $10. The material and craftsmanship is high and the primary market is expatriates (read: non-Chinese) living in Shanghai.

The way it's set up, is there are maybe 50-100 booths set up in the fabric market area. Each of the booths is rented out by a proprietor, and they are in business for themselves. Most operate by relying on an economy of scale behind the scenes. The sole proprietor would take your measurements in the shop, then send them to a behind the scenes system which processes hundreds of suits a day.

It is not uncommon to have your custom clothing done within 24 hours and shipped directly to wherever you are staying. Very interesting way to manage the economy of scale.