Almost Everything You Need To Know About Suit Tailoring in Kuala Lumpur
Every city has a unique tailoring ecosystem and convention. Here’s some of what I know about the inner workings of tailors in Kuala Lumpur after 15 years in, and observing, the industry.
Interacting with a suit tailor is unlike interacting with a car mechanic. A car mechanic can do the entire work himself. A tailor cannot. The term tailor is also a generalization, just like the term doctor. Doctors are not homogenous. There are orthodontists, general practitioners, opthalmologists, hemotologist oncologists, pediatricians, and etc. With tailors, you have style consultants, jacket cutters, fitters, half canvassed coatmakers, fully canvassed coatmakers, trouser cutters, trousermakers, shirt cutters, shirtmakers, alterationists, pressers, and etc. Just as there are no doctors who practise universally, there is no tailor who does everything.
It starts with somebody facilitating the customer’s buying process. This customer-facing person helps the customer spec out his suit: cloth and style. He takes the measurements. This person often has designations like sales assistant or style consultant. In smaller operations this person may be the cutter. In the smallest of operations, this person may be the cutter who is also the proprietor.
What happens after this is highly varied. The most typical next step is the measurements land at the desk of a specialist cutter who is employed by a workshop owner. This is a separate business that services the one you interacted with. The cutter does the patternmaking for both jacket, vest and trousers. Patternmaking is where the exact lines of each panel of cloth in a garment are drawn using the measurements as input. Very often, the cutter also strikes the cloth, i.e. chalks the lines and cuts out each panel. Specialist cutters are prolific: they can cut more than a dozen suits a day.
Less commonly, the measurements land at a self-employed coatmaker. He either works from home or in a workshop of his own. In this case, the coatmaker drafts the pattern and strikes the cloth. But only for the jacket. Trousers are handled by the trousermaker. In KL as in elsewhere, coatmakers do not make trousers and trousermakers do not make jackets.
Very uncommonly, the person the customer interacted with is also the cutter. Whoever does it, the measurements are translated into two dimensional shapes, either on paper as an intermediary (known as paper patterns) or directly onto the cloth. Using paper as an intermediary has the advantage of record-keeping. The body of knowledge that a cutter uses to translate numerical measurements into 2D shapes is called a drafting system. It is composed of a set of algorithms in simple algebra.
The shapes generated by the cutter utilizing drafting systems supported by experience often do not result in a perfect fit. They have been doing this for two hundred years on Savile Row yet perfection has evaded them. For this reason, there are basted fittings. The cut pieces of cloth are rolled together and tied into a bundle. It then goes to the sewing tailors for bastemaking.
A baste is a provisionally-sewn garment for the sole purpose of a fitting. You can regard it as a mock-up of a garment. In fact, after the fitting, every seam will be completely taken apart. This is why it is called a baste, after the word “basting stitch” which is a coarse, loose stitch meant to be taken apart again.
Now the fitter plays his part. He will help you put on the bastes. As the bastes hang from your body, they display aberrations of fit. There is a technically ideal way for the garments to fit, tempered by the fitter’s preference or taste. The fitter identifies and diagnoses deviations from the ideal fit. He either memorizes the changes necessary, or he makes notes to himself by either making chalk marks onto the bastes or writing down on paper. Fitters also often use pins to roughly simulate the changes they would like to make.
In the world of optics, the causes of imperfect imaging of monochromatic light were first systematized by Philipp Ludwig von Seidel. Called The Five Seidel Aberrations—comprising spherical aberration, coma, astigmatism, field curvature and distortion—it tells of how light deviates from its ideal path as it goes through an optical system, e.g. a camera lens. An optical designer has to design optical systems that, among others, minimize these aberrations. Otherwise the image will be blurry.
While tailoring has been resistant to such universal systemization, a fitter is trying to minimize the aberrations of fit. Some of the aspects of technical fit are: the major vertical balances (aka front and back balances), the minor vertical balances of the shoulders and the sleeve crown, eases, the relation of neckpoint to front edge, sleeve mounting position, position and size of neck hole, contour of armhole, and etc. Beyond the technical aspects of fit just mentioned, the fitter also evaluates the aesthetic aspects. Every step in the tailoring process requires skill, but fitting is one that is particularly cognitively demanding.
The fitter could be the salesperson or style consultant you first met. This is the most common. Or he could be someone who makes an appearance only during your fitting. Least commonly, the fitter is also the cutter.
For the vast majority of tailoring businesses in KL, that one fitting is all that is needed. Some require a second fitting.
All the steps from when measurements were taken until the conclusion of the fitting(s) I call pattern development. They took place in order to develop your personal pattern. Even if there are no paper patterns for future reproducibility in the case of the majority of local tailors.
After the fitting, the bastes are taken apart into their constituent pieces of cloth. The findings from the preceding fitting session are now reflected in the garment. Changes are made to the contours of those pieces to come closer to the ideal fit. Those changes might first be made to the paper patterns before being transferred to the cloth. With the majority of outfits, the changes are made by directly rechalking the cloth. The pieces of cloth are rolled up, tied into a bundle and handed over to their respective sewing tailors.
Sewing tailors then do the final sewing. They could be employees of the tailoring business you ordered your garments from, though this is uncommon. More likely they are external. They might belong to an independent workshop, or they are self employed.
A half canvassed jacket takes one man-day to complete. Trousers a third of a man-day. Fully canvassed jackets take three man-days for sewing and another man-day for finishing. Of course none of these take into account pattern development.
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