How to find a good tailor?

You probably recall from the previous article that I bought a Roland Mouret dress from Net-a-porter.com. It was a little big on me, so I had it altered by my tailor Richard. One of my friends said that I was so lucky to find a good tailor, and the dress turned out perfect. The truth is that finding a good tailor is not only about luck.

I tried a couple of tailors including the ones in Louis Boston. The work they did was indeed not satisfying because they didn't understand how my skirt was constructed, nor did I explained. I learned a lesson from that experience: to find a good tailor especially for complex jobs, we have to do our own research and communicate with the tailor very well.

I believe that good tailors are everywhere. We find them by word of the mouth, by citysearch.com, or by the recommendations from the stores where our garments are purchased. Those tailors normally have very good skills which is the key to good alteration.

Most of the designer items are constructed differently from the way the mass-produced clothes are made in order to achieve better fit or express certain design concepts. Unfortunately, most of the jobs taken by the tailors are for mass-produced clothes, so we need to do our homework to find out if the clothes can be tailored and even how. For instance, I looked at the dress closely to find out where the seams were and how it could be taken in. It was not wasting time because some lazy tailors tend to take the easy way out with the sacrifice of the quality. In the case of a skirt, a tailor might just add two darts on the waist to take it in, but chances are, the darts will change the shape of the skirt dramatically. If you want to see a good result, do your homework.

Communication is equally important. Tailors like to know what the customers want. If I tell a tailor I want a skirt to be taken in, the tailor doesn't know how small is too small. By sitting on a chair to try the fit, I am able to tell the tailor the exact fit. Tailors like that because they don't want to risk their work. To make sure the tailor understood the way I wanted the dress to be altered, I showed Richard how the dress was constructed, then I asked him if it made sense to take in from the seam on the center. Richard appreciated what I thought and agreed with me. I also asked him to move the belt higher and added two little strapes inside of the should strap to hold the bra, and he adjusted accordingly. Good communication helped.

Those are my secrets to work with my tailor for the best fit. Of course, the best case is that we never need to have anything tailored and everything fits perfectly. But just incase you want to make the fits perfect, I hope that my tips help a little.