http://www.bespokerow.com/blog

Second, the reason:

Hosting our blog on wordpress.com has been a great way to start; it’s easy to set up and worry-free.  However, it’s difficult to really integrate the blog into our site when we don’t have access to all the source code.  It’s also a little unprofessional to use a different domain for the blog than we use for the rest of the site, so we’ve decided to consolidate.

Now, we’ll be able to really integrate the blog into the rest of the site, as hopefully it will lead to a better experience for our customers as well.

So, check it out, change your bookmarks, etc.,and get ready for some more awesome blogging from the BR Team!

The Fit Fanatic Head Honcho

Do you think differently? Well, so do we. For the Bespoke Man, a status quo off-the-rack dress shirt will never do – it has to fit perfectly and it has to right perfectly the first time.

In short order, we’re dedicated to:

1) Superior Fit
2) Awesome Style
3) Helping You Look Your Best

Can you get behind that? We hope so.

Kris wearing his bright salmon, Vegas-ready shirt

You may have wondered who the handsome models are on the Bespoke Row homepage.  Surprisingly, none of them are actually male models – they’re all just regular guys who volunteered to have a picture of them wearing their Bespoke Row shirts on our website.

Adam and his sweet silver checks

Last month, I went back to the US for a few weeks while I resolved some visa issues and took the opportunity to visit my family and friends.  Some of the friends I visited had helped test our website, so they had custom shirts from Bespoke Row.  A few of them were kind enough to also let me take their picture, since we haven’t had a chance to do a real photoshoot yet.

Therefore, clockwise from left, we have Kris in Las Vegas, Adam in Harvard Square, Simon in Somerville, MA, and me in San Francisco (at one of the awesome POPOS parks, which you should check out if you’re in SF as well).

Right now, one of the many projects we’re trying to work on is getting some professional photos for the homepage, but until that happens, you’ll continue to see these guys up there.  Thanks, Kris, Adam, and Simon!

Simon and too blue French cuffs

Talking about Bespoke Row in San Francisco

Overall, we have five guys and Erin’s roommate at the party.  I told them about the history behind Bespoke Row – how I am tall and thin and could never find good clothes that fit until I went to tailor and had some made.  However, it’s not very feasible to do that in the US because good tailors are so expensive.  They all seemed very receptive and also wanted to have clothes that fit better.  Apparently it’s not only men in unusual sizes who aren’t satisfied by their clothes.

Erin measuring her friend Sean

One of the guys who came, Mitch, actually wore a Bespoke Row shirt, because he had tested out the site for us earlier.  Of course, I wore one as well.

Mitch in his Bespoke Row shirt

We put the site up on the TV and I showed them how it worked – first the home page, then the design page where you can pick your style, then inputting the ten measurements we ask for, and checking out.  After that, Erin and I showed people how to measure each other and everyone tried it out.

We also talked about what’s next for Bespoke Row – how the vision isn’t just to provide tailored shirts, but to be a personal tailor to customers.  After they finalize their measurements, customers should be able to easily come back and quickly order a jacket, pants, a vest, or anything they need in a style they like and that is guaranteed to fit them.  We’ll never run out of a style in someone’s size because we don’t start making it until they send us their order.  Everyone liked the shorts I had from our tailor, so maybe our next product will be pants.  Mitch suggested vests, but I think people generally need more great fitting pants than they do vests, so we’ll probably go that route first and get to vests later.

Bespoke Row. On TV!

At the end of the night, Erin and I gave everyone a free tailors tape as a gift.  Erin’s also really good at measuring people now, so if you live in SF and want to be measured in person, let me know.  She said she’d be happy to meet people around the city.

Thanks again to Erin for putting this together.  I learned a lot from the guys that showed up, and I think they’ll be happy with their new shirts as well.

When you ask for a recommendation, it will generate a set of four color swatches – your suit, dress shirt, tie, and pocket square – that will work well on you.  Each swatch includes a pattern as well if it’s appropriate.

Alternatively, you can make color swatches from items that you own, and it will tell you how well they match you and which ones work well together.

So, if you’re a technophile who wants to dress well, check it out!

It turns out that taking photos of fabrics is just the first step in getting something will look good and give an accurate representation to our customers.  I’m sure the photographers reading this will understand that the photo is never really finished until it’s been run through Photoshop to make the colors look like they do in real life.  So, I installed the 30-day trial of photo shop and started going through our photos last night.  It’s not so easy with pictures of fabrics, because there are no good reference colors and therefore Photoshop’s auto adjustment features don’t come out with the right value.

Moreover, some of the photos that looked ok on the camera ended up highlighting wrinkles or other defects when we saw them on the computer screen.  Therefore, I’m going to have to retake a number of the photos.  I was going to have to take some more anyway, because we want to have a thumbnail and three large photos for each fabric, and we didn’t want to keep Mr. Zhang too late while he was doing us a favor during the last photo shoot.

Anyway, here’s the part I’m sure you’ve been waiting for – images of all our fabrics.  Like I said, none of these are the final versions, but they should give you an idea of our overall collection.

Hopefully I’ll be able to put the whole 28-fabric collection online over the next week or so, but for now, let us know what you think about these few by leaving a comment.  Thanks!

Now that summer is here in Beijing and Shanghai, this has meant that I’ve been getting really hot.  So, I decided to head down to my local tailor and get a pair of shorts made that would fit well, look nice, and save me from the heat.

I wore a pair of pants that I ordered last year from Bonobos to show the tailor the style and see if he could replicate the famous Bonobos fit.  I flipped through his book of cotton pants fabrics (protip: When you visit a tailor, the best fabrics are often in books.  The stuff on the shelves is temporary stock he found on sale somewhere, but the stuff in the books is what he buys direct from the factory and keeps at his workshop); there were about 150 colors.  Since this was my first pair, I wasn’t looking to go too crazy and I just picked a light khaki.

This was leftover from someone's shirt

Normally, you can just end there and the tailor will make you a pair of pants.  I wanted an exciting contrast lining, though, so I asked if I could look through his shirt fabrics for something that would work well.  He said it would be a little bit extra, since he’d prefer to sell that fabric to make shirts.  You don’t need a lot of fabric for the lining, though, so we worked out a deal where I could find some waste from the end of a roll that wouldn’t be enough to make into a shirt anyway.  He actually had quite a few different designs, and I eventually found a piece with a checks on blue that would look nice.

Two days later, I went back to the tailor for a fitting.  It’s always interesting to see a half-finished piece of clothing.  The belt loops were only sewn on the bottom, there was no button on the front, and the shorts were unhemmed.  As it turned out, the waist fit perfectly, and the finished length that we marked out was almost exactly what we measured earlier.  He said they’d finish the shorts that night and I could pick them up the next day.

Yesterday afternoon, I went back, tried on the finished shorts, and decided to just wear them home.  In the evening, I wore them to a Duke Ellington Orchestra concert at the National Centre for the Performing Arts.  My shorts were stylish enough not to be out of place in the evening, and comfortable enough to walk around town in the afternoon.  Perfect.

No place to take pictures here, so they're just on the couch