Tailored?

The joy and the despair of people sharing experiences with polar opposite outcomes can be directly translated to this example.

A lovely friend of mine went on a long holiday this year (3 months in South East Asia), and within that time he went to Vietnam. He went to a town called Hoi An on the coast to have a suit tailored to fit him. Months later, I went to Hoi An. Tailored clothes were on the agenda, but so was relaxing and this seemed like the perfect place in which to do it. Hoi An is quietly situated on a river, with restaurants and shops lining the water. Lanterns softly light the town at night, but night time adventures tend to cease at around 10.30pm. A little sanctuary. 

This friend enjoyed Hoi An and had a great experience with his tailor of choice, so much so that he recommended the place to me. I went there and I can say with confidence that I will absolutely not recommend it. I still like the person who recommended the place to me, for how can I blame him for my own disappointment? Indeed, my experience was a colossal disappointment, but maybe my expectations were too high.

The place is called Kimmy's, and in fairness to them, I get the impression that they are not one-of-a-kind shit, they are one-of-most-if-not-all-that-are shit.

The prices are high. By saying that they are high, of course I don't mean that they are anything like what they would be in London, but everything is relative. A good price comparison is a packet of cigarettes: in Vietnam, expect to pay about 65p for a packet of 20 Marlborough Lights compared to the £6.20ish that you would pay in the UK.

Anyhow, Vietnamese workers get paid little, but they pay little for food (around 30p for a meal in a restaurant), little for fuel for their mopeds, for rent et cetera. So to get charged US$120 for a suit jacket and trousers that can be made within hours is quite obscene, particularly in light of the terrible quality of craftsmanship. 

I say that it is obscene mainly because it is unclear to me where the money goes. The cost of the fabric in Asia is next to nothing, but if you ask them how much a wool mix per metre costs, they don't know or refuse to say, but charge a solid $20 extra for a 'better' fabric for the item that you have asked for. You can get beautiful silk fabric in London for £3 per metre, so I was fairly confident that I was getting ripped off on the basis of the costs of the fabric alone. 

Do the employees who spend a couple of hours stitching together a few seams in their tried and tested methods get the moolah? I saw no evidence to suggest that there were countless wealthy Vietnamese people walking around.

The friendly employees of Kimmy's take your measurements (shoulder to shoulder, neck circumference, neck to waist, shoulder to wrist, under arm circumference, upper arm measurement, waist, hips, thighs, waist to knee, nostril to nostril...), but to experience your first fitting is a huge surprise. Every detail of your body that they write down is used as more of a general guideline than as a rule. And every design detail that you ask to be included in your jacket/shirt/dress will be ignored because they also seem to adopt a basic template with which to make a lady's jacket/shirt/dress.

Intuitiveness is certainly not something that a Vietnamese tailor can lay claim to and celebrate. It seems as if they are instructed on how to make a basic item and no more. To incorporate changes that you insist on as a result of the first fitting being so wrong, they disregard anything else that needs to be altered to in order to maintain a balance with the design. Buttons are sewn on unevenly, scorch marks will be left on your 'better quality' fabric, sleeves are sewn in poorly so that they don't sit comfortably and they look uneven, sleeve lengths are too short... Seams on trousers are wonky; straps on dresses are mismatched; lengths that you ask for are not provided; pockets are fake!

I stayed in Hoi An for nearly a week because I enjoyed cycling to the beach, eating the good food, and revelling in the comparative quietness. But going back to Kimmy's again and again and again for refit after refit because they don't know how to sew well was unexpected, and it added some frustration to my experience there. 

It was also very dull having to try on these disappointing items of clothing. If it had been cheap, I would have been less bothered. But the fact is that I could get all of the items from the high street for the same price, of better quality and superior fit, and without expectations of perfection. For surely that's what tailoring is? Working to achieve results of perfection. If only I had appreciated the merits of what was already available to me.

Please don't mistake this entry for someone with no perspective - I realise that in the grand scheme of things that can go wrong in life, this is going to have little impact on me or anyone else. No one has died. It's just really irritating. A disappointing clothing experience? A little shallow, I guess. But I really really like clothes, and I was so looking forward to being the owner of beautifully crafted, perfectly fitting fabric on my small frame. So not the end of the world, but a sad little let down for sure.