Custom suits

Custom Suits, Chiang Mai: start with where you will wear it

Everything about a suit follows from the climate it lives in.

A suit made for Chiang Mai and a suit made to take home to a northern winter are genuinely different garments, and the difference is not styling. It is cloth weight, lining and how much internal structure the jacket carries. Lightweight cloth in a cold climate looks thin and wears cold. Heavy cloth in the tropics is unwearable no matter how well cut.

So the first question is not colour or lapel width. It is where this suit is going to live.

Cloth

The workhorse is worsted wool. It breathes, resists creasing, holds a press and recovers its shape overnight on a hanger, which matters more than almost anything else in daily wear.

For heat, look at the lighter weights. For a first business suit, mid-grey or navy in a plain weave will do more work than anything else you can buy and will not date.

Linen and cotton-linen blends suit hot weather and creases are part of the character rather than a fault, which is fine if that is the look you want and irritating if it is not.

The fabric guide goes into weights, weaves and the Super numbers properly.

Construction

We build half canvas as standard: a horsehair canvas through the chest and lapel where the shaping work happens, fused lower down.

Full canvas is available on request and runs the length of the jacket front. It costs more labour and needs more time, and it is the right answer if you want a jacket that will still be worth wearing in a decade.

We do not recommend a fully fused jacket for anyone who intends to wear the suit regularly. It is cheaper and it will look fine for a while, and then the chest will bubble. The construction guide sets out the trade in detail.

Choosing a style you will not regret

A suit is worth choosing conservatively, because trends in menswear move slowly but they do move, and an aggressively fashionable cut dates faster than the cloth wears out.

A notch lapel of moderate width, a two-button front, and a cut that skims rather than grips will look correct across many years. Save the experiments for a second or third suit, once you own something dependable.

The exception is a suit bought for one specific occasion, where being memorable is the point.

Where to go next

Pick by occasion rather than by garment. The intended use decides the cloth, the construction and the cut all at once, which is why the pages below are organised that way.