Thursday, July 29, 2010

Materials... The true value fo a suit

The materials being the cause
What are these materials which are casuing such exuberant price tags on a bespoke suit.
Well what i found was the world's most expensive suit. Designed by Alexander Amosu, theone off creation took more than 80hours and 5,000 indivual stitches to make. The suit is embellished with nine 18-carat gold and pave set diamond buttons but what else makes it special is the fabric used to make the piece.

The cloth titles vanquish II is seen as one of the world's most luxurious, made from vicuña and qiviuk blended with pashmina.
What are these furry friends you ask:
"Vicuna is a rare wild South American Camelid which only produces enough wool for shearing every three years"
"Qiviuk is the world’s most expensive wool, gathered from the Arctic muskox, which sheds its coat once a year"
"Pashmina is a goat from the high mountain plateaus of the Himalaya’s"
Additionally, "Due to the rarity of these fibres and the care which is taken to safeguard the well-being of the animals that produce them (these animals are not hunted but cared for in their natural environments), only enough wool can be gathered to make 300 suits in the world

But what about in the lower levels of the market, those which stil fetch in the high thousands but come without the diamonds and gold..
The wool quality is determined in terms of 100's which specify the fines of the fabric interms of how many strands of wool there are in a 10mm by 10mm square. Tailores stated that even though a wool of 220 or so if finer and maybe more luxurious its actually inappropriate and doesnt make the best quality suit.

"Master tailor and "Power look" avatar William Fioravanti, for instance, charges clients who walk into his Manhattan showroom up to $10,500 to create a bespoke suit in Super 220 merino wool, of which he says $5,000 covers the cost of four meters of cloth
entry-level bespoke in Super 100 wool, on New York's Upper East Side, bespoke suit maker Jon Green won't get the fabric rolling for anything less than $5,100 (taxes not included)."

"There's a certain type of customer who thinks fabrics like vicuna are better, but such an expensive suit is not necessarily what I would recommend," says Jay Kos, whose made-to-measure suits start at $3,800 in his eponymous shops in New York. (Like llamas, vicunas are members of the camelid family and live in South America.) "Something in the $4,400 range will have better quality, better drape and a better fit than a suit at twice the price. A true gentleman who appreciates fine clothing is going to go for something classic like an English woolen."
Indeed, bespoke suit-maker Leonard Logsdail, who came to New York by way of Savile Row more than a decade ago, won't even work with such exorbitant fabrics, making his top suit price $5,500. "I only keep Super 180s and Super 200s around as a talking point, because they don't have any guts."

http://www.luxurylaunches.com/fashion/worlds_most_expensive_suit_priced_at_102500_is_up_for_grabs.php
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6397866/
most expensive suit http://www.letitflow.com/worlds-most-expensive-items-of-clothing/
vicuana image http://www.bar-q-diamond.com/Information/llamafacts.htm - middle right
quivik http://www.maruyasu-fil.co.jp/category/1377524.html - middle left
pashmina http://www.pashmina-pashminas.co.uk/usd/ - bottom

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