We fit what you already own.

Jackets: chest, sides and waist taken in or let out as far as the seam allowance permits; body and sleeves shortened or lengthened; shoulder seam adjusted; sleeves re-set; front shortened; re-lining; buttons replaced; small damage darned or rewoven.

Trousers: waist in or out; seat in or out; leg shortened or lengthened; rise adjusted; leg tapered; re-hemming; waistband replaced; zip replaced.

Shirts: body taken in; sleeves shortened; collar size adjusted; cuffs remade.

Ethnic wear: sherwanis, bandhgalas and kurtas taken in or let out; body shortened; collar or stand adjusted; churidars and salwars altered; embellishment repositioned after a structural change.

Anything bought from our own rails — Van Heusen, Arrow, Louis Philippe, Raymond, Allen Solly, Park Avenue, Blackberrys, Levi's, Parx and the rest — is altered here as part of the purchase. Same tailors, same bench, usually the same week.

Sometimes the honest answer is no. Not because the garment was cheap, but because the alteration you want can't be done cleanly on that particular garment. We would rather tell you at the counter than take your money and hand back something you're unhappy with.

Fused jackets where the glue has let go. Once the bond between the fusing and the outer cloth starts separating, opening seams and re-sewing them tends to make the bubbling worse. The alteration holds badly and the distortion shows. We'll point it out on the spot.

Shoulders. Raising a jacket's shoulder seam is possible and almost never worth it — expensive, slow, and rarely clean on a jacket that wasn't cut for you in the first place. On a bought jacket we will nearly always talk you out of it.

Jackets cut with no allowance. A lot of ready-to-wear is cut with barely any seam allowance. If the chest needs letting out and the cloth simply isn't there, no amount of skill invents it. We check before quoting you.

Where altering is the wrong answer, we say so and tell you why. Occasionally the better answer is having something made instead — but we only suggest that when we genuinely think you'll be better off, not as a way of selling up.

Anything we cut, we look after. Your pattern stays on file, so we know exactly how the garment was built, what cloth went into it and where there is room to move. Bodies change — weight comes and goes, posture shifts with the years — and a bespoke jacket that was right in 2015 often just needs an hour at the bench to be right again now.

We build the allowance in deliberately. A jacket made here has enough cloth in the seams to let the chest out by around four centimetres and the waist by something similar. Trousers get a generous waist allowance. That is not an accident; it is what lets a garment stay in service for decades instead of years.

When you bring something in, bring what you wear with it — the shoes, for trouser length, and the shirt and tie you'd wear under the jacket. The garment has to work in context, not on a hanger.

Walk in with the garment on, if you can. Fit is read on a body, not on a counter. Our fitter looks at what's bothering you, checks what the cloth and construction will allow, and tells you plainly what we can do, how long it will take and what it will cost. No appointment needed.

For bigger jobs — a jacket needing chest, waist and sleeve work at once — we'll usually ask you back for a quick check before the final press, so nothing is finished in the wrong place. For a hem or a waist adjustment, one visit is enough.

Timings: simple work such as hemming or a waist adjustment takes three to five working days. Bigger work — a jacket recut, a re-lining — runs one to two weeks. Wedding rush jobs and genuinely urgent alterations are worth a phone call; tell us the date and we'll tell you straight away whether we can do it.