We have dressed whole families here since 1997, and a woman's suit gets the same treatment as anything else in the workshop: a pattern drafted from your measurements, cloth from the mills we deal with directly, and two fittings. The jacket sits across the shoulder and chest in a way a ready-made blazer never quite manages. The trouser is cut to your actual waist and hip rather than to the ratio somebody in a factory decided on. It looks like it was made for you because that is precisely what happened.
Why the gap is even bigger in womenswear
Women's bodies vary far more than men's in exactly the measurements that tailoring depends on. Waist to hip, shoulder width against the chest, bust, the length of the torso. All of them interact, which is how you end up with a standard-size jacket that fits one woman well and fails on the next in four separate places at once. Anyone who has spent an afternoon in changing rooms already knows this.
A suit made here starts with all of those measurements taken carefully, and the pattern is drafted to your body rather than to whatever a size 12 is supposed to be. The jacket sits on your shoulder, closes across the chest without straining, comes in at the waist as much or as little as you want, and finishes at the length that suits your torso. You will not need the second jacket you usually buy as a compromise because the first one fitted the shoulders but not the chest.
Single or double breasted, jacket length, trousers
We make women's jackets single and double breasted, with lapels from a clean notch through to a wider peak. Jacket length matters more than anything else to how the suit reads, so we set it at the fitting against your torso length and against whatever it is going to be worn with, trouser or skirt.
For trousers you can have flat front or pleated, at anything from a mid to a high rise. A cigarette trouser, slim and clean through the leg, is the most modern of the options. A wide leg is more generous and has a lovely, relaxed elegance to it. The break gets set at the fitting once you are standing in the shoes you intend to wear.
On cloth, the sensible first suit is a mid-weight worsted in charcoal, navy or grey, which will go anywhere you need it to. A fine check or a stripe adds character and stays entirely professional. For the hot months, a light tropical worsted or a linen is both practical and good-looking, and far more comfortable than pretending the weather is something else.