Made To Measure

A custom-fit suit at a price better than a department store’s? That’s the promise of a new breed of suitmakers.

- Sheila Marikar

BESPOKE SUITING once brought to mind cigar smoke and burnished mahogany, and a gray-haired tailor with a measuring tape around his neck and a pin in his mouth. No longer. The past few years have seen a boom in online businesses peddling made-to-measure men’s suits at off-the-rack prices, as the Average (nattily dressed) Joe has shifted from revering luxury labels to building out his own brand. “It’s the desire to not look like one of a million but one in a million,” says Marshal Cohen, chief retail analyst at market research firm NPD Group.

One company on the crest of this wave is Indo-chino, a Vancouver based firm founded in 2007 by Kyle Vucko and Heikal Gani, former University of Victoria students who hated shopping for formal clothing.

Here’s how ordering a suit online works: Customers follow step-by-step video guides on how to take their own measurements in less than 10 minutes. (No tape measure? They sell one for a dollar—it ships for free.) Sartorially inclined shoppers can then customize details like lapels, linings, pocket placement, and monograms. The cost starts at around $400 a suit (lower for fabrics that are on sale), and the finished garment arrives via FedEx within four weeks, promising a better fit than anything found on the racks of a department store.