Suits Me

When “custom-made” fails to impress, the real deal is an alternative.

- Jared Paul Stern

In July of 2017, when Conor McGregor showed up to promote his fight with Floyd Mayweather wearing a suit with pinstripes that were in actuality repetitions of the phrase “FUCK YOU” in white letters, the world hailed it as the sartorial equivalent of mixed martial arts. In fact, McGregor’s move was nothing new; he was, as usual, just doing it more violently than anyone else. But such forays into “extreme bespoke,” where custom fabrics are merely the starting point for creating garments that are literally one of a kind, are rarely seen at press conferences.

Duncan Quinn, the British-born New York–based lawyer-turned-designer whose signature style was once described as “Savile Row meets rock ‘n’ roll,” has made similar suits for well-heeled clients, though most of the messages woven into them “were not dreamt up by an ex-plumber’s apprentice who climbed to riches on the shoulders of defeated fellow pugilists,” he states. One recent commission contained the more reined moniker “warlord.” McGregor’s suits, made by California’s tailor-to-the-stars David August for a reported $4,000 to $10,000 apiece, were relatively inexpensive in a world where most individually-crafted creations begin at a minimum of at least twice the higher end of that range and spike sharply from there.