THE WARDROBE
Early March · New York · A Morning · Hosted by the Court
The Wardrobe is a morning in early March. A tailor and a shirtmaker are received in a borrowed room, measurements are taken, cloth is chosen, and nothing is sold on the day.
Six places. What arrives later arrives in time for the season.
The Form
A shop is arranged to conclude something. A fitting is arranged to begin something, and the two cannot happen in one room without the first spoiling the second.
Which is why nothing is sold here. The tailor comes to measure and to talk about cloth. The member leaves having ordered nothing and decided everything, and settles it afterward at his own pace rather than under a salesman’s eye.
The word for what is being made is bespoke, and it is older than the trade’s use of it. Cloth that a customer had spoken for was said to be bespoken, as against the cloth left on the shelf for anybody. The distinction has not changed. A pattern is cut for one body and belongs to that body afterward.
That is the part most people never reach. Ready-to-wear is cut to an average that describes nobody. A bespoke pattern is drawn from one particular set of shoulders and kept by the house, so the second suit takes less time than the first and the tenth takes almost none.
The Morning
Six members, by appointment, across the morning.
The tailor measures first and the shirtmaker after, because they measure differently and for different things. A shirtmaker attends to the neck, the cuff, the yoke and the pitch of a sleeve. A tailor attends to the shoulder, and everything else follows from it.
Cloth is chosen from bolts rather than from garments. This takes the longest and should. A cloth in a book looks nothing like the same cloth made up, and the tailor’s work in that hour is to say what a cloth will do rather than what it looks like.
The Court’s own calendar decides a good deal of what gets ordered. A member who means to keep the season needs morning dress by June and white tie by December, and both take months.
Nothing is concluded on the day. Measurements are kept, the order is placed later, and what is made is delivered directly.
What Is Asked
The code is stated in the invitation.
Come in something that fits. A tailor reads a great deal from what a man is already wearing, and arriving in the wrong shoulder tells him the wrong thing.
Telephones stay in pockets. A photographer attends for part of the morning, and what is worth keeping is sent afterward.
Nobody is pitched at the table. This applies to the tailor as much as to the members.
The Places
Six. It is the smallest number the Court sets, because a morning holds six fittings and no more.
Members are written to in January. The sum is stated in the invitation and covers the morning itself. What is ordered afterward is settled directly with the houses and is no part of it.
