We are no longer able to take on simple mending, or corrective alterations on garments that somebody else has already tailored. It is worth explaining rather than leaving people to discover it at the counter.
What changed
Growth, mostly, and the particular shape of it. The bespoke side of the business — and the Everything Capsule Wardrobe especially — has grown faster than planned, and a workroom has a fixed number of hours in it. Every hour is either going into substantial work or it is not.
The honest arithmetic is that a full commission cannot sit behind a queue of small jobs. When it does, both suffer: the commission slips, and the small job gets the attention a rushed job gets. Doing both badly is not a service to anybody.
What we do still take
- Full garment tailoring — sport coats, suiting, shirting and skirts, professional and dress casual wear
- Formalwear and bespoke commissions
- High-end suit restoration
- Complete wardrobe projects
- Alterations on high-quality garments from any house, including ones we did not make
A simple hem is still accepted if the garment is a high-quality one, subject to the $75 transaction minimum. What has gone is the category of small corrective work on garments that have already been tailored elsewhere — unpicking somebody else's decisions is slow, unpredictable, and rarely produces a result anybody is happy with.
Why corrective work is the hard case
Because you are working inside constraints you did not set and cannot see until the garment is open. Inlay that has already been used cannot be used again. A seam that has been let out and re-pressed carries a line. A shoulder that has been reworked once has less to give the second time.
You can quote that work honestly only after opening it up, which means quoting it honestly is impossible beforehand. That is an unsatisfactory transaction for the client and an unprofitable one for us, and the combination is why it is the first thing to go.
Where to go instead
A local dry cleaner or an alterations shop, genuinely and without any implied disparagement. For basic work they are the right answer — faster, closer, and priced for the job. Recommending them is not a brush-off; it is the correct referral.
If price is the main consideration, that is also the right route. We would rather say so at the start than have somebody discover it on an invoice.
What it buys the people who stay
Attention, and the ability to keep improving rather than simply taking more in. Focusing the workroom on substantial work is what makes it possible to keep training the team, to answer properly, and to give a commission the three fittings it needs instead of two and an apology.
It also means we are not the right answer for everybody, which is a reasonable thing for a business to be.
The version of this that would have been worse
Keeping the work and quietly deprioritising it. That is the ordinary way a busy shop handles the problem: take everything in, put the small jobs at the back, and let turnaround stretch. The customer is not told, they simply wait longer each time.
It is worse because it looks like service while being the opposite. Somebody hands over a garment expecting a fortnight and gets it in six weeks, having been told nothing, and has no way to make a different decision. Declining at the counter is less pleasant in the moment and far more respectful of somebody's time.
How to tell which side of the line you are on
Roughly, and a call will settle anything ambiguous in about a minute:
- A high-quality garment needing real tailoring — yes, and this is what the workroom is for
- A high-quality garment needing a straightforward hem — yes, subject to the $75 transaction minimum
- A garment already tailored elsewhere that needs correcting — no, and this is the specific category that has gone
- Fast fashion, or mending on anything — no, and a dry cleaner will do it faster and cheaper than we could
The minimum is the part people find blunt, so it is worth explaining: a twenty-minute appointment, the fitting, the write-up and the collection cost the same whether the work is a hem or a full re-cut. Below a certain point the transaction costs more to administer than it earns, and pricing it honestly is better than pricing it in a way that has to be recovered elsewhere.
