Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1895-02-02

Small Tnilors Who Make Up the Gus
tome Own Cloth mt II Small Cost.

Small Tni1Ors Who Make Up the Gus
toners Own Cloth mt Il Small Cost.
From the New York SUM- IL
The days of SIS business suits are gone.
said a salesman as he cut off what he
would have called a ".suiting'' for a waiting
customer, You are sstHng in this what
the fashionable tailor puts into a suit for
which he used to get $50. Hard times have
brought down the prices of even the fash
ionable tailors, but dozens of men who
used to order of such makers now buy
the cloth and have 1t made up for $1S or
$40 a suit by tailors unknown to fame
Economies that were necessity Of hard
times are still practiced now that times
have improved, and there is a marked
change in the needs of men that still live
in what really poor folks would call great
comfort Scores of modest little tailor
shops are scattered all over the city in
out Of the way places, and men that were
once customers of the fashionable tailors
go to these small makers. The latter will
mend when they cannot make, and clean
when there is no mending to be done. They
will work wonders with old clothes, and
they do a great deal of altering upon gar
ments bought ready made. The large cloth
iers that make a specially of cheap suits
undersell everybody but the dealers in
ready made clothes and you may have
made to order for $50, $50 or SO at any
one of half dozen places suits that to
the eyes of the uncritical look well as
the finest product Of the fashionable tailor
Luckily for the purchaser of cheap gar
ments, nobody is over particular about the
TIT Of other mems clothes. Some tailors are
advertising mems evening suits at $50 or
less, and overcoats, which men are getting
more and more prone to buy ready made,
are made to order as low as $50.
Meanwhile the small tailor, who will
make or mend or clean, is making up the
customers own cloth at from $l2 to $40
suit. few obscure tailors make trim
pair of trousers for less than 81, while
$3.50 is above the average price: a few
large dry goods houses keep imported
cloths only and sell them at from So to
$500 yard. The average man can be
clothed with three and a half yards of 81
inch cloth. His raw material so to speak,
then. costs him from $3.50 to about $40.
The last price, at a trustworthy house,
usually guarantees the finest and heaviest
imported winter goods. The best of the
modern substitutes for broadcloth may be
had for this price. If the accommodating
little tailor be one that makes and trims
a suit for S12, the whole cost will be from
$3.50 to 81. If he charges $3.50, as the
better ones do, 1t will be from $26.50 to
$50. The most eXacting of these little men
will do the suit for $50. Their price for
making UP an evening suit is somewhere
between SO and $50, which, with the best
material would bring the cost up to SAL
or Sol for the average man, and at most
$50 for the man of extraordinary size.
Fashionable tailors seldom make such
suit to order for less than 500, and few
used to run considerably above 800.
The inconspicuous talors who are max
ing clothes for the men that still cling to
their belief in imported cloth work very
hard and employ a few hardworked jour
neymen. The head of the place is usually
the cutter. Their profits are not great
One of them, who charges $50 for making
up an evening suit, says that the work oc-
cupies him week and a half. These men
will trot from one end of town to the other
to take measures ard to receive the Gus
TONER'S cloth; they do not mind little
oblige but they dote upon cash payments.