page_title: Bespoke
section_title: Contemporary usage
hierarchical_section_title: Bespoke / Contemporary usage
caption_attribution_description: English: Tailoring: first fit of a jacket. The jacket is two-button, peaked lapels, double vented, black wool. Español: Sastrería: Primera prueba de una chaqueta.
context_page_description: The word bespoke has evolved from a verb meaning "to speak for something" to its contemporary usage as an adjective that has changed from describing first tailor-made suits and shoes, and later, anything commissioned to a particular specification, and most recently to a general marketing and branding concept implying exclusivity and limited runs.
context_section_description: In 1990, American writer William Safire, questioned in a The New York Times article what had become of "custom, a word fading from our fashion vocabulary in a blizzard of British usage".  In a play on words, he wrote of the snob appeal of the word: "To be suitably trendy, bespeak to me of bespoke tailoring." Gentlemen's Quarterly magazine wrote that the word was "gaining in popularity", meaning "the opposite of off-the-rack". In its contemporary usage, it implies exclusivity, and is used as an aid in marketing and branding.  A 2014 India Today article described bespoke as an emerging branding trend that marketers would need to embrace.
  A 2001 google search of "bespoke and software" produced 50,000 hits, many not in the UK or the US.  The New York Times quoted an Indian tech director as saying the "global communications boom" contributed to a "superset of English vocabulary"; another business writer explained that software companies in India were accustomed to adapting their language depending on the client, so that switching between bespoke software and custom software was the equivalent of switching between lift and elevator or queue and line.  By 2008, the term was more often used to describe software, database and computer applications than suits, shirts or shoes.
  The BBC News Magazine wrote in 2008 that the word had increasingly been used to describe things other than websites, suits and shoes—like cars and furniture.  Some examples of usage of the word are: 
  bespoke medicine (a movement to better fit treatment to the individual patient),
  bespoke portfolio (an investment tool),
  bespoke shoes (shoes that are made to fit the customer's specifications),
  bespoke software (software written to the specific requirement of a customer), and
  bespoke tailoring (clothing made to the individual measurements of the customer).
  Deborah Tannen, a Georgetown University linguistics professor, told The New York Times that "Americans associate it with the British upper class", adding that the word for Americans tapped into "our individualism. We want everything made special for us. Even when it comes to salad bars." As of 2012, there were 39 applications using the term bespoke at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, with half of those having been filed only in the previous 18 months. The Wall Street Journal said that the term had started to proliferate in corporations and among investors a few years before that. A writer in The Independent said that consumers no longer wanted to "keep up with the Joneses", but wanted to set themselves apart, saying that the bespoke drive was anti-tradition, and about a desire to be different rather than identify collectively with others.
  Newsweek described the word as "monstrously distorted, abused and otherwise mangled into near meaninglessness", saying that anything can now be labeled "bespoke".  The same Newsweek writer used the word as a verb to describe ordering a custom-made pair of glasses ("bespeaking a pair of spectacles"). One French bespoke shirtmaker was said to offer 400 shades of white, to satisfy vendor-customer relationships and desire for custom-made items. The New York Times devoted an article to bespoke cocktails, which they described as "something devised on the spot to a customer's precise and sometimes peculiar specifications". In another article, The New York Times described bespoke perfumes' taking the "world of personalization to an entirely new level".
  
  A 2016 The New York Times article describes a satirical video about bespoke water and observed:
  "The B word has become an increasingly common branding lure employed by interior design companies, publishers, surgeons and pornographers. There are bespoke wines, bespoke software, bespoke vacations, bespoke barber shops, bespoke insurance plans, bespoke yoga, bespoke tattoos, even bespoke medical implants."
caption: Fitting of a bespoke jacket
exif: {"Image XResolution": "96", "Image YResolution": "96", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Paint.NET v3.30"}