Aston Blake
01-83 Millenia Walk, tel: 6337-3504
New British-Australian label Aston Blake opened in April last year in Millenia Walk.
Local designer and stylist Kovit Ang designed the label's spring/summer 2010 collection.
With contemporary fashion details such as black contrast buttons and angular yoke and cuff designs, the fresh label has already attracted interest for potential collaborations from tailors from London's Savile Row and Jermyn Street.
The brand is set to open a store in Sydney next year.
Degree of customisation: The brand has standard design palettes and adds seasonal ones. Customers can choose from slim and regular cuts for made-to-measure pieces.
Advice from in-house stylists is given on fabrics and colours that suit a client's skin. A full bespoke service is also available, price on request, where a pattern is cut for an individual client and kept for all future orders.
The wait: Two weeks.
Price: Made-to-measure button-down shirts for work are $225 to smart-casual and casual shirts, $265 to premium line, which uses Egyptian cotton, $325 to $425.
Made-to-measure shirts are priced the same as off-the-rack options.
Boss Selection
01-17 Ion Orchard, tel: 6238-9328
Boss Selection, launched seven years ago, is the premium label of German fashion house Hugo Boss. The first Boss Selection store here opened last July in Ion Orchard.
Degree of customisation: While Boss Selection's tailored suits are available as off-the-rack options, all alterations required to fit the customer are provided.
For shirts, sleeve length, sleeve diameter, shirt body and length can be modified.
For suits, jacket sleeve length and diameter, jacket length and collar, pant waist, body and length can all be altered. The suit is then finished with hand-sewn buttons by an in-house master tailor.
Other special requests, such as embroidery of initials on the inner lining, can also be done.
The wait: An average of three working days.
Price: From $4,029, with lifetime complimentary alteration services.
CYC Custom Shop
02-12 Raffles Hotel Arcade, tel: 6336-3556
This was set up in 1935 by Chiang Yick Ching and his wife Foo Ah Neok from Ningbo, China.
The shop has long offered customised shirts made from fabrics from the same mills as designer brands like Hugo Boss, Ermenegildo Zegna and Prada.
Two years back, the shirtmaker began to offer custom-made jackets, vests and pants.
Degree of customisation: CYC offers over 1,000 designs and colours for shirts. For whites alone, there is a choice of more than 30 designs. There are also over 50 collar, cuff types and pocket styles. Shirts can be personalised with monograms.
For suits, there are double and single-breasted styles, British-style with moderately tapered sides and little shoulder padding, Italian-style padded shoulders, and less structured American styles. One and two button suits are available.
The wait: Seven days for a shirt. For a suit, two weeks are required for fittings and another two weeks for the suit to be ready.
Price: Made-to-measure shirts range from $99 to $300, depending on material and button types. Suits from $650.
Ermenegildo Zegna
01-34 Paragon Shopping Centre, tel: 6735-8147
Italian suit expert Ermenegildo Zegna is one of the biggest global producers of fine fabrics (2.3 million metres per year) and also manufactures suits for labels such as Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and Tom Ford.
The label's Su Misura made-to-measure service for shirts started here in the late 1990s. It is available for suits, shirts, ties, trousers, coats, shoes and belts.
Degree of customisation: For shirts, customers can choose from 300 different fabrics. Buttons, collar styles and cuff designs can also be customised.
For suits, there are over 450fabrics to choose from. Garments can also be customised to suit different functions, like sharper and slimmer silhouettes for formal occasions and relaxed shoulders for more casual events.
The wait: Five to eight weeks.
Price: Suits, $3,900 to $35,000, depending on fabric and construction. Shirts, $500 to $1,500.
T.M. Lewin
B1-20 Ion Orchard, tel: 6509-8570
The English brand, best known for affordable off-the-rack shirts and suits, started offering pre-order suits here after opening last June. It now has five stores here.
All offer pre-order suits except the Changi Airport Terminal 2 store. Shirts, however, are all off-the-rack.
Degree of customisation: Customers can choose the fabric and fit. Twice a year, T.M. Lewin introduces more than 20 new fabrics, mostly in wool. The four cuts available are contemporary fit, English cut, classic cut and dinner suit.
The wait: Two weeks.
Price: $599 to $699, which is the same as an off-the-rack suit from the brand.
This article was first published in Urban, The Straits Times.
