Want the shirt off his back? It may be harder to snag if it`s custom-made. For the man who`s hard to fit, a custom-made shirt is a necessity. It`s the difference between looking like a million bucks or looking like you`re decked out in hand-me-downs.
”About 60 percent of our custom-made shirt customers buy them because of sizing problems,” says Blaine Lucas, merchandiser of men`s dress shirts at Brooks Brothers in New York.
”Most people that can wear ready-made (shirts) will,” says Sid Shapiro, owner of Syd Jerome men`s store at 2 N. LaSalle St. Like Lucas, Shapiro estimates about 60 percent of his custom-made shirt business stems from fit problems.
Standard sizing for ready-made shirts ranges from 14 1/2 to 17 1/2 inches around the neck and about 32 to 36 inches for sleeve length. Which means if you have an 18-inch neck or larger, you could choke to death. Or, if you`re smaller, you could look like the Incredible Shrinking Man. (The oversized look has a place in the fasion world, but this isn`t it.)
And even if you fall within the parameters of standard sizing, that doesn`t guarantee good fit. Neck and sleeve sizes for ready-made shirts fall in increments of 1/2 inch. Custom-made shirt services offer more precise fit- 1/4 inch or better.
Yet, the custom shirt market is as driven by idiosyncrasies as by non-standard physiques.
Not right off the line
”I haven`t bought a shirt off the rack in 20 years,” says Nick Celozzi, president of Celozzi-Ettleson Chevrolet Inc., an automobile dealership in Elmhurst. Celozzi`s reason for going the custom-made route? An urge for individuality: ”In a custom-made shirt, you don`t see yourself coming and going,” he says.
Like Celozzi, many men want control of fabric, collar style, pocket treatments, etc. ”I just got my first custom-made shirt recently because I fell in love with a certain French blue cotton fabric and couldn`t find it in the body style I wanted,” says Paul Buckter, merchandise coordinator of men`s tailored clothing at Bloomingdale`s in New York.
Indeed, in an era of mass production, a custom-made shirt offers a chance to break with conformity.
”I want a button-down collar with more of a roll” or ”I want a pocket with pleats” are just a couple of the requests that Beatrice DeBartolo, co-owner of D. DeBartolo & Co., a custom shirt shop at 330 S. Wells St., hears each day. ”We`ve had men walk in with pictures from magazines, sketches or even ideas they have seen in a movie,” says DeBartolo. Once she rented a video of ”Dr. Zhivago” because a customer wanted a formal shirt with ruffles down the front.
Collar converts
Getting a distinct, unusual and/or offbeat collar is the reason many men convert to custom.
”The collar is the most important element of a shirt because it frames your face,” says Mortimer Levitt, founder and owner of The Custom Shop, a New York-based shirtmaker with 76 stores across the country.
The Custom Shop offers nine collar styles, including the ”Giorgio Armani,” which features a low back and short collar points.
Time and money
If you`re in a hurry, a custom-made shirt may not be the answer. Most custom-made shirts are made out of town or even out of the country and delivery takes anywhere from five to eight weeks. Only a handful of small tailor shops in the Chicago area, including D. DeBartolo & Co. and Alberto`s Custom Tailor at 5531 W. Irving Park Rd., still make shirts on premise. Here, delivery takes two or three weeks.
When Levitt founded The Custom Shop in 1936, his custom-made shirts sold for $2.15. Each. Times have changed, and so have prices. Today, a shirt from The Custom Shop starts at $52.50 (although there is an introductory offer for new customers: four shirts for $188 or $47 per shirt).
A quick check of local men`s stores revealed custom-made shirts range from $65 to $225, with fabric responsible for the variation in prices.
Yet, one man`s luxury is another man`s bargain. ”For some, the price might be a drawback, but not for me,” says Maurice Grant, a 34-year-old Chicago attorney who buys custom-made shirts because of his tall, slender frame. Grant pays about $100 per shirt. But, being a fan of Zegna suits, Grant says he would buy the same brand in shirts, if they fit. Since Zegna shirts start at $135, Grant comes out a little ahead.
