For men, the comparison with cars should be understandable here. There is the Indian two-seater Tata for 3,500 in India, and there is the Bugatti La Voiture Noire, which was purchased by a Swiss man for 17,000,000. You can commute to work, visit friends, and even drive to the sea in Monaco with both, but there are still differences. And it’s not just because it’s easier to find a parking space for the Tata.
The production costs for a cheap suit made of synthetic materials and inexpensive components mass-produced in Asian or African countries with cheap labor do not exceed 5. If you pay 100, you are mainly paying for logistics, advertising, the seller’s administrative costs, customs duties and local taxes, and the profit margin. Usually, but not always, such a suit is poorly cut, and finding one that fits your figure well is a matter of luck. Even in this case, suits made with cheap technologies cannot hold their shape for long and soon look more like a sack than a suit.
If a mass-produced suit can be made by a seamstress in just two hours, a high-quality suit requires much more manual labor, and a high-quality suit requires between 40 hours (with minimal mechanization, where manual labor does not compromise quality) and 120 hours (for special orders with a large number of complex elements and a very difficult customer figure) of work by an experienced tailor. A more standard suit requires 60 hours of manual labor. And that’s just the tailor. Add to that expensive fabrics, pattern development, equipment, and all the same costs we listed for a cheap suit, but with higher requirements and therefore higher costs.
This results in the cost dependency on the production location. In low-cost European countries, a tailor without a well-known name who is capable of making a good suit costs from $9 per hour including taxes. For a suit made from the cheapest Super 100 wool fabric with viscose lining, the fabric and equipment costs are from 160. In total, we pay 520 for 40 hours of labor and materials.
Now you can check out many offers yourself. A tailor of this caliber costs from 4/hour in China, Vietnam, or Thailand. Can you buy a quality suit there for 250 with delivery? Obviously not.
Italian suits have long been popular in Switzerland. Italy has traditionally produced a large quantity of high-quality fabrics. Historically, it made sense to have quality suits sewn there. Unfortunately, young people in Italy are becoming less and less interested in the hard work of tailoring, and many tailors are retiring without passing on their skills to apprentices. More and more often, an “Italian suit” in Switzerland is no longer a quality product, but a marketing ploy for the trusting buyer. The classic “sartorialist” tailors a suit in the standard 60 hours and values his work at a minimum of 30-40 euros/hour, producing no more than three suits per month. The actual waiting time for such a specialist is 3 to 18 months. Taking into account the fabric, taxes, and retail markup, such a suit can be purchased in Switzerland for at least 5,000, but more and more often, even for this price, you will only be offered a bottle of champagne, good Italian fabric, and a familiar name.
With expensive and very expensive suits, an important part of the price is the fabric and the trimmings. Vicuna wool from the most expensive fabric manufacturers can cost you 20,000 for the main fabric of the suit alone. Special abrasion-resistant linings with a high silk content, handmade buttons, and other such “little things” can cost another $1,000.
Now, you might say that the hourly wage of a tailor without a well-known name in Switzerland is 45/hour, while world-renowned tailors from Savile Row charge up to 100/hour, so even if they make me a suit out of vicuña wool, it shouldn’t cost 50,000. Unfortunately, you’re right. Very often, the high price is not due to what you get, but to the brand, the cost of renting a store on Bahnhofstrasse, or the greed of the seller.
It’s good that you now understand what determines the price of a good suit. Whether you pay for the name and local production is a decision that everyone has to make for themselves. After all, if you’ve paid a lot of money not for a beautiful legend, but for a good suit, it will always give you the feeling you deserve.