Founded in 2008, Cad & The Dandy is a relatively young bespoke tailoring shop. Since their founding, Cad & The Dandy moved into a second London shop on Savile Row, rescued Götrich (the world's second oldest continually operating bespoke tailor) and brought it on as a sister business, and opened a showroom in New York City. Quite the operation for any tailoring shop, let alone one only a dozen years old.
Cad & The Dandy's New York Showroom
The NYC team, made up of co-founder Ian Meiers and the inestimable Steve Knorsch (better known as The Snob Report), recently started offering trunk shows in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and Boston every couple of months. Importantly, unlike other Savile Row tailors, Cad & The Dandy's prices are quite affordable, sometime even cheaper than the ready-to-wear prices of brand's like Ring Jacket.
Cad & The Dandy's price chart, with prices based on fabric. My suit fell in the fourth row from the bottom.
This combination of affordability and availability, and a good bit of Steve's excellent company, convinced me to commission my first bespoke suit. I'd also recently come to realize how much Italian-style tailoring dominates my wardrobe, so it made sense to commision my next big piece from a British tailor.
The first and biggest decision was of course the fabric. This can often be a tortuous choice, but luckily I'd been dreaming of a three-piece navy herringbone suit for some time, so this narrowed down my options significantly. I wanted a three season suit and since I live in DC where the summers are hotter and longer than the winters are cold, we settled on an 11 oz. Super 100's from Yorkshire Textiles.
What most drew me to this cloth was its goldilocks qualities, a herringbone stripe that was wide, but not too wide, and a navy color that wasn't too close to black, but also not too blue.
In total, I did three fittings with the Cad & The Dandy team. During the first fitting, they took my measurements and noted my preference for trouser width and rise, lapel width, and pocket design. I also tried on a stock jacket so they could assess shoulder slope, my dropped shoulder, and sleeve pitch. The only modifications from the house style I asked for was a wider waistcoat lapel and on the trousers, a rounded closure with a button instead of a square closure with a hook and bar.
The second fitting was a toile mock-up based on the measurements from the first fitting. The results were already pretty close, only a few minor adjustments to the trousers and even fewer for the jacket and waistcoat were required.
The third fitting was in the finished suit. It was exhilarating to see it all come together and the suit was very nearly perfect, just a few more minor alterations needed to hone the fit. The most intriguing modification decided on during this fitting was shortening the waistcoat in the back so it lies better over the trousers. However, this will also create a more aggressive angle from front-to-back on the waistcoat, which I think will be sharp.
This was my first bespoke commission, so I don't have a long history to compare this experience against, but I have commissioned one high-end made-to-measure suit from Anglo-Italian in the past and I've spent a lot of time at tailors in the last three years getting to know the process and how my body works with tailoring, so I feel comfortable evaluating how well a tailor is assessing my fit.
By these measures Cad & The Dandy did remarkably well and was easily my best in-person tailoring experience. Communication was excellent throughout and having visits every two months was just the perfect schedule. What most impressed me about the Cad & The Dandy team was their willingness to listen to me about how I knew tailoring fit my body at the beginning of the process and to acknowledge minor flaws during the fittings rather than try to convince me the problem would go away after a few wears. It's often nerve-wracking to point these issues out to a tailor and their willingness to listen and address my concerns was refreshing and far from the norm I've experienced with suit makers or alterations tailors.
The modifications from the final fitting are being made now and I should have the final, finished suit back in a few weeks. I couldn't be more excited to share it with all of you soon.
