Custom Jeans
The welcoming of casual attire in the work place comes with some pitfalls and responsibility. Losing your jacket and tie doesn’t mean dressing like a slob, and even as jeans are now appropriate, the pair you wear for house chores is not.
New York City’s Michael Andrews Bespoke (with temporary pop-up locations in Abu Dhabi, Atlanta and Washington, D.C. throughout the year) has the ultimate answer to avoiding denim-don’ts: order custom-made jeans. The concept is that the clothes you wear the most should fit the best—no sagging in the crotch or at the ankle—and that having jeans custom-made is the way to avoid compromise.
When you walk through the doors the staff will determine how you like to wear your jeans. From there you choose from an array of different denims sourced from Japan (pictured top left). You’ll pick a shade and select from styling details like rivets, zipper or button fly, and color of stitching. The key choice will be either selvedge or stretch denim.
Selvedge (starting at $450) is an artisan fabric, tightly woven on old-fashioned shuttle looms. It’s more durable, but also harder to break in. Stretch denim ($395) incorporates anywhere from two percent to five percent elastane, a stretchy fabric with some flexibility.
A number of measurements (bottom left) are used to create a muslin test garment (bottom right), which is then adjusted to fit and sent to a facility in Shenzhen, China, a region known for its highly skilled garment stitchers and assemblers. In about two months, your jeans arrive and are further fine-tuned, before taking their proud place in your wardrobe.
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