What a bespoke suit costs.

The short answer

In Mumbai today, a garment honestly made bespoke — a pattern drafted for you alone, cut by hand, built through fittings — begins around the price of a good ready-to-wear designer suit and rises with the cloth. The cloth is the variable. A suit in a dependable house worsted and the same suit in Loro Piana or Dormeuil cloth are the same labour and very different invoices. At RAJASAB a two-piece starts at ₹35,000 in house cloth; the exact figure is confirmed once the cloth is chosen.

Where the money actually goes

The cloth. Half the conversation. Mill, fibre, weight, weave. A 280-gram tropical worsted for Bombay heat is a different animal — and a different price — from a winter flannel. The books at the atelier run from our house worsteds to Loro Piana, Ermenegildo Zegna, Vitale Barberis Canonico and Dormeuil.

The pattern. In true bespoke, a paper pattern is drafted from your measurements and kept for life. It is why your third suit fits better than your first. Made-to-measure adjusts a factory block; bespoke starts from nothing but you.

The hands. A bespoke coat passes through a cutter and tailors who do nothing else. Hand-padded lapels, hand-set sleeves, buttonholes sewn rather than punched. Hours, not minutes.

The fittings. Two fittings, each one a correction the machine-made garment never receives.

How to tell you are being quoted for the real thing

Ask three questions. Will a pattern be drafted for me and kept? How many fittings, on my body? May I see the canvas? A fused, one-fitting, seven-day suit can be a perfectly good suit — but it is made-to-measure, and it should be priced like it. If the quote seems too fast and too low for hand-work, it is not hand-work.

Is bespoke worth it over made-to-measure?

If you wear a suit a few times a year, made-to-measure may serve you. If the suit is for the days that matter — a wedding, or a working week of meetings — bespoke is worth it: the pattern is yours and every later suit starts from it.

How long does it take?

Four to five weeks for a suit, with two fittings. We aim to finish a week before your date. Wedding work in season needs more time. The planner will tell you whether your date is workable. We take a small number of urgent orders when the atelier has room. Write with your date and we will tell you the same day whether we can. How long a bespoke suit takes →

Every mill, and what it comes to

What is written above explains where the money goes. If what you want is the figures themselves, we publish them in full: a two-piece suit from ₹35,000 in house cloth to ₹2,80,000 in the most expensive cloth we hold, mill by mill, with the range each bunch actually spans. What the cloth costs →

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