14 Dec, 2014

Basted Fitting

Desmond Merrion

Basted Fitting

The basted fitting is undoubtedly the safest route that makes the tailors many hours of labour successful.

One of the real beauties of going down the bespoke, or semi-bespoke option with me is the various basted fitting stages that I give my clients.

These basted fitting stages allow my clients to monitor their vision, and see how their ideas are taking shape and coming together. They also allow me as the cutter and tailor to keep an eye on the fit and the proportions of the garment I am making for my client.

Many tailors will only offer, or give their clients one fitting. This is often to achieve a fast turnaround time and most places that operate this way are not really giving you a tailor-made suit, it’s probably coming out a factory somewhere. However, I personally elect to give all my clients a minimum of two fittings, which consist of a skeleton baste and a forward fitting baste.

The skeleton baste is exactly as it suggests, the mere bare bones of the garment. On my skeleton baste fitting only the shell of the garment is assembled. Non of the pockets are made, nor is any other part of the coat. The skeleton baste should not have any pockets made on the coat, and it should have both the sleeves basted into the coat. You can’t give a correct fitting with a coat with only one sleeve in because the coat will be out of balance on the figure.

A coat fitting that has the pockets made and only one sleeve inserted may be a sure sign that you could be getting a factory made suit so beware.

Basted Fitting

Because nothing is fixed, or completed at the skeleton stage, the room for manoeuvre from this fitting stage is quite vast. More or less anything within reason can be adjusted or changed, and believe it or not clients do change their minds from time to time.

The picture below shows me in my Harris tweed jacket. The jacket is at the forward fitting stage.

In my Harris tweed jacket I have cut and made. This is my forward fitting stage.

The picture above shows the forward fitting stage of a tweed coat I cut and made for myself. The forward fitting stage of all my clients coats will consist of all the pockets being fully made, the coat fronts fully made, all the inside linings inserted with the collar basted in place and the sleeves basted in place.

Essentially at this stage the coat will be merely waiting for the sleeves to be fixed and set and all the delicate hand sewing to be then completed. The following pictures show a few different angles of the inside sections of my coat waiting for the vast amounts of hand sewing required to finish it off.