Multiple Fit Ousts The Little Tailors

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29901, 15 August 1962, Page 9

Multiple Fit Ousts The Little Tailors

Of the 600 or so different suit fittings produced by the big manufacturers, there is only one suit that exactly fits an individual customer, say today’s retailers.

To determine which fitting is the correct one, retailers simply take the chest, waist and height measurements of the customer, and consult the fitting charts provided by the suit manufacturers.

They freely admit that mass production and multiple fitting in the suit business had put hundreds of New Zealand tailors

out of business. But they claim it means a better deal and a better fit for the customer. The secret of the success

of mass-produced suits is said to be in the fact that every worker who helps make a factory-made suit becomes a perfectionist. His field is limited to one operation—perhaps just sewing collars and in that he is an expert.

Multiple fitting means that anybody, however tall or short, fat or thin, can get a suit to fit him out of the 1000 or more that the stores now have to stock. Extreme shapes* may have trouble getting much variety, but they will get a suit.

Average size is “38 to 40 normal,” and big stores would carry nearly 150 in that fitting. But in the “50 stout” fitting there would be only two or three suits in stock.

Four or five big manufacturers now run the multiple fitting business, making a big proportion of the 95 per cent, of today’s suits that are sold “off the hook.”