READY-MADE SUITS

Evening Post, Volume XCVII, Issue 27, 31 January 1919, Page 9

READY-MADE SUITS

INTERESTING REVELATIONS IN

AUSTRALIA.

Some interesting disclosures relating to the tailoring and ready-made clothing industries are contained in the report furnished by the Inter-State Commission to the Commonwealth Government upon the prices of clothing in Australia (says the Melbourne Age). Dealing with ready-made suite the Commissioners state that the profits of manufacturing have been unusuaDy high since the war.

"On the wholesale side, the practice for some unexplainable reason appears to be that a greater percentage than is usual in other departments is, even in normal times', charged on to the cost price of readiy-macte suits, in ordter to fix the selling price," adds the report It goes on to say, however, that the only branch of the clothing industries which has been less instead! of morei prosperous, in the circumstances created by the war, is the tailoring trade,

"using that term to denote the genuine making by skilled tailors of suits for men, or costumes, etc., for women, to the customer's individual order." The main reason for the decline in genuine tailoring is that the increase on the prices of. raw material such as tweeds, serges, worsteds^—whether Australian or imported—and of contributing materials, such as linings, buttons, and trimmings, centre upon the genuine tailor, "while he cannot fully pass on these increases without running the risk of his customers taking the cheaper, readymade suits." Further, tbe Commission points out that increased charges have led to more turning and cleaning of old garments, and orders-for more expensive clothes, such as dress suits, have fallen away "to a remarkable extent." The advance in the cast of men's tailored: clothing is shown in the following figures :—"A man's tweed suit, which would have .been sold in 1914 for £3 11s Bd, would cost £6 8s 5d in 1918. The selling price of a suit at £4 0s 4d in 1914 was £8 9s Bd. In these calculations and gross profits of 33 l-3rd per cent., usual before the war, is added. But the Commkaion points out that this is not always obtainable now.

Dealing with unfair practices; in the tailoring trade, the Commission states that "it appears that there has sprung UD quite a largo number- of 'so-called tailors' shops, who advertise mnde-to-order suits, but these suits are really factory made, the only difference between them, and slop, or ready made, clothing being that the customer's measure is taken and he has one 'try on." All the work from cutting out to finishing is done in a factory by, a. contractor, and by far the greater part ol the making is machine work. The cost, of producing such a suit is so far below the cost of a genuinely -tailor made suit of similar materials that after charging the public on the footing of a rnmdfe to order suit, the profits have proved tempting enough to induce- a gTea-t expansion of this class of trade. A secondary imposition practised in such shops is to advertise 'uncalled for orders.' Suits for which no customer has ever been measured, <md therefore worth no more, to the individual purchaser than if he bought ready-made clothing, are sold as having been made to the choice and fancy, as well as the order, of some customer who has gone off -without paying. The. purchaser, taking- over the forsaken garments of this phantom defaulter, considers he has a bargain when he gets them a Kttl» below the cost of a made to order suit, though much above that of a ready-made one."