At Garrison Tailors we pride ourselves in offering quality British made suits, but what makes them so special?

In the British tailoring industry there is a long held quotation that arguably has greater meaning today than at any other time…

“The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten”

That quote, is something that prompted our decision to do the right thing when it came to making our suits. To use British fabrics, sewn by artisan craftsmen here in the UK, ultimately supporting and investing in a British Industry.

The overwhelming bulk of suit manufacturing by UK brands is carried out overseas, sourced from Turkey, Portugal, Eastern Europe, India and China. Additionally, some British suiting brands will use British fabric but opt to send this fabric abroad to be cut and sewn, making the finished product as much as 50% cheaper than having the suit finished here in the UK.

Garrison Tailors does not seek to compete with the high street fashion brands, instead opting to buy top quality fabric and maintaining the British heritage of our products, a decision which is much more important to us than affordability for our initial Signature clothing range. Making that decision to produce high-quality clothing was a positioning decision for the brand. Our British made tweed suits aren’t designed as mass market options, the quality of our items is much more in line with the era of the Peaky Blinders, not as costumes or as fancy dress items but as an investment in luxury and quality.

Steven Knight:

“Lots of people seem to admire the way the Peaky boys look and whilst conventional shops and outlets may offer a cheaper alternative it’s hard to find clothes that are of the same classic cut or quality fabric. Our traditional producers really know their stuff, they come from generations of tailors which is why our standards are so high when it comes to the clothes we produce.”

Our fabrics have been sourced and supplied by Abraham Moon & Son Ltd of Guiseley Leeds. Abraham Moon have an international reputation and have been supplying fabric to the British fashion houses for 175 years, the quality of their tweed is without question and without equal.

We chose to have all of our Signature suits, waistcoats and caps made here, by British craftsmen. Our producers are artisans that have generations of tailoring experience, using age-old methods. Each and every component of our suits is cut from individual paper-patterns, laid out on the tweed, traced around using chalk and cut by hand using shears that have been cutting tweed for decades.

Each suit takes between 30 and 50 hours to complete from start to finish because a Garrison Tailors suit is made from start to finish by a single pair of hands, in much the same way as a suit from Savile Row.

Overseas factories have their suit patterns stored as digital files on computer controlled laser cutting machines, allowing the machine to calculate the most economic way to use the fabric and arranging the various panels of the suits to get the maximum use out of the material used. There is no doubt that workers that assemble these components are skilled but their products are ultimately designed for a mass market and are therefore by definition a wholly different product from the British made luxury tweed suits that we offer.

Our suits are not made to compete with anyone, we make our suits to showcase the very best of the style and era which reflects the Peaky Blinders TV series, to champion the tweed and to celebrate the tailors skill in producing a product that we believe in and that we are proud of. We understand that our suits will not be affordable to everyone, but we aim to produce the highest quality suit that will last the customer for decades, if not their entire lifetime and to that extent it represents, unarguably, fantastic value for money.

Quality comes at a price, a family of highly skilled tailors with decades of experience, at the very top of their profession quite rightfully demand a high-price for their time and experience and if we didn’t choose to pay these prices you wouldn’t be receiving a high quality, luxury suit from Garrison Tailors. Instead, you would be receiving a mass produced garment that differs in no way from the suit of the gentleman stood next to you.

When you buy a Garrison Tailors tweed suit you make an investment in British Craftsmanship, to be worn for pleasure and with pride for the story and heritage that comes with it.