Custom Suits for El Segundo
Mr James is a short drive north of El Segundo, at 221 Culver Blvd in Playa del Rey — up Vista del Mar or Sepulveda, ten to fifteen minutes without traffic. We make fully canvassed, fully bespoke suits from $1,795, cut from a pattern drawn for one man and made by our own atelier in Southern Brittany, France.
Built for a body that does not match a block
El Segundo runs on aerospace, engineering, defence and sport, and a good number of the men who come to us from there have builds that off-the-peg tailoring handles badly — broad through the shoulder and chest, narrow through the waist, or one shoulder visibly lower than the other from years of a particular sport or a particular desk.
This is the case where bespoke stops being a luxury argument and becomes a practical one. Made to measure adjusts an existing block pattern: it can change size, but it struggles with shape. A drop of two inches or more from chest to waist, an athletic seat, a forward neck — these are pattern problems, not measurement problems.
We draw the pattern from nothing, take around thirty measurements, and photograph you from three angles because posture does not show up in a tape measure. If you have spent years buying a 42 and having the waist taken in four inches, this is the difference you have been paying alterations to approximate.
What it costs
| Two-piece suit | from $1,795 |
| Three-piece suit | from $2,045 |
| Tuxedo | from $1,795 |
| Custom shirt | $295 |
| Odd trousers | $450 |
| Overcoat | from $1,200 |
Finer mills from Drago at $2,995 to Loro Piana at $3,995. The price is set by the cloth; the making is identical at every level. Unlimited fittings and a year of complimentary alterations included. Detail on the cost page.
Custom shirts are worth a separate mention here. At $295, a shirt cut to an athletic build solves a problem that no off-the-peg collar size can: a chest that fits and a neck that does not, or sleeves that are correct in length and wrong everywhere else.
Travel, and suits that survive it
A lot of El Segundo work involves getting on planes. High-twist worsteds recover from a suitcase in a way that soft flannels do not, and a jacket with a proper canvas will settle back into shape overnight where a fused one will not.
Tell us how you actually travel and we will steer the cloth accordingly. It is the kind of recommendation that costs nothing and saves a suit.
How a commission runs
An hour, free, with Robb or Ben — one of them is at every fitting, never a salesperson. Four to six weeks in domestic cloth, six to eight in imported Italian or English. Shirts two to four weeks. Most men come in three times in total. Fittings are unlimited, so nothing is signed off until it is right.
Office visits anywhere in Los Angeles are $300, including travel and a full cloth selection — straightforward for a group commissioning together.
Come and see us
221 Culver Blvd, Playa del Rey. Monday to Sunday by appointment, roughly nine until six, forty-eight hours' notice. Free parking front and back.
Book a private consultation — or telephone 310-503-3592, or write to mrjames@bespokemrjames.com.
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