Custom suits for Los Feliz, made by hand in France. Mr James is a European tailoring house at 221 Culver Blvd in Playa del Rey. Every garment is fully bespoke and full canvas, cut from a pattern drawn for you alone, and we come out to homes and offices across the Eastside. The first consultation is an hour and costs nothing. Book a fitting or call 310-503-3592.

Custom Suits for Los Feliz

Los Feliz is one of the few parts of Los Angeles where a great many people who work in a demanding industry almost never put on a suit. The work happens in rooms where nobody is dressed up, and that is the convention of the trade rather than carelessness. The consequence shows up in the wardrobe. Instead of five suits in rotation there are one or two tailored things, and those one or two have to carry every occasion in the year that genuinely matters: the premiere, the award evening, the funeral, the wedding where you are standing at the front rather than sitting at the back.

That is a harder brief than a daily suit, not an easier one. A suit worn four times a year is looked at closely every single time, usually by people who look at clothes professionally, and quite often by a camera. This page is about how we approach that wardrobe, and about the practical point that a house in Playa del Rey can come to an office in Los Feliz or Hollywood rather than asking you to cross the city twice.

Where we are, and what the drive actually is

We have no address in Los Feliz. The shop is at 221 Culver Blvd in Playa del Rey, down on the coast, and we have been there since 2021. From 90027 the sensible route is out to the 5 or the 101 and then west across town, and the honest answer about the time is that it depends entirely on the hour. Early, or at the weekend, it is about half an hour and the drive is pleasant. At four in the afternoon on a weekday it is a great deal longer.

Number 221 has no suite number, and parking is free in front and behind. We work Monday to Sunday by appointment, roughly nine to six, with notice. For most Los Feliz clients, though, the better answer is that we come to you.

The wardrobe of someone who does not wear a suit to work

When a client tells us they wear a suit twice a year, two things follow, and both push the commission towards bespoke rather than away from it.

The first is that the garment has a long life. A suit worn two hundred times a year is finished in three or four years; the knees go, the seat goes, the cloth thins at the elbow. A suit worn a handful of times a year is still a good suit in fifteen years, provided it was properly made and cut for the person who owns it. Fused construction, where the chest structure is glued rather than sewn, does not survive that long. The glue line eventually bubbles across the chest and no pressing puts it back. Every jacket this house makes is full canvas, a layer of horsehair and wool attached by hand, which is the only construction we offer.

The second is that the fit matters more, not less. If you wear tailoring every day you learn to carry it, and a slightly wrong shoulder reads as habit. If you put on a jacket four times a year you have no such practice, and the garment has to do the work for you. A shoulder that sits correctly, a collar that stays against the neck when you move, a sleeve that lets you reach for a glass without the whole jacket lifting: those are what make somebody who does not wear suits look comfortable in one, and they come from the pattern.

That is the difference between a genuine commission and a factory pattern adjusted to a few numbers. We do not offer made to measure, at any price. There are good houses in this city that work that way and they are not hiding anything, but it is not what we do, and a practical guide to buying a bespoke suit in Los Angeles sets out the comparison question by question.

What one or two garments should be

There is no single right answer, since it depends on the year you are about to have, but a pattern recurs often enough in Los Feliz to be worth writing down.

A navy suit, in a cloth that recovers

If there is going to be one suit, it is navy, in a plain or very quiet weave, at around ten to twelve ounces in a high twist worsted. High twist is the technical point that matters most. The yarn is spun hard, which makes the cloth springy, so it comes off the hanger after three months without a crease across the lap and survives an hour in a car on the way to Hollywood or downtown. A soft, loosely woven cloth creases in exactly the places a photograph notices. Navy is also the colour that goes everywhere, and it does not become the thing people remember about you.

A dinner suit, if your year contains evenings

The second garment, for a certain kind of Los Feliz client, is black tie. The difference between a dinner suit cut for you and a rented one is visible across a room, mostly in the shoulder and the lapel. We make custom tuxedo Los Angeles commissions in the same way as everything else, full canvas and your own pattern, and the arithmetic of owning against renting tends to settle itself after the third evening. If your year contains no such evenings, skip it.

Shirts, an overcoat, and odd trousers

Shirts are the cheapest improvement available to a wardrobe of this shape, because a collar that fits changes how the whole thing reads, and a shirt takes two to four weeks rather than months. An overcoat earns its place more in Los Feliz than it does at the beach, since the evenings up against Griffith Park are genuinely cold in January in a way the coast is not. Odd trousers come last and do more for an ordinary day than people expect. All of it is priced at consultation, garment by garment and cloth by cloth, with the figure for your own cloth settled when we meet.

We will come to your office

This is the part that usually decides it. We offer tailor home and office visits Los Angeles, and they are a normal way of working with this house rather than a courtesy extended to difficult clients. We arrive with the cloth selection, suitings, shirtings, linings and the mill books, take the measurements and the three photographs, and the later fittings come back out to you as well. The visit fee is quoted by location.

For a Los Feliz client the sum is simple. A commission means a consultation and then two or three fittings, which is three or four crossings of the city at the worst hours. Or we drive east instead. If you work on a lot, or in an office off Franklin Avenue, or at home up one of the canyons, this is the version of the process that gets finished rather than abandoned halfway through.

How the commission goes

The consultation is an hour and it is free. We talk about where the garment is actually going to be worn, which is the question that decides the cloth, and we take around thirty measurements and three photographs, front, side and back. The photographs are not decoration. They record posture, which measurements do not: a shoulder that drops, a head carried slightly forward, a stance that puts more weight on one leg. None of it shows up in a list of numbers.

The pattern is drafted for you and goes to Max, who has been the atelier of this house since Robb founded it in 2010 and who makes every garment by hand in Southern Brittany, France. We are a European house, and as far as we know the only genuinely European suitmaker in Los Angeles. Making takes 4 to 12 weeks depending on the cloth and the number of fittings, and shirts take two to four weeks. Fittings are unlimited and included, and a year of complimentary alterations on garments we have made follows delivery.

The trade itself is described on our custom tailor Los Angeles page, and what full canvas and single-client patterning amount to is set out on bespoke suits Los Angeles.

Weddings, and the things with a date on them

A wedding is the one occasion where the timetable is not negotiable. Six months is perfect and leaves room for the cloth to be chosen calmly and for a change of mind. Three months is comfortable. Six weeks is a rush, which is possible but narrows the cloth to what is in stock. Parties of groomsmen, where the aim is that six men look like they belong at the same wedding rather than identical, are set out on wedding suits Los Angeles. Funerals arrive without notice, which is the real argument for owning a dark suit before you need one.

Across the Eastside

Los Feliz sits between Griffith Park and the city, with Vermont and Hillhurst running north from Franklin Avenue, Los Feliz Boulevard along the bottom of the park, the 5 to the east and the 101 to the south. Western Avenue is the western edge, East Hollywood below, Atwater Village and Glendale across the river to the north east, the Hollywood Hills above. We have written pages for the neighbouring ground: custom suits Silver Lake south along Glendale Boulevard, custom suits Hollywood to the west, and custom suits Downtown Los Angeles for clients who do wear a suit every day. The whole picture of the city is on custom suits Los Angeles.

If you are not sure what a given invitation is asking for, which is reasonable when you dress up four times a year, we have written out what each business dress code actually means.

Questions from Los Feliz clients

Is there a bespoke tailor in Los Feliz?

Not in Los Feliz itself. Mr James is a European tailoring house at 221 Culver Blvd in Playa del Rey, west across the city, and we come out to homes and offices anywhere in Los Angeles, with the visit fee quoted by location. Every garment is full canvas and fully bespoke, and the price is settled at the consultation. Nothing we make is made to measure.

I do not wear a suit to work. Is a bespoke suit still worth having made?

More so, in our view. A suit worn a few times a year is looked at closely each time, often by people who look at clothes for a living and often by a camera, and it is still in your wardrobe in fifteen years rather than worn out in three. The cost spreads over that life, and the fit is doing more work, because somebody who wears tailoring rarely has no practice at carrying a jacket that is slightly wrong.

How many tailored garments does a wardrobe like that need?

Often two. A navy suit in a high twist worsted of ten to twelve ounces, which is correct at a wedding, a funeral, an office and a dinner, and then either a dinner suit if your year contains black tie evenings or a few proper shirts if it does not. We would rather talk you out of a fourth garment than sell you one you will not wear.

Will you come out to an office in Los Feliz or Hollywood?

Yes, and for most clients on that side of town it is the sensible way to do it. We bring the full cloth selection, suitings, shirtings, linings and the mill books, take the measurements and the photographs there, and bring the fittings back out to you, so the commission can be completed without the drive west. The visit fee is quoted by location and includes the travel.

What is the drive from Los Feliz to the shop?

Out to the 5 or the 101 and then west across the city to the coast. Early in the morning or at the weekend it is around half an hour. In the afternoon it is considerably longer. Parking at 221 Culver Blvd is free, in front and behind, and we work by appointment with notice.

What does a commission cost, and how long does it take?

Everything is priced at consultation, garment by garment and cloth by cloth, so that the figure you are given is for the cloth you have actually chosen. A suit takes 4 to 12 weeks depending on the cloth and the fittings, a shirt two to four weeks. Unlimited fittings and a year of complimentary alterations on our own garments are included rather than charged for. Half is taken when the cloth is chosen and the balance on delivery.

Do you cut for women, and who will I meet?

Yes, by the same method and on the same terms. This house has always dressed women as well as men, from a pattern drawn for her rather than a men's block made smaller. There are two of us, Robb and Ben, and you will meet one of us at the consultation and the same one through the fittings and the delivery.

Do you alter garments you did not make?

No. Alterations as a separate service are no longer something this house takes in, and we do not work on garments made elsewhere. The year of complimentary alterations belongs to the commission and applies to garments we have made ourselves.

Book a consultation

An hour, free, at the shop or at your office. Wear fitted trousers and a close shirt so that we can read your figure, and bring a garment you already like if you have one, because what you dislike about it is usually more useful to us than what you like. Book a fitting, or call 310-503-3592. Mr James, 221 Culver Blvd, Playa del Rey, CA 90293.