One of the things that is well known in Hoi An is getting clothes tailored to you. The English term is bespoke, and I decided to get some high quality custom tailored clothing.
There are tailor shops all over the city. I have seen probably a few hundred. The thing is that many of them offer low quality goods, and use sweatshops to build them. So I started doing research. The research was surprisingly hard to do, as there is a lot of misinformation about them. And all the shops have great reviews on Trip Advisor. I narrowed it down to 4 shops that kept their production in house, and had a great reputation. Those four were A. Dong Silk, Yaly Coulture, Kimmy Tailor and BeBe. I couldn’t decide, so I asked my sidekick and best friend where to go. She said Kimmy Tailorr, as it was the name of one of her childhood friends.
I was a little intimidated by the experience, but we walked in and the sales lady at Kimmy Tailor guided me through the process. First I picked out the suit, wool and brownish in color. I got a nice paisley lining. I also picked out some purple for pants, and two shirts – one blue and one purple. I have wanted purple pants for a long time, and I just haven’t found them.
After going through a bevy of options, that I will not bore you with, they measured me. They took a lot of measurements, maybe 20 or so. And I was to come back for three fittings.
The first fitting at Kimmy, the clothes were rough cut. They had their shape but not their trim such as buttons. We made some adjustments, and were told to come back in a few hours. I was quite excited at this point. The shirts were lush, and felt great. The suit was going to fit perfect. Oh and the lining was gorgeous.
We arrived back at 4:30 to Kimmy Tailor, to get the 2nd fitting on the bespoke experience. I first tried on the purple pants. They looked great but needed a bit taken in at the waist. One shirt was complete and it looked fantastic on me. The 2nd shirt was almost done but I could tell would fit great. But the suit? It had some issues. There were issues in the shoulders and the collar with bunching. Our sales lady at Kimmy proceeded to get several other tailors opinions on it. With the 2nd one, they started arguing in Vietnamese. We couldn’t understand what they were saying but I could tell it wasn’t good. The arguing took place as they worked on the clothing. The sales lady eventually said, you know what, we have to make a new jacket. Panic set in, as could we get it done before we left? She assured me they could. But she wanted the master tailor to take a look. After waiting for maybe 20 minutes, he joined us and took a look. Again, arguing proceeded. But then, he said ok. We fix by tomorrow. Apparently there was a mess up on the sewing of the lining, but he could fix it.
We returned this morning to try it on. And it turned out perfect! The purple pants fit excellent, the shirt I tried on fit perfect. And the jacket was fixed! We were told to come back in an hour to pick them up, while they finished a few small things.
While the process had its ups and downs, I was quite pleased with the end results. I got a suit, 2 shirts and a pair of pants for $337, a good deal if you ask me. I would definitely recommend Kimmy Tailor to others trying their luck at tailoring in Hoi An.
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