A Cuff Above

By Josh Tyrangiel

Until recently, the only garment ever made specifically for me was a dowdy macrame sweater scarred with Newport Light burns. Actually, it wasn't a sweater--just a sleeve, constructed over many years with a characteristic mix of love and laziness by my grandmother, a woman who believed that all children needed one sweater knitted just for them but who also used knitting as an instant soporific after M*A*S*H repeats, a few cremes de menthe and 40 or so cigarettes. Had she lived to be 100 instead of 75, she still would not have finished the second sleeve.

The incomplete sweater never caused me any psychic pain, but I had always wondered what it would be like to wear something built with my body in mind. Custom-made shoes can cost $3,000, and a custom-made suit twice that, but a number of High Street men's clothiers--including Brooks Brothers, Joseph A. Bank and Thomas Pink--have started to turn out dress shirts made to measure for about $200 a pop--more than the ones already pinned to cardboard and wrapped in plastic but not that much more.

So I decided to dive in and get myself some custom-made love. I made an appointment at Thomas Pink in Manhattan and was quickly ushered into a private alcove away from the prying eyes of mere retail shoppers. "We feel that the custom-made customer is making a commitment to us," said Alexander, my tailor, "and we want to reciprocate with special treatment." he then brought me a bottle of water and delivered a stirring monologue on the history of the shirt cuff--the French cuff was apparently born when Napoleon ordered extra-long sleeves so that his soldiers could wipe their nose on the excess, then fold the cuff to hide the snot--that climaxed with "Are you ready to see our cuffs?" I was ready to invade Russia.

Most of what Alexander did was shepherd me through decisions. There are two basic shapes of shirt--regular cut for suits and slim cut for jeans--but close to a dozen collars and even more cuffs. In the end, I went slim cut, basic cutaway collar, no pocket, no monogram and cocktail cuff, which Alexander described as "the cuff for anyone with James Bond aspirations." Fabric choices were pretty basic. Most colors were represented, and there were a few interesting patterns, but the real decision was about thread count--100, 170 or 200, each of which had a corresponding price escalation. After feeling the gossamer soft 200, then the merely luxurious 100, I decided on a very subtle white-on-white checked 170. Mostly because I didn't think I would be able to expense the 200.

Oddly, there wasn't much measuring involved besides the basic sleeve and collar. That's because the tailors in Pink's Ireland shop start with their regular retail-base model and then build out with the customized choices. It's like Pimp My Shirt. But since I was interested in finding someone to make a garment that hugged my contours as well as satisfied my whims, I headed to Seize sur Vingt, a small men's boutique that promised to make me a shirt from scratch.

Agustina, like Alexander, sat me down at a special desk and insisted I take a bottle of branded water. Then she showed me hundreds of swatches that ran the gamut of self-consciously bizarre names, from Bitched From the Start (a Patti Smith lyric) to Adlai Stevenson. (J. Edgar Hoover is not the gayest pattern in the store; that would be Curac,ao.) After considerable deliberation, I went with a pink-and-blue stripe called Equal Rights in a single-button cuff and a dark black-and-blue pattern called Levev in Napoleonic style.

Then Agustina measured me for 20 minutes--which was awesome. My right arm is one-quarter of an inch longer than my left, which she would note for the tailors in Italy. Such asymmetry can make a difference in a shirt's appearance if it's not factored in, but, Agustina assured me, it's physiologically normal. "Yesterday I had a customer with a three-quarters of an inch difference," she said. "He was a little bit of a freak."

She also checked out the slope of my neck, made sure I didn't wear a watch (lest she add a quarter of an inch to the cuff) and finally asked whether I felt uncomfortable about anything--you know, bodywise. Now, I'm not in the Burt Reynolds or Sean Connery league, but I did confess to a rogue tuft of chest hair in the spot between the top two buttons of a traditional dress shirt. If I wear a tie, no one knows. If I don't, I look like Teen Wolf. Agustina suggested this could be remedied with a shirt that sat slightly further back on my shoulders. I felt unburdened.

The shirts arrived after about four weeks, and I cracked them open knowing that when I put them on, no one else in the world would be dressed quite like me. I convinced myself I looked a little like James Bond in my Pink 170, and the colors in Levev and Equal Rights pop far more than on any of my off-the-rack shirts. Most of all, though, they actually fit. And it's amazing how style becomes almost irrelevant when clothes look like they were made for you and you alone.