Custom Threads: Urban Tailor

“If you look at most people on the street you will recognize patterns. Some fashion trends nobody can really escape, because even the fashion buyers of big mall or retail chains buy clothing because of trends.” So says Jay Uhdinger, one half of the duo behind Urban Tailor, a new clothing label which “offers individual clothing to individual people that expresses their unique style.”

Uhdinger co-founded the Bangkok-based brand with Salinya Suthinarakorn, to let people design their own truly unique garment from their website, which is then hand-crafted in the Urban Tailor workshop, and shipped out to anywhere on the map. “The fit is another issue. Everyone’s body is different, some have longer arms or a longer upper body but the fashion industry just offers standard sizes for standard humans. But humans are not (standard). Everyone is different.”

On the Urban Tailor website you personalise EVERY step of the design process- I’m not kidding. You control the lining material, the cuffs, the hood, the fabrics, the zipper and buttons, the logo placement- it is unreal the level of customisation you can give your garment. You just start with the basic model for the Classic Hoodie, Asian Track Jacket and Banadana Jacket, and let your creativity go wild.

Below: a cross-section of some fabrics available at Urban Tailor

Another distinguishing mark of the Urban Tailor brand is a dedication to ethical manufacturing and rejection of sweatshop-produced clothing. Uhdlinger traces his disgust for the exploitive practice back to actual sweatshop visits made while working for a major Thai design studio. “They get paid so little and have no real chance to climb up the ranks, so some of them spend their whole life like this. Living in a camp near the factory and working the same job over and over again, every day.”

“Companies try to get a clean image by showing how eco-friendly materials they use but they are not mentioning the human cost and the living conditions of their workers,” he continued. “We have personal relationships to our tailors and pay them well. I’m convinced you can do business in an ethical way and still succeed. I prefer to earn less but feel good what I’m doing instead of being greedy and making other peoples live miserable.”

Below: fancy an Urban Tailor pre-designed Classic Hoodie?

Links!:

The Urban Tailor
SNJ Brand Collective

Posted in Art & Culture by Martin Skivington on March 24, 2008.

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