Our Standards
This page is the practice in full. If anything on a listing contradicts it, the listing is wrong and we want to know.
Inspection
Every garment is inspected in hand twice. The two passes ask different questions.
The first pass asks whether the make is consistent with the house on the label. We work against a written list of construction markers for each house: the shoulder and sleevehead, the buttonholes, the canvas under a pinch, the lining and internal finish, the pockets and edge stitching, and the label's own wording where it can be dated. Those lists are published on each house page. They are the intake checklist and your reference at the same time, and they are published so that you can check the reasoning rather than take the conclusion on trust.
Many of the markers confirm a region rather than a maker. Most Neapolitan tells confirm Naples, and the lists label them that way. Every marker published here is one we could corroborate from two independent sources. Where we could only find one, we left it out, because a wrong tell does more harm than a missing one.
The second pass ignores the label and looks for damage. Shine at the seat, cuffs and elbows, checked under raking light rather than flat light. Nap loss. Moth, inside and out, including under the collar and in the pocket bags. Repairs, rewoven or otherwise. Prior alterations and whether they can be reversed. Odour. Then the specific places that particular construction fails first: the armhole piping on a lean Neapolitan interior, the in-breast pocket on an English coat cut straight into the lining, the membrane on an older technical cloth.
Words we will not use
Authenticated does not appear anywhere on this site, and nor does any word that claims a certificate, a check by a third party, or a permission from the house, because each of them asserts a process that does not exist here. What we write instead is what is true: inspected in hand against known construction markers.
There is no as-is clause either. The standard clause in this trade reads something like we cannot guarantee the garment is entirely free from minor flaws, which is permission in advance to leave things out. We would rather find the flaw.
The condition scale
Six grades, applied identically to everything, with three rules that sit above them.
A. Any hole is disclosed, at any size, including pin-size. Any stain is disclosed, at any size. There is no threshold below which a fault goes unmentioned.
B. Every named fault is photographed, and the photograph is in the main gallery.
C. A prior alteration is a disclosure rather than a fault. It is named in Condition and its effect on the alteration reserve is given in Measurements.
| New with tags | Unworn, with the maker's tags still attached. |
| New without tags | Unworn and unaltered, tags gone. Cuff buttonholes uncut, pockets still tacked shut, basting still in the vents. |
| Excellent | Worn, but not visibly. No shine, nap loss or seat and elbow wear under raking light. Any alteration is reversible within the garment's own reserve. |
| Very good | Light wear, named and located, that does not change how the garment hangs and that a tailor or a good presser can correct. |
| Good | Wear you will see across a room or feel in the hand, named and photographed. Covers rewoven repairs, replaced linings, sleeves shortened past the point of return, and sun fade. Serviceable, and will stay serviceable. |
| Satisfactory | Specific faults a tailor must address before the garment is worn. Priced for the work, with the repair quote published on the listing. |
Measurement
Every measurement is taken from the garment, laid flat, never from the label and never from a size chart. Centimetres first, inches alongside. The method for each figure is on How We Measure, including which point on the cuff the tape stops at and whether a figure is doubled, the two places where a number can differ by a lot without anyone lying.
Where a garment carries a usable alteration reserve, it is measured and published: seam allowance in the jacket sides, the trouser waist and the hems. Where a house's construction leaves little or none, the listing says so, and says to buy on the measurements as they stand.
What we refuse
Nothing below Satisfactory is listed. Active moth infestation. Persistent odour, whether smoke, damp or mildew. Structural failure of the canvas or a collapsed chest. Anything altered so far past its own reserve that it cannot be brought back toward its cut. And anything we cannot identify with enough confidence to describe: if we cannot tell you what it is, we will not sell it to you.
If we get it wrong
Tell us. If a garment differs from its listing in cloth, condition, measurement or make, it comes back at our cost and we refund in full. That undertaking has no window attached to it beyond what the law already gives you. A measurement we published incorrectly does not become correct after fourteen days.