Tailoring Vietnam
Custom Clothing in Vietnam
This activity was one that had me excited for months leading up to our trip. Articles and blog posts about how to select a tailor, what to have made, or how long it would take, were nearly daily reads in my travel preparation phase.
Lucky for you, I’m going to make this simple and tell you that with very little effort before you leave, you can make this tailoring process easy as pie!
If You Can Dream it They Can Make it
Coats, dresses, pants, suits, whatever it is as long as you have good pictures, they can copy it. Not wanting an exact copy of something? There are magazines, books, and sample items at every tailor, and you need only to tell them what you like about a given piece, and what you want changed to meet your taste.
Fabrics are plentiful, but if it’s leather and fur that you’re seeking, these are materials that weren’t obvious at any of the tailors we visited.
I selected a half dozen items which I had long coveted, but couldn’t afford or find, and printed multiple images from online of the items (if I could find differing photos which showed elements of the construction) from the internet, and these would ultimately service as the best thing I could have done.
Selecting A Tailor in Hoi An
First off, don’t bother researching before you go. I spent HOURS reading reviews and inquiring about folks on TripAdvisor, but it’s honestly a total waste of time. You can’t go more than ten steps in any direction without finding a tailoring shop, and asking locals (or staff at your hotel) will also not be helpful because everyone gets paid for referrals there.
Frustrated by the number of “My good friend works at this or that shop,” or being given discount cards to this or that tailor because I was a “preferred” customer at some hotel or took a tour or who knows what, we decided to cast a wide net and try several.
The first shop we visited, Yaly Couture, was a chain of tailoring shops that our hotel recommended. This shop claimed that they could do body image scans and then make additional images for you using your body scans and ship to you. The scan was a joke, but the staff and shop were welcoming, and between my husband and I, ordered three suits and two button-down dress shirts.
The second shop was Bebe couture and was one of the shops which I found on the internet while researching the trip. This shop was by far the nicest showroom, had the most satellite locations, and was the most expensive. Here we ordered one suit and two pairs of dress pants.
The third shop was a moment of travel weakness, in which we were looking for directions to a particular part of town, and an all too friendly local offered to walk with us to where we needed to go. “Fortunately” this journey landed us directly in front of her very good friend’s shop. That said, being the least fancy of tailoring establishments that we had seen, I decided that it couldn’t hurt to give it shot and ordered a dress. I don’t even know the name of this particular shop, or even if it had one, as it consisted of a table just inside the door of a larger shopping market.
What was the result of all of these orders? You might be surprised to discover that the quality was the same at all three shops. Having factored in enough time to appropriately utilize the tailors during our time in Hoi An, by allowing enough time to have more than one fitting done, we very satisfied with everything we had made.
To rank the shops we visited, I would have to say that Yaly Couture was best because I liked the feel of the showroom. I liked the experience at the no-name tailor second, because it was cheapest, probably because it didn’t have a fancy showroom. I liked Bebe the least because it was the most expensive and the showroom was overwhelming.
My advice is to pick a tailoring shop that you can easily find a second time (it’s REALLY easy to confuse the shops with each other), make sure you stay at least three days (four would be better), so you can have more than one fitting, and show them pictures of what you want.
Lastly, haggle as if your life depends on it.
