I\u2019d like to present to you the best German bespoke\ntailors, shoemakers and shirtmakers in a sequence of articles. As an\nintroduction I\u2019d like to give you some background information. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It seems nowadays that the craft of tailoring is an\nEnglish invention that the Italians copied after the war but of course this is\nnot true. Tailoring was a craft known in all countries of Europe and one could\norder decent clothes everywhere between Stockholm and Naples. And when\nEuropeans settled in other parts of the world they took their tailoring\ntradition with them. Local craftsmen were trained and most of them quickly\nadapted to the European techniques. This is why we find a rich heritage of\nbespoke tailoring in many parts of Asia, in South America and of course the USA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The quality of workmanship that you found anywhere in\nEurope depended on the price you could pay but for the rich there was no need\nto travel to London to order a suit because the best tailors of Hamburg,\nBerlin, Munich or any other bigger town worked just as well as their colleagues\nin the West End. English and Scottish fabrics were available in most countries\nand used as the top quality alongside local weaves. Good fabrics were made\neverywhere in Europe using wool from sheep living locally or imported fibres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The number of tailors was huge in the late 19th\ncentury everywhere in Europe because ready-to-wear did not exist yet \u2013 with the\nexception of children\u2019s wear which was sold off the rack since the 18th\ncentury. If one could not afford a tailor one had to wear second hand clothes\nwhich was the only option for the majority. In Germany the decline of tailoring\nstarted slowly in the 1930s when department stores started offering\nready-to-wear clothes in a big way. Nevertheless the middle and upper classes still\npreferred custom tailoring until the 1950s. In 1956 the impressive number of\n47.115 men\u2019s tailors with 92.581 employees where officially registred in West\nGermany, not counting outworkers who worked from home. In 1994 only 1.429\nbusinesses were left in reunified Germany with 4.529 employed cutters and\ntailors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today tailors are even harder to find but a limited\nnumber is still alive and kicking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Federal Association of German Bespoke Tailors\n(\u201cBundesverband der Ma\u00dfschneider\u201d) lists about 90 ladies\u2019 and men\u2019s tailors as\ntheir members. As not every is part of the association we can assume that\naround 100-120 craftsmen are still active in Germany. This looks like a big\nnumber but of course only about a third of these craftsmen make bespoke clothes\nexclusively, many make their main turnaround with mtm clothes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Competition has led to the survival of the fittest and\nthe few remaining businesses have noticed an uprise in orders in the last ten\nto five years. People have started rediscovering handmade clothes in the 1980s\nbut now, after twenty years and steadily rising prices, Germans start to turn\naway from Italy\u2019s luxuriously priced made-to-measure labels towards craftsmen\nin their neighbourhoods. And although some of them have a slightly stuffy appearance\nthey do understand modern fashion better than tailors in other European\ncountries because since the 1920s German tailors tried to compete with\nready-to-wear rather by being fashionable than classic. This attitude is very\ndifferent from the English position that prefers not to change at all and sees\nfashion as a dreadful modern invention. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If one compares the tailoring traditions of Europe the\nGermans need not fear any competition in the quality of the workmanship, for\ninstance buttonholes are usually stitched with much greater care than in\nEnglish workrooms and pattern matching is done with almost scientific\nprecision. The weak point used to be the heavy stuffings and interlinings that\ngave the wearer the appearance of a dress dummy. Much fun and mockery has been\nmade of the German tailor\u2019s preference for horsehair canvasses but in the last 30\nyears most craftsmen have learned to make a much softer and lighter suit and\nthe traditional heavy armour has almost completely died out. This is partly the\nresult of the strong presence of Italian makers like Brioni or Kiton who had a\nstrong presence in the German market since the late 80s. They set a new\nstandard of soft tailoring that pampered the customers and forced the tailors\nto follow this trend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A real peculiarity of German tailoring is the system\nof training which also applies to other crafts. The training lasts three and a\nhalf years and it takes place both at the workshop of your master, the\n\u201eMeister\u201c, and at a state school where the theory of the trade is taught in\naddition to basic topics like Mathematics, German or Chemistry. After the\ntraining you must do a final exam. Afterwards you are permitted to be employed\nas a tailor, if you decide that you want to become a master of the trade you\nmust take another training course at your own expense, usually an evening\nschool that is visited after work. At the end of this additional master course\nanother exam has to be passed and a master piece, the \u201eMeisterst\u00fcck\u201c has to be\nproduced. Only tailors with the officially approved title of \u201eMeister\u201c are\nallowed to train new tailors and to call themselves \u201eMa\u00dfschneider\u201c which means\ncustom tailor. This system may seem a bit rigid, nevertheless it ensures\ncertain standards of training and workmanship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The training of bespoke shoemakers is similarly\nformalized. It puts great emphasis on the ability to deal with problem feet.\nThis has the advantage that German custom shoemakers are great experts in\nmeasuring and fitting. They do not only measure the feet with a tape measure\nand draw their outline on a piece of paper on which they also note any\nirregularities and problems like their English colleagues. In addition they\nwill measure the back and sides of the feet and take their imprint on carbon\npaper. Finally they will measure the feet with the desired type of heel which\nis placed under the customer\u2019s feet to get an idea of the foot\u2019s position in\nthe shoe. The whole procedure usuall takes more time than in England or Italy\nbut is similar to the tradition of Austria or Hungary. But of course the fit is\nonly one aspect of a custom shoe, the other is the way it looks. Many German\ncobblers of the older generation go for a very sturdy and solid construction\nbut the younger ones have been strongly influenced by English, Italian, French\nand Austrian artisans which results in a shoe that offers the best of all\nwords.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some German bespoke tailors and shoemakers deserve to be discovered outside their country. Before we present them we give an introduction into the specifics of the German bespoke scene.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[171],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/feineherr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3701"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/feineherr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/feineherr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feineherr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feineherr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/feineherr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feineherr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/feineherr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feineherr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feineherr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}