The next step after finding your favorite fabric by visiting Chiangmai Fai Thong and selecting your buttons at U-Raiwun Shop is, of course selecting a tailor. I had three shirts of my carefully selected fabric made at Fashion King, 89/2 Room G, 113-114 Kalae Food and Shopping Center, Chang Klan Road, Chiang Mai, 50100. This was not a good experience. I provide exact models of the size and shape of the shirts I wanted and the tailors could not follow a simple pattern.
The first shirt I made was of a nice sweater like material. The owners complained that the material was “stretchy” and difficult to sew. The tailors actually sowed the buttons on backwards and tried to convince me it was more fashionable because the name of the buttons could be visable if backwards. Even though I provided an exact pattern, the shirt came back looking like a robe, it was at least three to four inches too wide in the shoulders and body. The owners tried to convince me it was fine!
I also provided an exact model of a perfect fitting long sleeve shirt and a beautiful weave from the villages outside of Chiang Mai. The shirt came back a bit wide in the shoulders, but that was OK. However, the sleeves were about 3 inches too long! At this point I became a bit exasperated and asked the owners why the did not check the shirts against the models I gave time, and they just argued with me, repeatedly. It too two more attempts to get the sleeves correct!
Finally, after many days, I got the shirts “almost right” but not the tailored fit I was expecting. The going price to make a shirt in Chiang Mai is around 400 Baht. You can get them cheaper if you bargain, but since I was asking and hoping for quality, I paid Fashion King 500 Baht per shirt. So, I paid 25% more than others tailors were asking, and found the Fashion King tailors could not follow a simple model without making excuses and complaining.
I saw many customers in Fashion King. Most of them were tourists in a hurry. My experience is that these tailors who cater to tourists do not really care about quality because the tourist are off to another city and they can’t really take the goods back very easily. By the way, this is true for many tailors and shoe makers in Thailand; so beware!
To make a long story short, I do not recommend Fashion King in the Kalae Shopping Center for tailoring casual clothes from hand-made fabrics. On the other hand, the owners are nice people and the fabrics I picked were special cottons for casual wear, not the normal dress shirt material most people make at the “tourist tailors” in Thailand. Since I am interested in casual shirts from hand-made cotton with my own designer lable, my experience might be quite different than tourists looking for inexpensive dress clothes and suits.
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