Jantzen Tailor - The Handmade Shirt (Part I)

 

Samson (left) and Ricky (right) examining @shirtingfantasy's Sannino shirt. 

What does a challenge mean to you? Is it "a call to someone to participate in a competitive situation or fight to decide who is superior in terms of ability or strength" or "a call to prove or justify something"? Arguably, in the case of Jantzen Tailor, it means both - a call to participate in making a handmade shirt (something not usually offered by Hong Kong Tailors) and a call to prove that they can make something more decent than the average 48-h turnaround shirt and suit package. 

On a fine Sunday, @shirtingfantasy realised his promise to visit the legendary Jantzen Tailor - who once did a HKD 400 (purported) clone of a 100Hands shirt. While the feat seemed impossible (and the shirt from that gentleman in the clandestine Telegram group justified the point - it certainly looked like HKD 400 or less), it was the triggering point which brought @shirtingfantasy to the interesting conversation with the shop and brought back the memory of their "Napoli type shirt" advertisement seen on Instagram. 

Before @shirtingfantasy attended the meeting, his wife wisely asked,

"So why are you going this time, especially given that you think it may not be as good as your Italian maker? You have too much money and got nowhere to spend?".

Why do we try new makers? It is a philosophical question, food for thought, and something to ponder. If men have perfect brand loyalty there may as well be a need for new makers. If old makers keep their quality perfect and only innovate to create better quality then no new brands are needed. To the menswear addict, trying new makers is like the gourmet reviewing new restaurants. Jackets and pants and shoes and ties may be the same thing, made in the traditional way [1], by dedicated artisans [2], blah, blah, blah. The reality is such that tailoring and production of menswear is mostly just an occupation to many; most do it out of necessity (as an occupation) and few do it out of pure passion. Close friends of @shirtingfantasy know how makers with pure passion and artistic temperament can create somewhat amateurish products with the whole process verging on being a joke - on the customer. True, the maker may think he is taking it seriously, but the customer sadly does not experience the seriousness. 

For this Jantzen experiment, as @shirtingfantasy mainly wanted to look at the subsequent handwork improvements over the original HKD 400 version (see here, here and here) and to honour the promise of not doing CMT with them for the first commission, a few unconventional arrangements were made -

(1) Fit would be largely based on the Sannino shirt, with minor tweaks, and would not be formally reviewed

(2) Fabric would not be the normal superfine cotton @shirtingfantasy likes, but would instead just be something wearable

(3) Jantzen offered a price of HKD 600, @shirtingfantasy counteroffered HKD 1,000

With all these agreed upon, @shirtingfantasy was suggested a denim-look fabric (the weave is not a twill like normal denim) from a brand previously unknown to @shirtingfantasy. The fabric has a nice soft hand. A light blue shade was picked, with the hope that it is dark enough for indigo fading to highlight the puckering from the handmade stitching with long term wear. 

The selected "denim" (bottom) - Samson said it's a denim, which @shirtingfantasy does not entirely agree. A lovely shade, nevertheless. 

Before we look at the fitting shirt in the coming article, we will look at a few more interesting shots taken at Jantzen to illustrate their evolution from a typical "tourist tailor". 

Handmade buttonhole on a shirt. According to Ricky, buttonhole is made by a suit maker. 

Thick MOP button - not shanked. Ricky said my shirt will have shanked buttons. 

Here the sleeve placket is mostly machine-made, with just a bit of contrast stitching detail. 

Lapel buttonhole on a suit jacket recently produced. 

"To upgrade our production, we adopted the standard seen in the high-end makers", said Ricky. This is certainly an upgrade from the normal 48-h suit standard. 

Handmade buttonholes. 

Buttons on the waistband. Ricky said they started looking at the different horn buttons when they started to upgrade their production a few years back. 

More decorative stitching...

And more...

Until then, goodbye!

Footnote:

[1] Is there even such a way? That is the question.

[2] For the curious reader, the accepted usage of artisan is actually quite broad and non-specific. The Hong Kong SAR government actually maintains a job title called Artisan and the workers of the grade would logically be more artisanal than your 200Hands or 3000Feet tailor. 

Jantzen Tailor

https://www.jantzentailor.com/

Minimum order: ? shirts

Price range: ?
CMT service: Yes (but not recommended)

Handmade options: - We will see... 

Room D-E, 5th floor., On Lok Yuen Building, 25-27 Des Voeux Road Central, Hong Kong. tel/+852 2810-8080 or +852 2570-5901