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Bespoke becomes affordable

Wednesday, 22nd November 2006

Justin Marozzi gets measured in London for a suit made in Kowloon

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He’s the man threatening to do to Savile Row tailors what Margaret Thatcher did to the miners. And he’s proving so successful that Tony Blair is said to be a fan. You’ll have seen his brazenly eye-catching newspaper advertisements with headlines like ‘Even The Price Suits You, Sir!’ and a picture of an Indian man with pursed lips and a slightly unnerving, unwavering stare which seems to convey pathological disapproval of the British male’s slipping sartorial standards.

Raja Daswani, a third-generation millionaire tailor from Hong Kong, is on a mission to rescue the ‘badly dressed and overpaying British customer’. I’m up for being rescued. No question about it. I’m 35 and to my enduring shame have never had a suit made. My only foray into the bespoke world was in Good Looks Tailors of Islamabad, a dubious establishment that boasts the nuclear smuggler A.Q. Khan and President Pervez Musharraf among its clients. The tweed Nehru jacket was not a success.

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