TM Lewin & Sons

My clothing budget usually sits firmly around the £10 an item mark. I just don’t see the point in wasting hundreds of pounds on so called designer clothes when you can get an imitation item for a fraction of the cost. Hell, I even got my bridesmaid’s dresses from Primark for about £15 a pop. Bargain. Anyway, quite understandably my husband was keen to splash out on a decent suit for the wedding so we headed off to TM Lewins. A guy I used to work with came into my old office with a TM Lewins bag full of posh shirts which cost him about 10 times less than I imagine it would. He told me they had a brilliant sale on in which you could get a full suit for about £200. You can’t really go wrong with that so we headed down there to take a look. I have to say we felt a little intimidated as it had a real traditional tailors feel about it, the shirts stored away on shelves, the sizing much more complex than the old small, medium and large affair you get in High Street stores and the clientele more like the Tory cabinet than likeminded young professionals like us. Needless to say, we didn’t get a suit here but opted for a lovely little independent shop up north. Bit too much for us mere mortals.

I’d love to pretend I regularly shop here but really, I only ever go in at sale time.
Me and my Dad will often discuss whether its worth paying more for something you can get cheaper elsewhere. In this case, we are both agreed, the price is reflected by the quality. Have you ever bought a shirt, let’s say from Primark or even somewhere a little more upmarket like TopShop/​TopMan? Have you found that after a couple of months it doesn’t quite fit as well as when you first bought it?
Shirts from TM Lewin will happily look as good a few years down the line, I can’t say the same rule of thumb should be applied to things like ties, but definitely for shirts and suits it’s totally worth splashing out on a sale bargain. My advice would be to go for something basic — e.g. plain white shirt, as your likely to get more use out of it.

Not the cheapest place to get a suit, but if you know you want one that will appear on numerous occations and generally get alot of use it’s worth spalshing out.
Make sure you choose carefully as well, as some suits you can put through a washing machine/​hand wash and do it all yourself, but some of them you have to have dry cleaned. So make sure if you are after a suit that you can easily maintain (by maintain I mean clean, I don’t know why I said maintain!) check the labels.
The service is very good, and you do immediatley feel like you have gone up in the world when they assist you!

TM Lewin and Sons is a great place to visit if you are looking for something extra special to wear. They mainly specialise in suits and will taylor fit you if you require. They also do some really good sales on quite a regular basis meaning you can get a suit for just over £110.
It is more expensive than say M & S or BHS but I reckon the quality is much better. The service is second to none too.