Pug Butter

Review of SuitClub

As of writing this, Suit Club still has a perfect ...

As of writing this, Suit Club still has a perfect 5-star rating on Google Maps. And five is one of the numbers you have to be very careful about when reading these reviews. Two through four tend to at least be measured, acknowledging both good and bad in an establishment; but one and five are where nepotism and silly grudges start to shine through. You'll see people give one star to an otherwise fabulous restaurant which refused to throw free drinks and desserts at them after receiving a slightly-too-rare medium-rare; or the inverse, people giving their neighbors and buddies five stars despite the lurid mediocrity of the service they provide.

So when I started browsing my area for the best values in tailoring and bespoke services, Suit Club's immaculate five-star rating put me on edge immediately. How are they buying their good ratings? How much are they paying Google to remove the bad ones?

Admittedly I've been given an incentive to write this review, but before I get to that I'll be getting to the things Suit Club did to genuinely deserve my five-star rating well before that point.

Walking into the boutique for the first time worried me almost as much as browsing their website did (where the explanation for the low prices feels a little too convincing, and the lack of catalogs a little too convenient). It was empty, save the two employees on the clock. For any other business this would be a bad sign; kiss your restaurant goodbye if it's dead during lunch hours. But it turns out this is so the two employees on the clock can give you, the customer, their undivided attention. They do all their work by appointment ONLY, so you are their world for the hours that you are there.

They killed my misgivings almost from the moment I walked through the door, too. I felt instantly welcome at Suit Club. At no point did I feel I was being judged for my tastes in clothes, either their offerings or what I walked in wearing. (I definitely looked more like a shoplifter than a Wall Street mogul.)

Their selection is huge, in all budget categories, and I've spent entire hours just browsing through the different fabrics and features available. Again, I never felt rushed or judged for taking too much of their time, though I know I did.

We even managed to reach a respectful compromise on our differing tastes; I was gently talked out of the choices which would have made me look _too_ absurd in my new suit. Yet my personal style still shines through in the end results. The patterns, the colors, the trimmings, make me love wearing it. I go out confident that their expert advice curbed the areas where I would have gone too far on my own.

After wading through the seemingly endless options for cuffs, lapels, vents, fabrics etc., payment and receipt were very easy too. The first suit and shirt took too long to show up for how excited I was to wear them, but that's to be expected for goods crossing the Pacific.

I even got a body-bag so my suit would not get wrinkled or muddy on the ride home.

If there are two things that are less than absolutely perfect about the suit/shirt I currently have, it's these, and remember I'm nitpicking hard here:
1. Most sources will tell you that suit sleeves should let about half an inch of shirt cuff show. Mine show over a full inch most times.
2. I want to be able to choose cool buttons the way I got to choose my collars, lapels, and fabrics. How great would it be to have a vibrant pine or cherry wood calling attention down to your midsection, or a nice selection of horns impressing the subtle eye of your tailor?

But these "issues" are nowhere near enough to drop my 5 star rating. (You could think of it as rounding up from 4.8 if you must.) Suit Club has even seen it fit to offer me a free shirt for writing this review, such is their dedication to customer loyalty. Rest assured I'd have given them a 5 anyway, but another fabulous shirt is just the cherry on top of the great experience I had here.