In Search of a Tom Ford Suit

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Earlier this year I made the biggest clothing investment of my life: a Tom Ford suit. But not any old Tom Ford suit, I wanted the brown QOS Bolivia suit. Some of you have seen my collection and my photos of the suit on ajb007.co.uk.

I wanted to let you into a story of how the suit came about.

I went to Tom Ford and inquired about getting the suit on a made-to- measure basis. I assumed that the fabric would be part of the range and it would be a simple matter of picking the colour, picking the style and hey presto!

But after 45 minutes of going through every possible shade of brown in Tom Ford’s fabric collection, there was no match. I printed off the article from Thesuitsofjamesbond.com on the brown suit and I meticulously reviewed every fabric against a high quality printout of this article, but nothing.

The sales assistant saw my disappointment and started to pack away the fabric when he came with a eureka moment. He showed me that one of the swatch cloth had been turned over, with the undercloth at the top of the swatch,, as soon as he did I knew it was the right colour. Although I did spend 10 mins examining every minute detail of the cloth, truth be told I was just in admiration of this colour.

A few days later I received a call from the sales assistant at Tom Ford and he told me that after speaking with Tom Ford Milan they would only create this suit if I agreed to a disclaimer that I took full responsibility for any defect as they had never ever used the undercloth as the main cloth for a suit.

I hesitated a bit, but I knew in my heart that this was the suit.

After 8 weeks, I received an e-mail from Tom Ford with the words “Paolo (Tom Ford’s main tailor) says the suit is beautiful.”

The next week came and the suit was ready. The results speak for themselves: fantastic shade, fantastic fabric, fantastic cut – it was the perfect suit, and the perfect James Bond suit.

When I wore the suit, I got great compliments, and in a world where I work with people in blue, black and grey suits, this has been readily identified as the Tom Ford suit.

Because of this story, it has made the brown suit (which I wear sparingly) even more special, and the Bond inspired colour is just the cherry on top of the cake.