The joy of my first bespoke suit

I’ve got a new suit. It’s bespoke, made in the UK, and it cost £2,000. The process of having it made, and now wearing and feeling amazing in it, has been an emotional and physical balm. It’s fabric-based therapy — and as a veteran of talking cures, let me tell you: this alternative works, and it works fast.

I had long coveted a suit that fitted me properly. I’m tall but not thin and the menopause stole my waist. Yet I increasingly crave style, as do many of my peers, because more confidence is the unexpected bonus feature of middle age.

Staying relevant in the workplace is also key for many of us still in corporate life. Looking good on the outside helps with the “invisibility problem”: women over 50 are the fastest-growing segment of the UK workforce, but are often overlooked for recruitment or promotion because of prejudice and ageism.

What started me on this journey (there, I said it) was a reader comment under an FT article headlined My search for the perfect suit by Annachiara Biondi. The best of these off-the-peg ones cost £1,000. “Go bespoke. Will be cheaper in the long run,” said a reader. Among the suggestions for tailors: Susannah Hall (thank you “Inversnaid” for that tip).

Hall, as it turned out, was exactly the right choice for this novice bespoke suit-buyer. She is informal — the very opposite of what I’d imagined a fancy tailor to be — and a natural at putting people at ease. As she should be, since she’s been doing this since 1996, going into business for herself after studying textiles at art college and a spell working with her designer/architect father.

“I fell into tailoring,” she tells me when I asked about her back-story. It combines, she says, “my love of creativity, design, colour, fabric, fashion and people”.

Only about 15 per cent of Hall’s customers are women — but that’s up from none when she set up — and back then the cutters weren’t able to expertly fit women’s bodies.

I knew none of this when I walked into Hall’s compact Clerkenwell shop in November 2022. I was a wreck. My marriage was in deep crisis and I was traumatised. In the midst of this mess, putting on fabric armour in order to face the world was an appealing prospect.

Having a suit made is a kind of self-love, this act of being measured and seen and cared for by a tailor

I soon learned, from those who have survived nuked personal lives, that at these times it’s crucial to have a sense of your “embodied self”. It sounds like wellness nonsense but it’s a solid concept: embodied here means being aware of being in your body. Celebrating it.

It’s why yoga and running are so good when times are bad. It’s also, I realise in retrospect, why raging middle-aged women have suits made, garments that are perfectly attuned to their bodies. It’s a kind of self-love, this act of being measured and seen and cared for by a tailor such as Hall, and by the skilled cutters, all of whom are in the UK, who make the suits to her specifications.

Still, stepping out of pouring rain into Hall’s shop for the first time, any bodily awareness was limited to panic about whether I’d have to strip down to underwear to be measured. (In fact, Hall is so experienced that she uses just her eye and a tape measure run over customers’ clothes.)

We sat down with some fabric-sample books to go through with possible looks and colour combinations. What did I like? I mentioned Margaret Howell’s pared-back vision, and the oversized, longline 1980s-style jackets popularised by Katharine Hamnett. And to be more current, Cos. The bold, simply cut pieces from the high street chain usually don’t suit me — but I love the look.

We browsed books of samples and settled on a light blue-grey worsted wool with a subtle herringbone stripe. It’s set off with a paisley-pattern lining that’s almost purple. Hall drew a sketch and talked through the possible look of the suit. Exaggerated pockets on the jacket, deep vents, big turn-ups on the trousers — everything just a little bit “extra”. I loved it, paid the deposit, went home, and waited.

Over the following months, only the fabric samples on my desk reminded me that something was happening. I started to doubt my decision. Was having a suit made a colossal act of vanity and folly? Yes, obviously. I didn’t tell anyone for months. And spending so much on clothes is not easy when your idea of a spending spree is snagging a bargain sweater in TK Maxx. Such is the English middle-class aversion to being showy, profligate or making oneself stand out.

My previous experience of made-to-measure outfits had been a wedding dress. It was by Antonia Pugh-Thomas, now a couture maker with a shop in London. In the late ’90s I got her number from a friend of a friend. She was just starting out, the fittings were in her flat and it all seemed pleasingly rebellious and under-the-radar, which somewhat glossed over the fact I was getting married. And that my father was paying for it.

This suit, though, was conceived as a forever garment, a statement of mature self, paid for by me. Two children have grown to adulthood since Pugh-Thomas made that shimmering silk shift — beautiful as it still is — worn just once, while I was “given away” from one man to another.

Early in 2023, Hall got back in touch. I needed to come in for a fitting. She got me into the loosely stitched jacket and trousers, still missing all the detail and lining. It was perfect. The doubts were erased. Hall put pins all over, then sent it away to be finished.

In early April, the suit was back. My first sight of it was hanging on a rail alongside other finished outfits waiting to be collected. An electric blue slimline number caught my eye — maybe next time?

By now, my marriage was starting to knit back together in what has been a raw recovery for both of us. The parallel process of having the suit made was a key part of my own reboot and recuperation.

Putting these pieces on, it felt like something broken clicked back together. The trousers fitted perfectly. A jacket that was loose — but not too loose. I was tearful, and incredibly grateful to Hall for realising this vision of a slightly better version of myself.

Isabel Berwick is host of the FT’s Working It podcast and writes the weekly Working It newsletter — sign up at ft.com/newsletters

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