Just got back from Beifang Shichang 北方市场 or the North Market, It’s a large textile and fabric market in the east of the city, where you can get clothes (or anything really) tailored.

Foreigners come here because you can actually get clothes that fit you, and because it’s so much cheaper than getting tailored things made in the west. It’s strange, many Chinese have a totally different perception of tailored clothing – that it is not so good, they would rather buy from off the peg. Also lots of people tell me they think tailored clothing is expensive, I have friends who say that they only time they had clothes made was when they were children, or many years ago when things were less developed.

I think it’s cheaper – especially if you are too big/tall to find clothing from elsewhere, and there is much more choice (for men anyway).
However, the quality of the fabric varies from very good to very poor, as does the quality of the workmanship.

Therefore, I think you have to be careful when getting things from here, it would be quite easy to get conned.

So they way to avoid this is – of course – to know people who work here, to have a contact that can guaranteed you quality of work for a good price.

There are some very high quality tailors that will charge you a normal price. For example, for a suit (trousers+jacket including all materials except the outside) the labour should cost around 120 yuan. A tailor you don’t know will try to get you to pay 2X 3X 4X this price.
Your tailor will measure you and tell you how much material you need to buy, in order to make whatever it is you wish to have made. I require 2.8 Square Metres of fabric in order to make a suit.

It can be time consuming finding the material you want, but it takes even more time bargaining it down to a price that is reasonable. Many foreigners come here, especially the foreign workers, and I think they don’t get a great deal on the price (what’s an extra 1 or 200 yuan to them?), so when the sellers see a foreigner they expect you to pay more even more than they normally do.

I often tell them, I can’t afford those prices, I’m a poor student with no money – Look at my clothes, do I look like I have a lot of money? Of course this approach fails as by virtue of being foreign immediatly makes me ‘rich’ in their eyes at least, however saying this always makes people laugh.

The great thing is that there are so many vendors you can just move on to the next one, compare prices and use the old ‘but she over there said this cost …’ technique. This is an effective way of getting a fair price I think, but it does take time which makes It great Chinese pratice!
Almost every vendor wil tell you how great this or that piece of material is, how beautiful a certain colour is, which one is best quality and so on. I guess you have to be able to decide what you’re looking for then try to get a price that is reasonable or you could spend all day here choosing, such is the choice.

There are many types of fabric ranging from formal looking materials for suits, to bright fluorescent shiny fabric that wouldn’t look out of place in the 1980s. Actually, comparatively speaking, Changchun doesn’t have such good choice when it comes to different types of materials, Shenyang is much better and cheaper.

In terms of suits, and lets face it that’s what 99% of foreigners have made here, the material ranges from about 50 yuan per sq/m to over 200 yuan a sq/m. I went around everywhere just casually asking the price – I have an idea what things should cost – because I’m interested in what kind of mark up they put on the fabric when a foreigner asks how much it should be. The most expensive price I was given was 275 a square metre :shock:, the lowest 85 – the real price is probably more like 40-50 and 150-60.

I’ve had a few suits made, I’ve tried the cheaper fabric 50yuan sq/m and the more expensive stuff at 90yuan sq/m – and they are all fine, but my tailor said to me that the cheaper material is cheaper because it wont last as long.

Once you’ve got the material you want, you take it back to the tailor who most probably has a magazine full of images of different clothing. You browse through this and pick whatever style you like, the beauty of this is you can ask for pretty much any style you want – I got a very nice suit made but requested bright red lining just because I could!

You can also take pictures of clothes you like, which are perhaps too expensive to buy in the shops, or copies of clothing made – It goes without saying they can copy almost anything!