Bespoke or not Bespoke that is the question?

Bespoke or not Bespoke that is the question?

Saturday, 21 June 2008 16:20

What does Bespoke mean to you? - Just recently I read an article recently (Rashid Razaq, Evening Standard) which explained how the Tailors of Saville Row had lost a legal battle over the right for the word 'Bespoke' to refer exclusively to hand made suits

Menswear retailers Sartoriani was referred to the ASA because it was advertising bargain bespoke suits as "uniquely made according to your personal measurements and specification".

After a fitting session, where the clients measurements were taken, the company admitted that the process of cutting and sewing was then handled mostly by machine.

We often refer to our design and development services as being bespoke.
The word bespoke, is not universally used and seems to be favoured/adopted by some industries and ignored by others, but it originates from the tailors of Saville Row in London.
The word bespoke was a term used to describe how a customer would 'speak' for a length of fabric.

A search on Wikipedia fills in most of the details;
Bespoke is usually a British English term for tailored clothing made at a customer's behest, and exactly to the customer's specification. Bespoke clothing is created without use of a pre-existing pattern, differentiating it from made to measure, which alters a standard-sized pattern to fit the customer. In American English, it is a synonym for "custom made."

Today, it is also frequently used for technical components specifically developed for a certain application (e.g. bespoke software), as well as in the automotive and cake decorating industries, when customers get a chance to have an automobile equipped or cake decorated to their specification.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bespoke

The Advertising Standards Authority upheld the suit manufacturers claim that the word 'bespoke' did not have an exclusivity to Saville Row tailors or should it indicate that a suit was fully hand stitched. They argued that it could also be used to refer to a garment that had been made to an individual customers requirements regardless of whether all of the process was by hand.

In my view the ruling is appropriate and I can draw parallels to how we approach bespoke web design and development for our clients.

When we say our websites are 'Bespoke Developments', what do we mean?
Our designs are certainly individually 'tailored' for each client. Each design is unique, and evolves as a result of a number of discussions with the client. On completion ownership of the design is passed to the client. At this point, you could say that the design has been 'spoken' for.
During the process of building each website there will be the necessity to produce 'bespoke' code to meet individual requirements, but in many instances of development we will also make use of re-useable code if the functionality already exists.
A couple of examples are; the use of re-useable code to produce website enquiry forms and the inclusion of a web page editor for users with content management systems. The website editor has evolved from 1000’s of man hours of development – why re-invent the wheel? Another reason for the practice of using re-useable code is price; we can produce a website in the fraction of the time and subsequently at a far more attractive price than one that has been hand coded line by line.
This comparison can be drawn with the suit company that used automated methods and reduced the time and therefore the cost to the client.

Saville Row tailors likened the use of the word 'Bespoke' to the legally protected term 'Champagne', but I would guess that whilst the process of producing champagne may remain the same, the vineyards may have adopted some machinery along the way to improve efficiency. Also, the word bespoke isn't just linked to Saville Row tailors in the same way that Champagne is linked to a wine growing region.
The Saville Row Tailors arguments seem to be a case of sour grapes.
Ultimately, this argument boils down to money, if you want a fully hand stitched suit from Saville Row it will cost you more.
If you want a bespoke website that has been fully hand coded it will cost you more than a development where some code has been used before.

Will a Bespoke hand coded website be better - No.
Will it cost you more, Yes - substantially more.
So when it comes to bespoke, be it suits or software and dependent on how deep your pockets are (no pun intended) – the choice is yours.

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