Ways a piece is made
Made-to-order: the house's cut, in your cloth
Once you have chosen the house, the decision left to you is first of all the cloth. Two lengths can carry the same name and not age the same way, and no label tells you which is which. Here is what you are really deciding, and the question to ask before you order.
What made-to-order means
The pattern is the house's, proven and unchanged, and the garment is made to it in the size you take. The cloth, the lining, the buttons, sometimes the lapel or the pockets, are yours to choose. Nothing is drafted from scratch and there are no fittings from the body. What you are buying is the house's design in the exact form you want it, made on demand instead of pulled from a shelf.
Where it sits
Made-to-order sits one step beyond ready-to-wear. Ready-to-wear is finished before you choose; made-to-order lets you choose before it is finished, without moving to the measurements and pattern work of made-to-measure. It is how you get a house's vision in your own cloth without commissioning anything.
See also
Who it is for
People who have found a house whose taste is already their own and want its work in a particular cloth or detail. It rewards knowing what you like more than knowing your measurements, since the fit stays the house's standard. But knowing what you like also means knowing what a cloth will do: a worsted flannel holds its crease and does not bag at the knee, while a woollen flannel has far more depth and loses its crease sooner. Both are called flannel, so ask the house which one it is offering you.
The world you are ordering into
Made-to-order is a commitment to somebody else's taste. You are not correcting a house's design, you are choosing it, so the house had better be one whose eye you trust across everything it makes and not only the piece in front of you. That is a judgement you make by looking at a body of work. Sartorium gathers the houses and what they produce, so you can see the whole of a maker before you order any of it.
See who is out there
Sartorium maps the houses worth knowing, wherever they are. An account is free, and it is what opens the map.