This blog entry is the first of many in a large endeavor, one which I believe is necessary more than ever. It's not only a belief, it's what I've been told by customers at other jobs that I've held. By the way, the subtitle above isn't just catchy, it's appropriate. The tailoring trade that I've come to live, sleep, eat and drink for the past eighteen years has been in decline for about half a century at this point in time, and it has declined to the metaphor that is implied in the subtitle. The clothing business that was once run by garment cutters, technical designers and tailors, mainly master tailors and domestic factory workers, is now run by advertisers, marketing experts, conceptual designers, foreign sweatshops and anybody who has enough money to bend them to their own whims and tastes. Style is dictated to people and not tailored to their physique and lifestyle, as it should be. In no lack of ways, people today are force-fed what to wear and what they should wear, instead of being educated on what works for them, only them, and squarely putting the choice in their hands. Style has been made to be interchangeable with fashion, when in reality the former is based on matter of fact and the latter on matter of opinion. The term bespoke began as a process and has legally and literally corrupted and distorted to the point where it is merely a statement lacking much of its former substance. That in a nutshell is the draft board, and when compared to draft boards in pro and fantasy sports, it makes sense. It's selection without soul. It lacks the human element, one that made the tailoring trade what it is. The human element ultimately made it the third largest industry in America at one point, but that was long ago. The tailoring trade eventually outgrew itself, but since no industry can exist in a vacuum, the ones who made the windows did not perpetuate themselves and now the ones who make the window dressing run the business. What exists now are very nice-looking curtains covering a big hole in the wall. The Draft Table is the 21st century tailor, one whom I hope can bring about a true renaissance of the craft. On the Draft Table we remember that necessity was and is always the mother of invention. That same necessity invented button-down collar shirts, cuff bottoms, vented coats and tuxedos. Eventually they worked their way to the masses, but they were originally meant to satisfy the individual. You might also say that scale is the mother of innovation, but it always begins with the scale of one. The Draft Table recognizes that the tailor needed today is a real tailor , one who not just takes in, lets out, shortens, lengthens and sews on a button, but takes something made from nothing for nobody or everybody, and shapes and molds it into something just for you. And not only that, they know style, color, anatomy, kinesiology and occasions to make it everything, just for you. Stay with me and you'll get it. You'll understand...