Quote Originally Posted by CameronTaylor View Post
Why is is that I can (and did ...once) go down to Express and pick up a fine dress jacket for a little over one hundred bucks
Hardly. Sure you can get some glued together bit of polyester fashioned to look like a "jacket" in some 3rd world sweat shop but no "fine dress jacket" for $100 USD. Good tailcoats (evening wear tend to be fashioned to lower grades than sports coats) start at around £500 or so.

A nice jacket takes what 2 meters of fabric? Leaving off the workmanship (and the cost of the other materials) what do you think 2 meters of "fine" woolen fabric costs? Given that a fine hand-made dress coat takes, on the average, of between 10 and 15 hours-- a good sports coat more than 15 and upwards of 20 hours-- of labour there is little possibility of selling one for $100 USD (even using slaves in sweatshops).

Today a fine bespoke sports coat costs upwards of £1500 (and some of the best hand-made ready to wear such as Brioni, Kiton or Oxxford more).

Marks and Spencer used to have sometimes some reasonable (sometimes even nice) coats at attractive price points but none under £150. OK coats, wearable for kicking about but not "fine" or even "good". I suspect that one needs to plan to spend upwards of £500 (and some willing and skilled tailor to tweak it) to get anything good on a budget.

but a Prince Charlie or Argyle jacket is twice or three times that much ?
A reasonable (and I'll not speak of "fine" since I really don't quite know anyone making "fine" Prince Charlie type coats) coatee and vest made of good grade Barathea can be had for under £200-£300. Not well made but nobody expects anything well made in these. For the workmanship they can even be good value-- better even than M&S. I got an inexpensive Scottish made Argyle jacket and am, in fact, quite amazed just how nicely its made. Its front was not fused (or glued) and the machines were reasonably well guided. For bespoke day jackets Haggarts of Aberfeldy make some wonderful tweeds at price points well below some of the standards of Saville Row.