Everybody has an image in their mind when I say Money Suit. We had one tailormade for us. Here are the instructions for doing it yourself: How to get your own Money Suit Step by Step!
Step 1: All you need is money!
Naturally you first need plenty of money. We have already shown you how to procure that in Part 2. As a rule of thumb: For one meter of “fabric” you need about 200 500-Dong-bills, for one shirt and a pair of trousers about 800 of them.
Step 2: Stamp it, baby!
Not only does money alone not make you happy, it also looks a bit boring and shows a clear deficit in hypnotic commands for ARTifying the world. Thus: Stamp it, baby!
Step 3: What you want is what you get!
Now we have to clarify how exactly the final product should look. In our case, for instance, a classical suit with a jacket is out of the question because for the time being we will rather suffer from too much heat than too much cold. So it is a shirt and trousers, light and casual, because we want to wear our money clothes as often as possible. In this step you might also start thinking about the feasability and (dis-)advantages of certain techniques (all made out of money, or rather sewed onto fabric …), but we have found out that it is better to do this together with the tailor of your choice. Therefore:
Step 4: Find the right tailor and have it made!
This is actually the hardest part. It took us a the best part of an afternoon to find the right tailor, and all of this in Hoi An, a city in Vietnam that is known for its more than 300 bespoke tailors. Here are a few practical tips: First of all a city like Hoi An is made for this enterprise. Hong Kong might work as well. It’s important that there are many, many tailors, and cheap ones, if money is a concern.
Never talk to the vendors. They will only waste your time by automatically saying yes to anything you ask and then make you wait half and hour for the actual tailor, who will proceed to tell you it’s either impossible or he’s afraid of the authorities, or both. So ask to see the tailor in person the moment you walk into the door, or leave immediately.
Look for an adventurous and courageous, therefore probably young, tailor who is really into the project and not just into the money. Keep stressing that you love Vietnam, its money, and Uncle Ho. Never give up, among 300 tailors there will be one who is daring enough. Barter for the costs, but be generous. It’s a lot of work, and it’s a special order. Respect your tailor’s wishes if she wants to remain anonymous. Talk about all the details: The make, the technique, the color, the pattern, potential problems … and then let your tailor do his work.
Step 6: Enjoy Your Money Suit!
Here are Julian’s first moments with the new suit. Dig the style! Look at the glitter in his eyes! And wait till you see what happiness you can bring into the world with a money suit in our next episode of The Money Series.
Best Practices and Lessons Learnt
After careful consideration with our tailors we decided against making the suit out of pure money (This might be possible with large denominations from 20,000 Dong on, because these are made from plastic. But I don’t think it feels too good.) and for sewing the bills onto a base fabric, cotton in this case. As expected the suit is extremely sensitive to wrinkling, with the seams breaking open easily. So wear it carefully! It remains to be seen how the final product reacts to washing. Maybe dry cleaning would be better.
Julian thinks that sewing the bills onto the readymade suit was not a particularly good idea of our tailor. He would arrange the bills on the raw fabric, brutally sew them on with through-and-through seams, and then resew the after the cutting. There is a lot of room for experimentation here. We are thinking about using our unique expertise for founding our own brand of tailor made money clothing for wealthy patrons. We’ll keep you posted.
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