Our Heritage
The spirit of Thumb Thimble is the dedication to bespoke tailoring.
It is a story of tailors running a tailoring house that upholds the traditional values from the past and ventures to the future.
When you walk into a tailoring house, you would meet a tailor, the master that actually makes your garments. How tailors segregate their duties is unknown to outsiders. In general, an established house would work as a team with cutters and tailors to deliver customers’ bespoke garments. A tailor is the person actually assembling the parts to make your suits. A cutter is the one responsible for taking your measurements and cutting the pattern and fabric. The latter is a client-facing role that communicates with the wearers to understand their needs and visualises their imaginations. Yet different houses have distinctive practices that some tailors also meet the clients and cut the fabrics themselves. It is reasonable that you expect meeting the craftsmen directly in a tailor shop, but tragically, this treasured tradition of meeting the makers is becoming rare in Hong Kong.
Before being a cutter, our founder Tsang Kwong was a carpenter of Yee On Tai in Guangzhou, making exquisite wooden furniture. So you can still see some wooden hangers made by our founder in our shop. In 1949, he moved to Hong Kong and continued to work for Yee On Tai but becoming a cutter of the tailoring division. His younger brother Tsang Lok also joined Yee On Tai as an apprentice tailor. In 1958, the Tsang’s brothers decided to establish their own tailoring house. In view of the high rental cost in the Central area, they started their business in 66 Yen Chow Street, Shum Shui Po, Hong Kong. They continued the century-old tradition that Kwong was responsible for serving clients and pattern development while Lok focused on tailoring. In such a small site, the tailor will also witness how his works fit the clients.
Situated in Shum Shui Po, our house was primarily serving local customers in which the craftsmen formed a close rapport with clients. This is always the trust between the craftsmen and the customers that makes bespoke tailoring special and suits more than a business attire. Also, having the tailors meeting the clients in person is an invaluable asset that the makers can have a comprehensive understanding on how the garment looks on the wearer, especially how all the specific tailoring skills help make a better suit.
In 1966, Kwong’s eldest son Tsang Hing Pui, William, began his tailor apprenticeship at the age of 12. In this family business, William mastered both cutting and tailoring. Experiencing the heyday of bespoke tailoring and the downturn of the industry since the 1980s when most tailoring houses began outsourcing the production process for better profit and new apprentices were nowhere to be found, our tailors insisted on in-house production for the sake of quality. In 1992, Lok retired and William continued the house singly for 26 years. Today, he still takes the measurements, cuts the fabrics and sews the suit himself. His inclusive mastery in tailoring establishes our house tradition to train craftsmen in both cutting and tailoring.
