A tailor in Bangtao Beach, Phuket

Where we are, and getting here

The shop is on the Cherngtalay side of Bangtao Beach, in the sub-district of Choeng Thale within the Thalang district of Phuket, a two-minute walk from Sunwing Bangtao Beach. Thalang is the administrative name you will see on a map, and the one worth knowing if you are searching rather than driving.

• From Laguna or Boat Avenue — the shortest approach, about 8 minutes by car from Boat Avenue, and where most visitors who come here are staying.
• From Surin Beach — about 11 minutes by car, 3 km.
• From Phuket International Airport — about 21 km, which Google Maps put at 37 to 40 minutes on a weekday afternoon. Bangtao is still considerably closer to the airport than the southern beaches.
• From Patong or Phuket Town — longer than the distance suggests, because the road goes around the headland rather than over it.

Most taxi and Grab drivers know Laguna and Boat Avenue as landmarks. Why a visitor might choose this end of the island over the busier southern strip — including where the southern strip genuinely wins — is set out in why Bangtao rather than Patong.

What we make here

• Suits — business, formal and everyday, cut on the premises here in Bangtao.
• Wedding suits for grooms and groomsmen, with fittings at the villa — fittings across Bangtao, Laguna and Surin cover most of the wedding venues on this stretch of coast.
• Women's tailoring — dresses, suits, blazers, trousers and occasion wear.
• Shirts, made to measure, with the collar and cuff decided by you.
• Casual and resort wear in linen and open-weave cotton.
• Alterations and repairs on anything you already own, whoever made it — worth knowing on this side of the island, where almost every alterations shop you will find is in Patong or Karon instead.

The full range, with what each one involves, is under everything we make and alter.

What it costs

Published rather than quoted after we have read you: a custom two-piece suit from ฿7,000, a wedding suit from ฿8,500 per person, a women's dress from ฿6,500, a shirt from ฿1,500, tailored casual from ฿2,500 and alterations from ฿300. Those are starting figures, the cloth and the construction move them, and the exact quote is confirmed before anything is cut. The full ladder is on what a garment costs here.

Publishing them means you can compare before making the drive from Laguna or Surin rather than after, and it is worth asking why a shop on this beach that does not publish them has decided not to.

Choosing between the tailors on this beach

There is more than one tailor in Bangtao, and this page is not going to tell you we are the best one — that is a claim with no source behind it, and a shop asserting it about itself is worth exactly nothing. What is useful is how this end of the island differs from the busy strip in the south.

We will not say it about ourselves. One customer did, under their own name, and you can open the review to see who wrote it and when:

“The best tailor in bangtao i like recommend go to see alex he will show premier quality 100 person”

Bangtao is quiet in a way that part of the island is not. Nobody approaches you in the street, nobody quotes a price at your back as you walk past, and the shops on this beach serve people who live in Laguna and Cherngtalay as much as passing trade — which means a tailor here is judged on the second suit a customer comes back for, not only the first.

What Bangtao does not have is Patong's density. Patong has more tailors in a few streets than this whole stretch of coast, more cloth on the shelf and later opening hours, and if you want to compare five shops in one afternoon, that is the place to do it.

Where we lose, we lose. Our cloth range on the shelf is smaller than the busy shops in the south carry, and an unusual request gets ordered in and takes longer. The questions worth putting to every shop on this beach, this one included, with what a good answer sounds like, are in how to tell a good tailor.

How long a garment takes

Most pieces are ready in 24 to 48 hours over two to three fittings, and because the shop is a short errand from the resorts in Bangtao, Cherngtalay, Laguna and Surin, those fittings fit around a holiday rather than taking it over. What that window will not absorb is a fully canvassed build, a cloth we do not hold and must order in, or a fit that needs a third fitting — and you will be told which of those applies before you commit rather than afterwards. Tell us the day you land and the day you fly, and you will get a straight answer about what is achievable between them, including when the answer is that a garment should wait for the next trip.