We have reviewed Hockerty before — including their outerwear — but a great test of a MTM company is whether they can produce garments with any level of consistency. This is especially true with offerings like outerwear which is not a super-easy thing to get right, and should only be offered if it can be done correctly. We were not at all happy with the consistency (or lack thereof) when it came to Hockerty’s shirts but we wanted to see if perhaps the experience with their outerwear would be different. This is because we quite liked the peacoat we got from them a while back, and actually wanted another piece of custom MTM outerwear. This time, we went with a topcoat in a nice checked pattern, which herringbone details up close. Their custom coats start at $249 which is an excellent value if they would end up coming out like their last peacoat.
Now, right off the bat you run into an issue with Hockerty’s re-order process. Namely, the peacoat they previously made was pretty good, but could use a few slight tweaks. There is no great way to do this with them. You can email them and hope they understand, but they take quite a while to get back to you, and even once they do it’s unclear that the proper changes are being made. Nevertheless, we took a shot, and requested some slight tweaks to the sleeve, and chest area.
Given we covered the whole ordering process in our last outerwear review from Hockerty, I won’t go into that all again here. We’ll just skip straight to the good stuff. First, let’s discuss the quality.
The quality is… decent. We paid for the extra padding/lining on the interior which makes this coat actually decently substantial for wear in colder temperatures. Won’t keep you warm in freezing weather, but as a top layer in colder temperatures, this is more than adequate. The fabric itself was actually decent as well. Looked nice both from afar and up close. Of course, it’s not nearly as rich or intricate as nicer, higher end herringbone and checked pattern fabrics, but for under $300, this more than does the job.
Things go a bit south when it comes to the details. The slanted pockets (for easy access to keep your hands warm) are placed oddly and ridiculously high. It’s effectively impossible to use them with any degree of comfort, or without looking like an idiot. In truth, it ruins the whole look of the front of the coat, and, if we knew they were going to be this high, we would have left them out entirely. Then there are the smaller details, like extra thread by the buttons which was not cut, we suppose, during finishing the garment. The buttons are also held in place by a second smaller button on the interior, a much cheaper way of securing buttons than a tight, quality, refined stitch. And then there aren’t even buttons at all on the sleeve! Which is also quite an odd choice. None of these things would be that big a deal, though, if it weren’t for the fit issues.
Like we expected, our requests were not at all interpreted correctly. For some reason, the shoulder/yoke increased, giving me a bit of a football player look. Not great… Plus there was extra room added to the chest for some reason as well. Most inexcusable of all is that the sleeves were not even shortened, and instead just made too tight.
When I reached out to investigate what happened here, I had to wait days for replies. When I finally did get answers, it turned out that the issue is that they do not maintain different measurement profiles for different garments, and so they updated and changed my outerwear profile when they changed my shirt profile. That is simply inexcusable and ridiculous for a MTM company. I hate to say it, but we were deeply disappointed here. To top it all off, they didn’t want to remake the garment, and instead, after some fighting, offered me a full refund, which I took.
The reality is that, with MTM, the more steps away you are from the person tailoring and making your garment, the worse the outcome will be. Some MTM companies offer just a step or two away. Others, like Hockerty, seem dozens of steps away, from one person to another, through on system after another, until the end result is something that, if it fits you well, is nothing short of a miracle.
If this is too harsh, we do apologize. We are upset about this all as well. Hockerty was a brand that showed lots of potential and value prop. But, once again, we simply cannot recommend them. For a few bucks more, there are far better alternatives.