Tldr; highly recommend for anyone looking to buy a well-fitting, quality suit / tux at any price point. Beautiful showroom with phenomenal customer service. The business model is similar to Indochino, but the Alton Lane experience is far superior. Caroline is the main point of contact and knows their sizing and products like the back of her hand - she is knowledgeable but not pushy. Since she's the main point of contact, you won't get passed around, and she takes full ownership of making sure your suit comes out perfectly. Lots of nice customization available even for the lower price points, and Caroline is a master at getting a perfect fit even for the cheaper standard sizing. Appointments are a must, but easy to schedule.
The long version with more details:
Buying Experience - While AL offers a great online ordering experience, the experience of going in person to the showroom in Raleigh (Cameron Village) is well worth it. You can browse the store, but if you're looking to make a purchase, highly recommend making an appointment ahead of time via their website. Appointments are an hour, and Caroline will walk you through the process, take measurements, and ultimately help place your order. She has fabric swatches available, which is important because they can look quite different than online. She's also fantastic at knowing their sizing and measurements, and will know exactly how to order to ensure a perfect fit (which may not always be what the online size chart suggests). She provides helpful recommendations for all the customization without being overbearing, and we appreciated that she was engaged and helpful even though we were looking to purchase one of their cheaper suits. Suit came in within about 2 weeks - you schedule a 30 minute fitting appointment to ensure you like everything or if you might need tailoring. We needed some minor tailoring, which was turned around promptly.
Price - we weren't looking to spend a ton of money, but wanted to get a quality, well-fitting suit. AL offers very high end fully custom options (think $1k+), but they also have a number of "standard" options for reasonable price points ($399+). The main differences seemed to be that the fully custom is truly cut-to-size (they make a pattern specifically for your body) and will have larger selection of fabric styles. The "standard" options are your normal size availability and have less fabric selections, but we still found them to be high quality, and Caroline is so great at what she does that the fit of the standard styles is still great (and she kindly comp'd any tailoring). You can browse online to get a sense of pricing, but I still recommend ordering in person. There are also frequently promo codes (ex. 20% off for first time purchases) that can be used in store and can add up to a sizeable discount.
Jos A. Bank is across the street, so we stopped in there for price comparison. Their off-the-rack suits were a bit cheaper, but generally require quite a bit of tailoring (additional charge). They offer a custom line of suits, most of which were more expensive than AL, and every custom option was a separate charge rather than being included (ex. $25 for lining, etc.). Overall, we felt like AL was a much better bang for the buck. read more
