On which side do you dress, Sir?

I stumbled over this question on the net while looking for something else and it took me back a few years. I once worked in an up-market gent’s outfitters for a number of years – as a salesman, not a tailor.

Every customer who wanted a made-to-measure suit was asked on which side his genitalia hung when it came to measuring him for his trousers.

According to the online answers, the question was asked so that the tailor could leave extra material on the ‘hanging genitalia’ side.

Mindful of the 50 year time lapse, that’s not how I remember it. Measuring a guy for trousers involves the sales person getting the tape measure right up to the crotch. In order to do this, we asked the customer to spread his legs and that is when we would ask, ‘What side to you dress, Sir?’

If his genitalia hung down on his right hand side, we would know to measure on his left hand side. If we measured on his right hand side, two things could happen.

1. We wouldn’t be able to get the tape measure far enough up without embarrassing him.

1. He could become slightly frisky.

There was never any mention of the tailor using extra material to allow the customer’s dangly parts more breathing space - but then, my memory isn’t what it used to be, I think.

You want your inside leg measured, Miss?

Every week we would get girls coming in asking us to take their inside leg measurement. The ladies, usually teenagers, but sometimes women in their twenties, would normally enter in giggly twosomes – one egging the other on.

It was obvious why they wanted their inside leg measured, but we used to have fun showing them different suits and trousers, and asking them if they wanted to try them on. Strangely enough, they never, ever, asked us to measure their chest sizes.

After we’d had some quiet giggles of our own, we would measure their outside leg from the waist to the ankle – and subtract 6 inches. This used to annoy the hell out of them.