Most people walk into a tailor because something off the rack never sat right: a jacket that pulls across the shoulders, trousers that bunch at the ankle, a wedding suit that needs to look correct in photographs for the rest of someone's life. That is the problem Bourjois Bespoke Tailor sets out to solve. The Morton Grove shop builds garments from patterns cut to a single client's measurements, taken in person, so the fit issue gets addressed at the source instead of being chased through endless alterations later.
Michael Shahwan and his tailoring background
The man behind the bench at Bourjois Bespoke Tailor is Michael Shahwan, who carries the title Master Tailor and more than thirty years at the trade. That depth of practice counts in a craft where the difference between a passable suit and a properly balanced one comes down to thousands of small judgments. His stated approach mixes old-school Italian construction with classic English tailoring, two traditions that disagree on plenty of details, and a tailor who can draw from both has more tools to suit a given body and a given taste.
Italian and English construction methods
Bourjois Bespoke Tailor splits the work into a few clear lanes. Fully bespoke, hand-tailored suits sit at the top, built from an exclusive pattern cut for the individual. Below that is made-to-measure for suits and sports coats, which trades some hand-finishing for a faster and often gentler-priced route to a good fit. There are custom men's shirts, and the shop tailors for women too, with both bespoke and made-to-measure suits on offer. A client picks fabric, color, cut, and detailing with no fixed menu, which is the whole point of going custom in the first place.
Custom services offered
Just as useful, and easy to overlook, is the alteration and repair side. Resizing, restoration, and complex alterations are all part of the service, which means a favorite coat that has outlived its original fit, or a vintage piece that needs saving, has somewhere to go. A shop that handles both new construction and rescue work tends to attract repeat visits, because the relationship does not end when the suit is delivered.
Alterations and repair work
The public record here is sparse, and it is worth being direct about that. A Yelp listing exists for Bourjois Bespoke Tailor with photos attached, but no aggregate star rating or review count surfaces in search results. The Better Business Bureau carries an entry as well, though it is not BBB Accredited and shows neither a rating nor logged complaints. The Facebook page reports zero reviews. No Google rating, no Trustpilot presence, nothing on the platforms a careful shopper would normally check first.
Online presence and review platforms
That absence should be read in context. Bespoke tailoring is a referral business by nature, the kind of trade where a satisfied lawyer tells another lawyer and work arrives by word of mouth rather than star clicks. A shop can run for decades on that and never accumulate a visible review trail. One piece of outside recognition does stand out: Bourjois Bespoke Tailor turned up as a featured business spotlight in Morton Grove municipal materials, a genuine nod from the local establishment that a purely fly-by-night operation rarely earns.
Word-of-mouth business model
The professional footprint is modest but present. There is a LinkedIn company page at 72 followers, plus Facebook and Instagram accounts. None of that is large, and a buyer who weighs decisions by crowd consensus will find little to lean on. Someone who trusts a consultation and a test garment more than a rating average will be far less troubled by the quiet online record.
How to contact the shop
Bourjois Bespoke Tailor is straightforward to reach. A phone number, an email address, and the full street address on Dempster Street are all listed plainly on the site. For a custom-clothing operation running on conversation and repeat in-person visits, that accessibility counts. Geographically, Bourjois Bespoke Tailor names Arlington Heights, Barrington, Schaumburg, Northbrook, Niles, Winnetka, and Lake Forest as served areas, which is a sensible radius around Morton Grove and suggests a clientele that knows what good tailoring costs.
What sets this tailor apart from chains?
The unlimited choice of cloth and styling, paired with patterns kept on file for returning customers, means a second suit comes together faster than the first. Set against a chain like Indochino, which runs on a slick app, standardized fittings, and a national showroom network, Bourjois Bespoke Tailor offers something different in kind: one experienced tailor cutting a real individual pattern by hand. The trade-off is a limited public review record and no big-brand reassurance. The published evidence points to a legitimate single-craftsman workshop with a long career behind it; whether that is sufficient depends on how much weight a particular buyer places on verified outside reviews versus a direct conversation with the person who will actually make the garment.
