Amid Bangkok's babel, Lawrence Osborne finds two suit makers who rise way above the rest to give men the ultimate shopping experience: perfect fit at a laughable price

Almost every Bangkok street seems to offer life's three essentials—food, sex, and tailors. Mine does. Soi 51, off Sukhumvit Road near Soi Thong Lor, is where many members of Bangkok's high society have their mansions. And between the karaoke girlie bars for Japanese salarymen is the tailor, the inevitable fixture on any Bangkok soi, or lane. The setup is formulaic. Usually there will be a small window with faded Italian fashion posters suggesting some tenuous connection with the maestros of Milan. Then there will be a knockoff Armani suit with a vaudeville silk hanky poking out of the breast pocket, and a moth-eaten tuxedo looking like something salvaged from a tomb. In the same window, you will invariably see a Sikh or Jain gentleman in a turban making eloquent hand gestures at you as you walk by. It's almost like being invited into a brothel: a little old-fashioned perhaps, but definitely hospitable.

In the West, the pampering of the male tailor has been lost except to the millionaire. The discreet appointments and flatteries, the languorous measuring and banter of a fitting—these were as indispensable to our grandfathers as a trip to the club. And then, the clothes. Hand-cut clothes sit on the body like a second skin. Their sensuality makes most stuff bought on Madison Avenue feel like glorified sackcloth. The problem is the cost: A bespoke suit in New York will set you back $5,000 or more. No rational person spends that on a suit. But in Bangkok the same thing can be had for about $300.

Bangkok is trying hard to make itself the fashion capital of Asia. Yet prices at the Versace or the Ferragamo inside the Emporium mall on Sukhumvit Road are exactly what they are in New York or London. This is precisely what middle-class Thais want; we farangs (foreigners), on the other hand, want just the opposite—a bespoke suit for peanuts and a couple of shirts for $25.

At the other end of Sukhumvit, therefore, things are far less sleepy than on Soi 51. Between Sois 20 and 2, Asia's latest "Savile Row" is undergoing a boom. This mile-long stretch of urban chaos, shadowed by the concrete pillars of the new Skytrain, is a place long notorious for its hundreds of streetwalkers. The Nana Entertainment Complex of go-go bars is just around the corner on Soi 4, and the infamous Grace Hotel is on Soi 3, suggesting that tailoring and libido go well together. At night, there is a pleasure-seeking pandemonium here no Western urbanite could imagine. And slotted into this morass of street vendors, transvestites, and kuaytiaw naam noodle bars are the Indian tailors—slightly aloof from the sleaze though offering a free gin and tonic to everyone who walks in off the street.

As a resident, I often come down here to smoke a hookah at one of the Arab cafés on Soi 3 and stare lasciviously at the Sikh clothing. Dozens of tailor joints are crammed side by side: There's Royal Tailors and Gulati's at the corner of Sukhumvit and Soi 3, all Suzie Wong Chinese silk gowns and cummerbunded tuxedos; there's Hermann, offering $99 suits and $8 shirts; Ricky's Fashion House, with a flashing Sikh shrine in the back; and the harrowing Harry's Boutique on Ruamchitt Plaza, next to the girlie pool hall (easy to enter, impossible to exit). There is an entire store devoted to the simulation of Hugo Boss, called—what else?—World Famous Boss and stacked with artful copies of all the latest Boss lines. Its shirts bear World Famous Boss labels that just dodge the copyright laws. There's even a "Versaces." The clothes look more like Brooks Brothers on a bad day, but they're popular with visiting Belarusians.