Clothing Arts Ltd — Local services in Kenilworth

On 6/2/25 I purchased a pair of Pickpocket Proof Adventure Travel Pants with an expected delivery date of 7/30. No worries. Plenty of time before my holiday in Europe come September. 7/30 passes so I call and speak with a guy and I am told they have a shipment on the docks awaiting customs approval this week and my order will go out 8/11. Cool. 8/12 comes and no email saying my order has shipped so I call for an update. I spoke with the same guy as before (Owner? He talked like he was) and he told me a similar story as he has before and now my order will ship sometime in the middle of next week. So I politely mentioned to him that if my order (now on its 3rd delivery date) isn’t shipped by that time I will probably ask for a refund. Holy cow.. Dude went off on me. He raised his voice and begins to berate me and goes on a tangent about the refund, how he’s ordered thousands of pairs from his supplier and that the tariffs are causing delay. What? Tariffs aren’t a shipping issue, that’s a money issue and not my problem. Tariffs have zero to do with how quickly my order will arrive unless he’s not paying them. The entire time I’m trying to get a word in, but this dude isn’t stopping his diatribe. He then begins asking me if I want a refund because he can do it right now. I told him I am not requesting a refund yet, but I may if my order does not ship by the 3rd shipping date I’ve now been given. Then he wants to say I’m berating him. That’s rich.. I kept a calm voice and he is the one being rude to someone that gave him $109 bucks for a product yet to be received. I told him he needs to learn some customer service skills. He stopped talking and if I recall correctly that’s when he hung up on me. Ok. I call back. He answers again using my first name. I’m glad to know we are that close now. Practically buddies. I told him I was going to wait to see if my order would be shipped by the next date I was given, but because he hung up on me, now he can go ahead and cancel the order and give me my money back. Which he has. And that refund is the only good thing about the experience I’ve had with Clothing Arts. I’m sure the product itself is very good. The customer service I received was rude, inconsiderate and unprofessional. And by reading other reviews on the interwebs, I’m not the first person to be condescended to by this guy. If he wants to argue this review, he can prove me wrong by releasing the recording of the call. Any customer service department worth a nickel records them for training purposes. Which he could certainly use. With my $109 back in my account I will now spend it at Duluth...

I am looking forward to giving a review on the product but cannot at this time. I ordered two items with three month lead times before I wanted them. They were initially listed as expected to ship one month after the order date. That's a week ago for one item, tomorrow for the other. I spoke to customer service today. One item should be shipped in a month or so. Good news. The other not for two and a half months. Bad news, as this misses the window for my trip. The orders aren't updated when the ship date passes. No word at all from Clothing Arts. So, if you will accept paying for an item and not having it ship for months, you may have a good experience with Clothing Arts. At least they should update their billing system so that you're not charged until the item is ready for shipment. Customer service this bad can rarely make up for a good product. I'm hopeful that my pants will have been worth waiting for.

Fast forward. The pants arrived and they're exactly what I hoped for. The fabric, style, and fit are fantastic. Do they make up for less than satisfactory customer service (which generated my one-star review a month ago)? Almost! The pants are a five, without a doubt. I have decided on the basis of the quality of the pants to order the skirt. The ship date is September 30, but I won't look for them until Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving was optimistic. Now scheduled to ship mid to late January. I'm sure they'll be great, but shipping four months after the initial expected ship date is an indication that there are serious issues with production that are not reflected in the ordering process.

UPDATE: April 29th and I still don't have the skirt, almost 8 months later. They now say shipment is expected to arrive in their facility around May 15th. Can the skirt be good enough to wait that long for?

UPDATE: Missed another ship date. I ordered the pants at the beginning of September and they're still not here. Nine months? Ridiculous. They continue to push the ship date back a few weeks at a time.

UPDATE: The skirt arrived almost ten months to the day after I ordered it. You have to decide if getting a good quality item is worth it. I understand the problems Clothing Arts has had with production, and when I contacted CA, they responded each time. However, overall the product rates a five and fulfillment rates zero.

ADDITIONAL COMMENT: The women's grey pants have an olive tone and don't pair well with...

The Pants Are Fine. Customer Service Isn't.

I have had a very mixed experience with Clothing Arts. My original order was placed on April 17th of this year; I was told that they were expected to arrive in Brooklyn around June 15th, so I was pleasantly surprised when I received the pants on June 7th.

Since I'm often between sizes, I ordered one smaller size and one larger size. The smaller size was too small, so I decided upon an exchange. I sent those back and received an e-mail notifying me that the company had received the smaller pair and would be happy to exchange them. My exchange pair of pants would ship in early-to-mid-July.

On August 11th, when I had not received my exchange pair of pants, I e-mailed Clothing Arts. On the 13th, I received an e-mail stating, “We have been experiencing a period of hypergrowth, as well as production delays and a fabric upgrade, which has pushed back our deliveries significantly...the shipment containing your travel pants has been delayed and is now expected to arrive around next week.” I had a short exchange with someone at Clothing Arts who asked me (rather ominously) the latest date I could receive my pants, but after what I had experienced, I lied by a few days.

On August 17th, I received a “pre-shipment notification”, a useless piece of information. I don't care if my pants have almost shipped; that doesn't help me. Clothing Arts never told me when my pants had actually shipped, but a week later I checked the pre-shipment notification again and found out that my pants would be delivered on August 28th.

I regard “growing pains” as inevitable for any expanding business, and delays are going to happen, no matter how carefully things are planned. But KEEP. YOUR. CUSTOMERS. INFORMED. Reach out to people periodically! Let them know you value them by not dropping off the face of the earth when their merchandise will be delayed for weeks! It isn't rocket science. There can be NO excuse for keeping people in the dark this way when they have already paid for their clothing, particularly given the cost of what they have bought. This isn't cheap apparel.

In fairness, Clothing Arts does inform people upfront that there will be a lengthy period of time between a placed order and receipt of their merchandise. That's a start, but it isn't enough. I will not order from this company again unless I have reason to believe they have upped their customer service game...