Ozempic is causing trouble on Savile Row | Hacker News Reader

Ozempic is causing trouble on Savile Row

thetimes.com

47 pointscwwc80 comments

This is horrible. The worst thing that can happen to a business - more and more customers are coming every day! How will these people survive!

And they might have repeat business down the line, too. Absolute horror.

>“Our big worry is that at some point, they will come off this drug, and, inevitably, they will put the weight back on.”

I assumed if I kept reading there would be a line explaining why they can't simply raise prices until the demand becomes manageable with current staffing, such as "We sold all these suits with guaranteed adjustments for £[some heavily discounted number] for life", but I didn't find any such explanation. Shrug

I think the population of people buying bespoke suiting is small enough that you would not want to alienate your existing customers. I agree that they should raise the prices, but I've got to think there's an aspect of a relationship there. It was hinted at, a little bit, in the article. It's not just a financial transaction, I mean.

And the article suggests that's it's not even the population of everyone with a bespoke suit so much as the minority of whales who own a lot of them. There is going to be a fair number of very demanding and impatient rich guys in that group.

Precisely. They're talking about a customer who has spent £700,000 ($870,000) on suits. That's a long-term relationship built on trust. Hiking your prices to manage demand might be a short-term financial bonanza, but it's disastrous in terms of reputation.

You can assume they'd rather be constructing new clothes, rather than doing alterations. You can also assume that there is some amount of their previous customer base who aren't interested in restarting the process at 0 with creating custom patterns, etc.

It's quite possible that the lasting effects are more dramatic, as this plays out over time and we move increasingly towards casual dress.

> You can assume they'd rather be constructing new clothes, rather than doing alterations

Thankfully, the free hand of the market provides a solution uniquely tailored to this kind of problem - just raise the price for the adjustments to a point where it's easier and cheaper if you just buy a new suit. In fact, if we are talking about huge weight loss I'm not even sure how the "adjustment" would be any less time-consuming than starting from scratch.

Either that or hire more people to do alterations.

That’s the problem, most of Savile Row will offer free alterations because they want you to look good in their clothes

The article should have mentioned that.

"The cost of alterations is an economically reasonable risk: the above would come in at £1,600 with Terry when they would need £5,000 to 7,000 for a replacement."

Ozempic has been a nasty surprise for Savile Row.

Presumably crying themselves to sleep on a Holland and Sherry super 120's worsted pillow, in a lovely navy blue.

Yes, the customer is returning, but that’s completely normal in the bespoke tailoring process—it’s not new business. The process of getting a completely bespoke suit there's usually multiple fittings over several weeks. It's normal for the customer's body to change, and adjustments to made to create a better fit.

That’s why it becomes such an issue when customers come in requesting an alteration—it’s like being dropped into a team at the final stages of a project that leadership says is 90% done, but it’s been stuck for weeks trying to finalize that last 10% due to some "small last minute requirement changes"

Spare a thought for the tailors who now have too much business and will need to raise their prices.

Joke all you want, it's a very interesting second-order effect that most people probably weren't thinking about.

Is it interesting? cause I really couldn't care less

Grab the tin foil hat but it seems like stealth advertising for Ozempic

The suit really is back this time? For an alteration at least.

https://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

ding ding ding

You’re assuming they tailor to make money, not for the enjoyment of suit-making.

If they don't find enjoyment in a particular request, they are free to turn them down.

Yes, a reasonable assumption. However, if they're doing it for the love, they can literally just keep doing that.

I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop on Ozempic. There has to be one. You're telling me that food has become so addictive and modern life so sedentary that we now need to fundamentally change human biochemistry to resolve the issues those things cause?

Also, rough name for the row.

I don’t think you understand how GLP ones antagonist work if you think they’re fundamentally changing human biochemistry. The medication works by using your own chemical signaling to achieve the effect.

The street has been famous under that name for centuries; the notoriety of Jimmy Savile is a blip in comparison.

Who is Jimmy Savile? I know I could google it easily and it's probably some guy who did something terrible, but it's certainly not a fact I could pull from memory. Savile row as a tailors' institution on the other hand is commonly known even over here on the mainland.

A children's TV presenter from the 70s to 90s, pedophile, and necrophilic.

Was protected by the BBC.

Savile Row has existed since 1735, predating the founding of the USA by 41 years.

I don’t understand the bizarre haters that show up in every GLP-1 thread.

America is fat, and the health consequences of that make COVID look like a regular Tuesday.

“If people just X” clearly isn’t working, we need results and we need results fast. The state with the lowest obesity rate in 2025 is higher than the state with the highest obesity rate from 1990.

I'm not a hater (or OP), but I think it's because GLP-1s are often talked about as if they're a kind of miracle drug. And it's very rare that drugs don't have some kind of side effects, especially after long term use. They might not even be universal, and we might not know what they are for years.

Yes, I understand there's an obesity epidemic, I also understand that GLP-1 drugs can have benefits outside of overeating. But with any drug, it's worth being thoughtful about its use.

Whatever we do, we mustn't address the root cause. There's no money in it.

You're absolutely right. As we all know, the perfect must be the enemy of the good, and so we must shun and ban anything that might be helpful until we spontaneously reach a utopian society where there are no problems at all.

They’re not suggesting perfectly addressing the root cause, just actually addressing it at all.

And it's being addressed, but doing that takes a long time. In the meantime, real people are suffering actual hurt that is alleviated by this medicine.

Obesity is self inflicted, which means very low self control. Being obese and taking the easy way out signals zero willpower. It's laughable.

Food has been optimized for thousands of years to be as addicting as possible, so yes, that about sums it up. If anything the food has altered human biochemistry long before anything resembling Ozempic came to be and this is a course correction.

Packaged food optimization as an industrial, scientific process only really became a thing after WWII. Before that the effects were insignificant at the population level.

Thousands of years may refer to domestication of e.g. corn.

The other reply is correct in that I was speaking to a broader concept than just historically recent industrialization, but yes, that certainly accelerated things too.

I'd argue that it's a few thousand years old. Humans didn't evolve to live on grains, but for the last few thousand years we've gotten the bulk of our calories from rice & wheat flour.

In the US.

This isn’t quite the forum for those kind of questions. But thank you for asking.

Why not?

Because, I reckon—as indicated by the downvotes and some comments—that at any appeal to human self-determination or a cultural/social redress of modern ideals that meddles in the reach of technological utopia runs contrary to the spirit of a significant portion of this community.

And my giving thanks wasn’t tendered in jest.

That said, I (and I suspect at least a few others here) have encountered questions like GP’s too, and would value HN-style patient, civil answers from the sorts of highly-informed biochemists and medical professionals who sometimes lurk around these parts :)

I’m curious what would disqualify this as an appropriate forum for “those kinds of questions,” and I’m not finding much in the guidelines ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) to explain it to me. Rather, it seems consistent with curiosity. In the interest of avoiding shallow dismissals, maybe you can help me understand why you’d exclude the GP’s question?

I can imagine myself asking something at a similar level about other topics that I’m fresh to, and I’d want to avoid asking unwelcome questions.

Only if the system was optimal to begin with - and it was very far from optimal so there is plenty of room to improve without so unknown hidden cost. Which is not so say that there is no unknown hidden cost - just that there doesn’t have to be.

Clearly yes?

The amazing part with ozempic is that it's been around for quite a while.

>You're telling me that food has become so addictive and modern life so sedentary that we now need to fundamentally change human biochemistry to resolve the issues those things cause?

Yes, absolutely yes.

I took it for six months and lost 20 pounds. I've been off it for a month and I've gained a few pounds back with my old appetite, so I will go on maintenance. It's healthy.

> change human biochemistry

We've done that in many ways already. For instance, essentially the entire adult population of the western world is dependent on and addicted to caffeine.

Yes. Or maybe, hormonal imbalance are so frequent more and more people become addicted to food?

My food addiction is caused by a grahlin hypersensitivity. It's hurtful to go on a fast, but I still do it every other year to rebalance myself. If I could have, I would probably also tried ozempic when I was obese. I'm now close the 'healthy' 25BMI so I probably won't though.

For people with addiction caused by insulin, I'd rather have them take ozempic than try the only method that worked for me.

I am a big proponent of fasts so I'm biased, but how is a weekly injection better than a free fast that you do once a year?

Because the injection is basically the only sustained weight loss mechanism that works on the population level. If a fast works for you knock yourself out. But fasts also come with risks like dehydration and malnourshiment.

Fasting hurts (the first one is really painful), demands prep, and I usually take time off when I do it. It only works with grahlin induced addiction. I will keep doing it because I have the habit now, but imho, on a macro perspective, openzic is better.

>You're telling me that food has become so addictive

There are labs full of people whose job it is to specifically make food addictive.

More scientists and engineers have worked on the contents of a bag of Doritos than the Falcon 9.

> I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop on Ozempic. There has to be one.

I don't have a problem with people using Ozempic other than if the people who really need it (e.g. type 2 diabetes people) aren't getting it cause they can't afford it or cause there's a shortage of it.

Having said that, I'm an obese person, and I still would not use it. I'd like to see in 10 years what the long term outcomes are before jumping in. I hope it's generally good for everyone. I don't need there to be an 'other shoe to drop' or some comeuppance for people who want to use it even just to look good. But I generally accept that there's no such thing as free lunches in life and that life is a series of tradeoffs.

I understand where you are coming from but as an obese person you should also be aware of the myriad of health problems that come with obesity.

Like the other commenter says, remember that obesity has many proven negative "long term outcomes" - as always, there is a trade off, taking the known danger over the unknown/possible danger

Let me guess, it will drop after the shoe drops from people getting covid vaccines?

The other shoe to drop will be when people start digging into why they are turning to food to feel good. Food is the what, not the why.

Timcast crew started talking about it on a recent show, with the clip on youtube: https://youtu.be/LsVk0O8ecF4?t=341 (jump to 5:41 if the timestamp link doesn't work).

Basically it seems to suppress appetite too much in some people, they starve without feeling like they're starving and end up with muscle and bone loss that doesn't rebound after going off of it.

You've got to be kidding me. I've never seen a more obvious plant of a story. You can't technically advertise drugs in the UK. Looks like they found a "clever" way around that.

I hadn't thought about how you can't just clip away some fabric; that the entire fit of the suit may be useless.

If someone has 100 suits at 7000 GBP a piece, you'd think they could sell those on some kind of secondary market and buy new suits that are flush fit.

Or light the old suits on fire. 700,000 GBP worth of suits? Goodness.

Off-topic: I wish there were places in the US to get tailored wardrobes curated, that wasn't an online subscription like Stitched. I'd like two or three suits, some sports coats, dress shirts and some versatile casual outfits.

As it stands, I have four identical pairs of jeans and a drawer full of black t-shirts that fit perfectly.

> Well, the Uncle Georges of today are turning into wraiths.

Does the author mean waifs?

No, the word meant is wraith which comes down to an insubstantial, ghostly or spectral person.

Yep, I see.

An example customer has 100 $7000 suits?

Pretty standard, really.

Barney Stinson approves. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_AgCzt9zcM>

I’ve opened a short position against fabric, but I’m long on thread.

Crazy how such an important drug for obesity sufferers is now just associated with fat vain rich people.

as someone suffering from eating disorders, causing obesity, I can assure you that this drug is not just for vain, fat rich people. Perpetuating the stereotype is actively preventing people from considering using it. It also paints it in a way that makes it seem like there’s no legislation or way to make it more affordable and accessible.

Not sure why you're being downvoted, it's literally crazy. The drug has been proven time and time again that it not only does what they say it'll do, but has a host of other benefits like helping addicts drop their habits. Jealousy runs deep.

I think they're more getting downvoted because that isn't actually the popular association with ozempic, despite the best efforts of these tabloid sloprags (and it's bipartisan too: The Guardian has an intense hatred of ozempic, and is clearly furious that it just keeps getting more popular). But I'm on it myself and have never gotten any reaction in person except encouragement and curiosity; I think the hate purely exists among opinion columnists in online bubbles.

that, and the contrasting of "obesity suffers" and "[...] fat people"

one of those groups is entirely contained within the other. contrasting them like that, and being judgmental about the latter, isn't going to be a popular opinion

the set of people that both agree with the class analysis approach, and are fine with the fat shaming, is very small

I just assumed it is associated with weight, of any kind.

it's currently expensive, until it's off patent and a generic comes out

so rich obesity sufferers are getting it before poorer fat people

So doing the clinical trial publicly for the rest of us…

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