How about something made in the USA this American Independence Day weekend? Some weeks ago, I arrived at my apartment door to a hotly anticipated Fedex box. It was my first custom shirt from online made-to-measure shirtmaker, Ratio Clothing.

Around five years ago, I first met Chino, Eddie, Hensy, and Tosso when they were part of a traditional Cuban band named Conjunto Guantanamo. They performed regularly at one of my favorite bars near my work in DUMBO.

Vector graphics are great. They deserve more of a place on websites than they get — certainly compared to their rasterized cousins. Nowhere is this more true than with icon UI. I decided to dip my toes into two leading solutions to bringing vectors to webpages: icon fonts, and SVG.

I hate getting things altered. The effort usually involves toting clothes to work, making an extra subway stop on the way home, getting sized up and dropping the clothes off, and returning in a week with your fingers crossed that a second round of alterations won’t be needed. And that’s making the huge assumption that the off-the-rack clothes were salvageable to begin with — an expensive rarity for my skinny, 5′ 2″ frame.

Fortunately, the rise of online made-to-measure promises to make alterations the expensive rarity. Here’s my thoughts on my first made-to-measure experience — Hong Kong-based MyTailor.com — and why made-to-measure is a must for XS and down.