Jonathan Quearney

After last week’s post on smart casual, I thought it was time to show what some of our more extrovert customers choose... In the picture below, the tartan and the pink check are trousers only, while the blue and the gold check have been made up into suits.

The Tartan is Clan Buchanan O.C. from LBD, whereas the pink is a creation of Dormeuil. Both the other two checks are beautifully soft and tactile worsted cashmere cloths from Holland & Sherry’s “Xtasy Cashmere” bunch.

The ‘worsted’ means that the cloth is made from tightly twisted long staple cashmere fibres, which makes the cloth strong and resilient without losing its softness. What is most exciting is that this makes it suitable for both jackets and trousers – before this, cashmere was only really suited to jacketing because cashmere cloths were too delicate for trousers. As you may have guessed, this kind of cloth is not cheap both because it is cashmere and also because it goes through the worsted spinning process, but the increase in performance and longevity does justify this increase in price. We really try to keep the prices on these luxury cloths to the lowest reasonable price to encourage people to try them – so drop by the shop and have a look!

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It is one of the most difficult decisions for the modern man – how to do 'smart-casual' without following the crowd but with style as well?? As happens with most of our customers, once the business suits are taken care of, attention turns to other parts of the wardrobe because once you have had tailor made clothing, everything else seems to be not quite right!

The great thing about casual wear is that there are many less restraints on colour, cloth and style because you are no longer bound by conservative workplace constraints. The picture below shows some of the casual wear currently on the rail for some of our customers whose eyes are on their autumn / winter wardrobes.

The colours range from bright red, through a nice medium blue, to an earthy mid-brown, but it is not just the colour that draws your eye, it is also the choice of cloth. The red and blue are both in a heavyweight (500 gram) honeycomb cotton weave from 'Caccioppoli' which gives a nice activity to the colours. The brown is a slightly lighter (440 gram / 14oz) soft brushed cotton from 'Dormeuil' which just looks so soft. It is this combination of colour and fabric in a pair of trousers cut to your body which draws the eye. There is no need to go too far in terms of colour or style to draw attention to yourself, just let the quality of the cloth and the cut do the talking.

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More and more of my customers are asking me what they should wear if the dress code is 'Hollywood Black Tie'. While this term has been about in America for quite some time it is gradually getting more purchase over in England. It is used to describe the more relaxed approach to formal wear that has been the fashion in Hollywood over the last decade as more and more men have tries to make a statement by ignoring the old sartorial rules.

I am not quite sure what to make of this development; on one hand, I do like men to play with the rules of formal wear and to inject some character into their wardrobe, but on the other, black tie is a dress code that every man can understand and feel comfortable with instantly. So sometimes it seems to breed the same insecurity as the 'Smart-Casual' dress code – the rules have suddenly shifted and the extra choice puts many men off rather than encouraging them. The two pictures below illustrate this point – any man in a dinner suit can come close to looking like Cary Grant, but if you go off-piste you may end up making the same mistakes as Eric Bana...

My advice to customers depends on the customer and the event, but the one constant is that black tie, of whatever type, is meant to give the ladies’ outfits a chance to shine against a subtle background of black and midnight. The current trend seems to sometimes ignore that subtlety and encourage men to make a statement at just the time when they shouldn’t and it gets dangerously close to the clothes overpowering the man wearing them.

I think the only other option is to wear traditional black tie, adopt a haughty aristocratic stare and when someone asks whether you read the dress code, reply that the only Hollywood you know is a suburb of Birmingham and you can’t see how that would affect black tie...

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Having clothes hand-made gives our customers the freedom to develop their own individual style and for one of our customers the devil is in the detail. As you can see from the photo below, this gentleman likes to have a double turn-up on all his trousers as standard. While we don’t suggest that every customer should develop a signature detail, because in many cases it looks too affected, for this customer it works.

A quick word on the cloth itself as well which is a twist from Brook Taverner sourced by the customer himself. This style of cloth is perceived as quite old fashioned and is getting less and less common because many mills no longer make it. The usual reason is that the number of different coloured yarns which have to be twisted to get the range of colour in the cloth makes the production process very time-consuming. It is a pity because it is the handle of the cloth and the range of colours in the cloth which makes it so attractive.

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Recently we have had a lot of requests for re-modelling suits, which we are very happy to do, and as far as we can tell there are a couple of factors influencing this.

First, in this age of austerity, people are trying to improve what they have rather than purchasing something new. If you have a suit in the wardrobe which isn’t quite right, then for a small outlay you can get a nicely fitted suit for a fraction of the price of a new one.

Secondly, for some reason a lot of people have been inheriting good quality suits which don’t quite fit or were cut in a time when fashions were different. Again, if you have a hand-made suit, the investment of time and money to get it right for you now will be repaid in the years of wear you will get out of it. It may even be time to kickstart this by raiding your father’s, or grandfather’s, wardrobe...

And finally, when travelling lots of people let the tropical air go to their head and buy lightweight and linen suits from Hong Kong, India or Thailand, but when they get back home they realise that the suits aren’t quite fitting right. Again, we can help to re-model them so you get the best fit possible and forget the trauma of an ill-advised holiday bargain.

As the weather has got hotter, more and more customers have been bringing in their linen suits to be given the once-over and as the picture shows, we have a quite a selection on the rack!

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We always like to have a good selection of casual cloths for our customers and in this heat our thoughts have been turning from football football and tennis towards stylish linens and cottons. Following up on a lead from Geoff at Dugdale we got in touch with Michele Solbiati Sasil Spa and have been extremely pleased with the results!

Solbiati is a family owned Italian business founded in 1874 which now specialises in high quality linens and cottons. The company is responsible for a number of innovations, including fibre-dyed and crepe linen. One of the most noticeable things when you look at their bunches is the use of colour and pattern. There is a distinctive feeling to the collection; the colours are nearly always earthy and natural yet characterful, individual and wearable.

In the bottom left corner of the picture above is a small selection of three cotton solaros in some slightly unusual colours. It is this type of creativity and innovation which draws us to Solbiati’s style. The crepe linen too is very exciting – it is made by twisting flax fibres together before weaving and this imparts spring and resilience to the cloth, similar to a worsted twist in fact. But flax is a woody fibre and must be softened first by being thoroughly soaked and then carefully twisted to ensure that the fibres don’t break. Therefore the linen feels a bit coarser (because it is 2-ply) but it doesn’t crease so much at all and retains that very summery look – it is a great example of improving a natural fibre’s performance with a little thought and effort. Of course, the extra preparation costs and time means that the crepe linen is more expensive that regular linen, but if it combats one of the main problems with regular linen then we think that this is a worthwhile trade-off!

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After last week’s post on the double-breasted jacket, I thought it would be good to post a picture of one that we have just made for a customer from a grey hopsack by Harrisons.

As alluded to last week, proportion is everything when it comes to a double-breasted jacket. First, the proportions of the body: a high armhole with a nicely curved waist ensures that the jacket looks slimming and a natural shoulder line keeps the shoulders in proportion with the waist and avoids the jacket looking too boxy. All too often a double-breasted jacket is cut with wide shoulders and a pinched in waist giving a real hourglass figure, we try to have some shape in the waist but with skirt flare minimised to keep the silhouette natural and flattering.
Secondly, button position really affects the initial impression of a DB – this includes the distance from the hem to the bottom pair of buttons, the distance between buttons (both horizontally and vertically) and the first button position. This is where a tailor’s eye and skill comes into it and if you trust your tailor, this is where it will pay off.

A nice little detail is the buttonhole on each lapel; the symmetry complements the style of the DB. Given the current fashion of single-breasted jackets with peaked lapels, we were amused to find several pictures from the 1930s and 1940s showing the last time this was in fashion. The best of the bunch is this picture of screen legend George Raft (most notable for his role in the original (and best)Scarface)!

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Peaked lapels on a single breasted suit are in currently in fashion, how long before the double breasted suit loses its rather fusty image and comes back into fashion as well? Many people seem to think that the double-breasted suit is worn only by royalty, Roger Moore and Chicago Gangsters.

A brief glimpse of Cary Grant in Arsenic and Old Lace or Fred Astaire should redress the balance and convince you that maybe it is not so much ‘who’ wears a double-breasted as ‘how’ you feel you should wear it which puts people off the DB. It is true that the double-breasted jacket is more formal than the single-breasted but it need not make you feel like you are buttoned up like a stuffy aristocrat. Some people still surround the double-breasted with formality and rules, such as, “Only do up the top right button, the bottom right is for show only” or, “Never, ever leave the inside button undone” or even, “Never wear a double breasted jacket without its matching trousers”.

These rules all reinforce the formality of the DB jacket, but this needn’t be the case. The picture below of the Duke of Windsor along with the picture of Roger Moore above, show that these rules are only for those who do not have the confidence to wear their clothes.

Okay – I can hear you saying already that if you had the poise and grace of Fred Astaire or the charm of Roger Moore, then you could wear whatever you liked how you liked as well, but the Duke of Windsor is a normally proportioned chap and the closer you look at the picture, more details come out.
First, you can just see that he has a roll through lapel, which requires a very soft buttonhole. It would be very interesting to see if that jacket still worked when buttoned conventionally, or if the roll through buttonhole is effectively for show as well. If it did work in both ways it would be testament to the Duke’s tailor’s skill as the under-lapping lapel would also have to match. This in turn would mean that the jacket would probably have two inside buttons on the inside of each of the left hand buttons to keep the lapel’s shape.

But secondly, it seems like the inside button has been left undone completely because you can see that the under-lapping front panel is collapsing at the bottom. Yet still the Duke of Windsor seems perfectly well-dressed, which is down to the proportions, cut and fit of his suit, a great example of the tailor’s craft.

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Summer has arrived in London! No promise of a barbecue summer yet from the Met Office, but it feels like it is getting that way. Charlotte Street with its outdoors cafe lifestyle is perfect for this kind of weather and you can see from the picture that the Fitzroy Tavern at tisn’t doing too badly either....

Some of our more clairvoyant customers saw this coming and have timed it to perfection. These four pairs of trousers for example were finished this week and will be ready to wear for the summer. There are two linen pairs (the purple and the herringbone), one in a cotton/linen/wool/mohair blend (the grey stripe) and the other in a cotton/silk blend. It will be particularly interesting to see how the blend performs in the summer – we shall be sure to get some feedback from our customer and keep you updated on the blog!

The fabrics are from Dormeuil and Scabal, who seem to keep their ranges updated with some interesting and modern colours, patterns and blends.

Of course, if you haven’t ordered yet, there is still plenty of time – we can turn around a pair of trousers in a matter of six or seven weeks, which would leave a couple of months of summer wear at least!

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We have seen a real trend of customers bringing in tweed jackets to be re-conditioned to give them another few decades of life. The most interesting thing is that these are usually young customers who have inherited tweeds through their family and are attached to the individuality of these older designs.

As you can see from the picture, the jackets may be old, but the colours and the patterns of the tweeds are still stylish and contemporary. It is always rewarding to see these jackets given a new lease of life by being re-modelled and becoming part of a wardrobe again rather than just being a hand-me-down.

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Here’s a nice medium weight (11oz) sports jacket of the kind which I am finding are becoming more and more popular, especially in North America.

There are several factors why I think sports jackets like this are regaining some popularity. The subtle, but interesting cloth from Dormeuil means that it does not look old-fashioned and can be worn casually or formally, with or without a tie. It is also not a very heavy traditional tweed, which would make it unwearable for most of the year in some of the warmer states, and the slim, flattering cut lifts it to a more modern look.

For a versatile and interesting jacket which can pretty much be worn all year round to most situations, a sports jacket like this can’t be beaten!

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As many of you know, we have developed our own in house bespoke shirt-making capability over the last six to nine months. This has been a very exciting time and we thought it was about time we featured one on the blog.

This shirt for example is made in a beautifully soft and silky Alumo Super 200s poplin, it really does feel luxurious! The fly front and compact bow-tie collar add to its elegance and refinement.

We will be adding as much as we can to the blog while we are still developing our Gallery page, so keep your eyes peeled for more pictures in the next week or two!

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After a long wait, we have got our new range of ties in the shop, and I am pleased to say that I think it has been worth the wait! The ties come in two different widths, eighteen different colours and have been hand-made in England. It has been a bit of a struggle because some of the tie-makers have recently gone out of business, but fortunately we have now found the right supplier.

Most of them are pure silk, but we have a handful of other fabrics as well. The picture below shows the small range of wool and cashmere ties that we have chosen. Sometimes the texture, depth and number of colours in a woollen tie cannot be beaten. Some of these ties have only been done in very limited runs, so you have to be quick!

In keeping with our philosophy we have used only the best materials and the ties have been hand made in England. We have thought long and hard about the ideal length and taper of the ties, and we feel that we have now got the shape of the tie right: it narrows nicely at the throat to give a smaller more compact knot that will sit nicely in a classic or a cutaway collar.

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Hello everybody - I was chosen to be the subject of a documentary 'Rock of Eye The Tailor's Tale' as part of the Jerwood: Fashion, Film and Fiction event, itself part of the Wapping Project 2005. It gave me the opportunity to discuss my approach to tailoring as an art and as a business, and since the film, I have aged but my ideas and philosophy have not!

Several people have asked me what "Rock of Eye" means - it is a tailoring term used to describe how an experienced and skilled tailor can rely on his eye and intuition rather than just the tape, which demonstrates a true understanding of the craft.

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Good morning everyone – just a quick post to divert your attention to two interesting articles focusing on the future of bespoke tailoring which I have contributed to. We had an excellent feature in The Economist Intelligent Life which has gained us a lot of business and has certainly raised our profile. This same article has been edited and added to on Thursday January 14th’s entry on the le parvenue blog (I am afraid you may have to scroll down to find it, but it is well worth it!)

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