British bespoke - Part 6

At last. The suit is ready and my first bespoke experience in the UK is almost over. The blue double-breasted piece, in a small herringbone with brown-detail buttons, has been seven weeks in the making. But now it’s ready to take away.

I timed my visit to Graham Browne so I could actually see the final touches – largely, the sewing on of the buttons. This is something I particularly wanted tips on, because I’ve done it myself and, while the buttons haven’t fallen off, they never look quite right.

A tailor will use slightly thicker thread than normal, doubled up and waxed. Indeed, at one point Russell added more wax to the thread by drawing it through a little lump of the stuff.

The thread should be knotted at one end and pulled through both the cloth and its lining. Some people apparently like the knot to go all the way through, so you can see a dimple on the other side. But to me this looks like the sewing was done by, well, me. To make sure the needle goes this far through and no further, Russell puts a ruler inside – so that bumping up against this means you have gone far enough, but you can’t go too far.

Thread the button and go through the whole cloth again underneath the button – tipping it to one side. This is actually easier than my normal method, which involves me turning the cloth over every time. It also keeps the stitching more accurate. The number of times you need to sew through largely depends on whether the button will be used or is just for show (or with a single-breasted jacket, how heavy that use is likely to be).

A touch harder is sewing the jigger button – that which attaches the double-breasted jacket on the inside. The hard bit here is getting the stalk right, the stalk being the column of thread that separates button from cloth. On the jigger button the stalk has to be particularly long, to allow for the thickness of the attached jacket (as illustrated below).

You need to sew a few times through the cloth, leaving a good half-inch in slack. Then twist that slack so it becomes firmer and sew looped knots into it at four or five points. To tie one of these knots: put the needle through the stalk, draw the thread through until a small loop remains, put the needle through that loop and then tighten, creating a knot. Carry on until the bottom of the stalk and then snip off the excess.

One thing you will often notice with ready-to-wear suits is that the buttons sit too close to the cloth (on the outside this is). That creates a small crater-like indentation around the button when it is fastened. Some Italian factories now have machines that can replicate a hand-sewn stalk but many still get it too short.

So how about the suit itself? Well it’s pretty hard to describe how good it felt. Remember when I first had a bespoke suit make in Hong Kong, and I described the odd feeling of having cloth evenly spread all along my shoulders? It’s like that but everywhere. The chest feels sculpted, rounded but without ripple. The waist is pinched, but subtly. The shoulders are emphasised with equally subtle roping.

Russell maintains that the sleeves are too short, but I suppose that’s just my style. I want to show a little strip of linen and my shirts are that length. It just looks worse because I have long hands. And it’s still a long way off Thom Browne.

Russell was also a little unsure on the chest. It could be taken in every so slightly, just to clean it up, but that would restrict some movement and make the jacket less waisted. There are advantages and disadvantages, of course, and a suit from Anderson & Sheppard, say, would leave a lot more drape in the chest. But then the padding would also be softer.

One of the greatest pleasures of a bespoke suit, particularly one that is made by a local tailor, is that I can try it out for a few weeks and come back with changes. I may yet have the chest taken in, but it’s worth giving the horsehair a chance to soften up and mould to me. I may yet have the armholes taken up even further (they are currently around 3/8 of an inch bigger than some Savile Row suits). It’s all a question of time and judgement.

You haven’t escaped yet. There will be more posts on this particular double-breasted experience.

How to wear brown shoes

I am surprised how frequently the questions I am asked centre around one object of clothing: brown shoes. This is because men’s certainty about the alternative (black shoes) creates a spectrum of worries as to how, when and where they should be worn.

It’s really not that difficult.

First, forget all that ‘never brown in town’ rubbish. Do you wear a dark suit to work everyday (usually a three-piece), keep the jacket on throughout and always pair it with a sober tie? Then you’re breaking far more recent rules than the brown/town one – which was established when brown was a sure sign that a man was loping off to his country estate after work.

Modern business attire is far more flexible. Understand the spirit of archaic rules, rather than blindly following the letter.

Second, black shoes are an English thing. Yes they mean business everywhere, but other countries (Italy, US) accepted the benefits of brown leather years ago. You wear an Armani suit and a Ralph Lauren shirt. Why stick obstinately to an English tradition?

So, what to wear them with? Navy and mid-grey are my favourites. Avoid lighter blues and darker greys (charcoal). There is no particular rationale for this, but those tones benefit in particular from having a colour in the shoe they are worn with. Black is not a colour; it may serve to enrich the colour it is worn with, but it is not a colour itself.

Those are some basic cloth suggestions. The important thing to remember is that the same guidelines on shoes elsewhere also apply to brown – indeed if anything they are more important there.

One is that your shoes should always be darker than your suit trousers. If tan shoes are being worn more casually, there is some leeway there. But don’t wear tan shoes with a navy suit. Try a chocolate brown instead and you’ll realise what the Italians are going on about – why they embolden each other.

(I have seen several men in recent days actually wearing black suits with tan shoes. I only hope that has happened through a lack of thought. How someone could think those two would complement each other is beyond me.)

A second guideline to bear in mind is that brown shoes are still not as smart as black. Yes, they are accepted; but no, they are not a replacement. If you’re in doubt about what to wear to a meeting, wear black. If you’re in doubt what to wear with odd trousers, wear brown. Use your judgement and aesthetic nouse for everything in between.

Some people still dislike brown shoes for being inelegant. Part of the reason I like them so much is probably the greater possibilities for patina and polish. Whatever your reason, think through their use logically using these guidelines and you can’t go wrong.

What is too "matchy-matchy"?

Everyone knows that matching your tie to your handkerchief shows a lack of style, even more obviously a lack of imagination. Personally, I don’t even like matching a tie to my socks – still seems ever so slightly affected.

So I’ve come up with my own Matching Table, in an attempt to regulate this abstract area.

Let’s take socks as our constant, with everything else in the outfit being the variables. Matching your tie with your socks is relatively affected (in my opinion). Matching your jacket lining with your socks is pretty odd. In between is a range of options, from the obvious to the obscure. Pick the range that you think is acceptable, according to your own personal taste, and I’ll tell you mine later.

Obviously we are talking about coloured socks here. Plain socks – blue, grey, black, probably brown – should match the trousers rather than anything else.

Here’s the table, from most obvious to most obscure. Matching your socks to your:

[Obvious]

Dominant colour in tie

Dominant colour in handkerchief

Shirt

Secondary colour in suit (overcheck, coloured stripe)

Braces

Secondary colour in tie

Secondary colour in handkerchief

Cuff links

Tertiary colour in tie, handkerchief or suit

Suit lining

Underpants

Colour you’re thinking of

[Obscure]

The last two options are obviously silly. They are a reflection of the fact that it feels slightly silly just thinking about this topic in such rigorous detail.

But there is a serious point here. It always looks inelegant to match colours exactly, to match things that are too close together or to match things that are both large components of an outfit. Matching should be subtle.

So which of the matching pairs above do you think are acceptable, which silly and which optimal? Personally, I think everything from secondary colour in your suit to tertiary colour anywhere is tasteful. It shows style if a faint blue overcheck is picked up in the socks, or the blue flowers on your yellow handkerchief are similarly reflected. But my personal favourite is matching cuff links and socks. (I often wear coloured silk knots for the options they give in this regard.)

One could argue that cuff links are more obvious than the secondary colour in one’s handkerchief or tie. Certainly they pop out more, though smaller. But I love the effect of matching these two parts of one’s dress – two hidden allies, secretly in cahoots, happy for the shirt, tie and handkerchief to carry on their brash party upstairs.

End of silly theory.

The decorative lap seam: Pogson & Davis

Ah, the lap seam. A harmless anachronism to some, a pointless flap of cloth to others, in certain men it still produces real pleasure on a pair of trousers.

One of those people is Craig Pogson, joint owner of tailors Pogson & Davis in Mayfair. To him, the lap seam adds a touch of panache without being over the top. It’s a style point for the subtle gentleman, rather than the extrovert.

“Lap seams are not new, they’re old school. They’re from Edwardian times,” says Pogson. “And while they are for display, they are not informal. You could have them on a business suit and you’d be adding formality rather than taking it away. You definitely don’t make the trouser more casual. It adds class and sophistication to a suit.”

What’s that? You don’t know what a lap seam is? It’s where two pieces of material are sewn together, folded over and then sewn down onto the cloth, securing the seam in place and leaving a small flap (or lap) down the join. That overlap faces backward from the side-seam of a pair of trousers, subtly emphasising the line.

“It can only be done by hand because the inside of the seam has to be worked twice,” says Pogson. “The join is folded over and then sewn down, so working it twice. It’s done with a sewing machine, but gradually and keeping the material parallel all the way up.”

You may be more familiar with a raised seam, which is like a lap seam but with a much smaller overlap (around one millimetre). You’ll be familiar with it because it is used on the inside seam of denim jeans. The outside of the jeans has a normal turn seam (where the two sides are sewn together and then turned inside out); the inside has a raised seam.

Head of production Erinarchos Stephanou
cuts a careful line in the cloth

At Pogson & Davis they do raised seams as well, but usually on lighter materials. A lap seam is good for cloths going down to a weight of about 8.5 ounces. Below that the cloth wrinkles if it is joined with a lap seam – so a raised seam is used instead.

“Like the lap seam, a raised seam is a fun way to add something extra. And it can make things look a little less formal. In my next suits (I’m having some cotton suits made for the summer) I’m having a raised seam on the trousers,” says Pogson.

You could have a raised seam anywhere there is a join. It’s just a way to stitch two pieces of cloth together. But it makes most sense on the trouser seam. Elsewhere Pogson has other suggestions: “You can introduce other finishes. On the lapel, for example, you can do a welted edge, where the seam is stitched a little way in and the remaining material plumps up to the edge of the lapel. Around half a centimetre in, with bigger stitches in a slightly thicker thread. But it’s more about how the cloth is presented than the stitches themselves.”

Pogson & Davis don’t shy away from extravagance. Shown here is a cashmere overcoat lined with mink

Lap seams were originally used to add greater strength to a join, and they are more substantial. But that’s not why they are used today. In fact, on a pair of jeans the turn seam on the outside is really the decorative one. It’s that seam that shows off the fancy selvedge you pay all your money for: a turn seam means both sides of the material lay flat, so it shows both sides of the selvedge – particularly if you wear your jeans with turn-ups.

And that’s the lap seam.

British bespoke - Part 5

It’s getting pretty exciting now. Probably the penultimate fitting for my double-breasted suit from bespoke tailors Graham Browne. And as you’d expect, there are plenty more technical details to get into.

I was broadly satisfied with the jacket when I tried it on, but I had asked for the middle button to be moved an inch lower – so that the fastening is exactly on my waist and the sweep of the lapel a little longer.

To my eye the initial lapel was rather stubby and short, but more than anything I think this shows the current trend to ultra-long lapels. The standard distance from shoulder seam to lapel is 3.5 inches at Graham Browne. Mine was already reduced to 2.5. Any less than that and the lapel sits away from the chest, with the point running across the shoulder and sometimes actually in mid-air. Tom Cruise and others have made this look popular, but then we’re not all that short.

In the first image below you can see how the jacket and its lining are stitched together, and see the distance of the lapel point from the shoulder seam.

To roll the lapel and inch lower down, as mentioned, Russell ironed it over – pictured below. Of course, as you roll the lapel across so that it buttons lower down, the point shifts up anyway – by virtue of becoming more vertical. So there is extra height there as well.

In picture three you can see where the lapel point moves to as a result of this adjustment – it is the chalk mark just above the lapel on the right. Not a big adjustment, but worth it nonetheless.

Russell also took in a tiny bit at the waist, around 3/16 of an inch, and a nip in the drape, just under the armhole. You can see both those adjustments in picture four – where the two pins have been inserted vertically.

Finally, as mentioned in my last post I decided to have the sleeves a tiny bit shorter. My shirts from Hong Kong might have shrunk ever so slightly in the wash, but no matter – they’re the only formal shirts I have so the jacket sleeve has to be a little shorter as well, to reveal a quarter inch of linen.

Russell wanted to shorten the sleeve by 1/8 of an inch. Possibly 3/16. But I held my ground and pushed for ¼. All this over such tiny measurements.

Trousers for bright shoes

Summer brings many things bright and unusual, one of which is shoes. They may be a normal colour but in suede, they may be a pale leather or they may be in adventurous and contrasting hues. I’ve had two questions in the past week asking about what to wear with this kind of footwear – one referred to tan spectators, the other to grey/blue Oxfords from Nicole Farhi. One writer also mentioned Lodger’s summer shoe in blue/white linen (pictured alongside a spectator from the same brand).

I think you have three options: summer cloths, grey, or jeans.

To take those in order, the most formal and traditional option is to pair bright shoes with the kinds of colours and trousers they were originally intended for. So a pair of spectators (also known as co-respondents) would have been worn on a bright day with what would then have been considered informal cloths – linens or cottons, possibly flannel, in white, tan or anything in between.

So an outfit might be: cream flannels, blue oxford-cloth buttondown shirt and a navy blazer. Perhaps a V-neck sweater if you want to make it a bit more casual. A key here is also to tie in similarly coloured accessories if possible – a tan belt with the spectators for example.

Essentially, the first option is about pairing the shoes with clothes of a similar formality in similar colours. The blue/white linen shoes could be harmonised with some blue above the waist to tie them in, just as the tan belt ties in the spectators.

The second option is grey. Of the darker tones usually worn with formal clothes, plain grey supports bright colours the best. This is because bright colours will always look cheapest when paired with contrast elsewhere – a navy suit and white shirt will make a bright pink tie look cheap. Replace that with a mid-grey suit and the difference is startling.

So you could pair any of these shoes with mid-grey flannels or worsted trousers (mid-grey is actually a fairly light colour – probably the lightest grey one would wear for business), a white shirt (to pick up some of the brightness elsewhere) and perhaps something that picks up one of the colours in the shoes, again.

Last but by no means least, wear them with jeans. Jeans can soak up the brightest of colours, as demonstrated by the neon trainers some guys wear. Not indigo jeans, though, or you’ll have some of the same problems as the navy suit mentioned earlier. A nice mid-blue, with some paleness where they’ve been worn in.

Those are your choices.

Frequently asked questions

“I’ve got a question for you – how do you gauge which patterns work well together across the tie, shirt and jacket?”

“I’ve written about that before, it’s all about the density of the pattern.”

“Well I didn’t see it, you should write about it again.”

One of the inherent disadvantages of a blog is its lack of an easy way to view the archive. Most questions I am asked my friends and readers have already been answered somewhere, previously (and I’ve only been doing this two years). There are exceptions, of course – a friend asked recently which side the buckle should go when you wear your belt, and I honestly don’t know.

But most of the time it’s been dealt with already. So to deal with this, and avoid the dull repetition that would result from following my friend’s advice above, I’ve created a list of useful answers by topic.

How do patterns go together?

Well, it’s all about how dense they are – how large and how close together. Just keep them in balance.

And it always helps if the tie has the largest, boldest pattern. If you want to play safe, to be honest, just separate tie and suit with a plain shirt.

How do you wear a pocket handkerchief?

Well, the default should be white linen, cotton if you find linen hard to wear or arrange (or indeed a mix, as Hermes ones often are).

Then and only then should you experiment with harmonising colours.

A good way to illustrate this is by looking at the way autumnal colours can go together.

The handkerchief is also a way to anchor an entire outfit, allowing more adventurous colours or patterns elsewhere.

As to how to wear it, this is often hard to do without looking pretentious. Go for a straight line or fold with the white linen default. For silk, I prefer the Lazy Fold.

This is an refinement of an earlier post regarding some general tips on stuffing.

How do you tend to wear waistcoats?

Well, I’m a big fan of wearing waistcoats with trousers on their own, as a way to avoid the difficulties of working all day at a computer in a jacket. This has been christened the Logical Waistcoat Theory.

This can mean changing the way you have your waistcoats made, if you have that luxury.

And I do like the odd waistcoat, though this is fiendishly difficult to do well, outside of formal events.

I hope this was useful. If it was, suggestions for similar references please.

British bespoke - Part 4

Monday was the first stage of my final fitting for the suit from Graham Browne – my first bespoke suit in the UK. While there is far less to say about the trousers of a suit than the jacket, there are still a few interesting points to note.

Like many bespoke tailors, Graham Browne sews a length of reinforcing material into the waistband of its trousers. Made from a loose-weave linen mix, this is intended to keep the waistband firm and stop it folding over.

I have to confess that when I first saw this addition to my bespoke suits in Hong Kong, I thought it was a way to cut corners – hiding the perhaps poorer-quality material with internal reinforcements. While Browne has corrected this opinion, it is still true that the side-adjusters on my Hong Kong trousers do not cope well with the insert, making the part of the trousers that is tightened with these adjustors into stiff folds that are a little uncomfortable.

(The Hong Kong suits also featured this reinforcement along the top of the breast pocket, which I recently discovered high-end ready-to-wear brands do as well – such as old Kilgour stuff.)

Ready-to-wear trousers rarely feature these reinforcements, apparently, because they make the entire waistband in one operation by a machine. The linen cannot easily be inserted afterwards, or into just some of the waistbands.

The waist of the trousers was slightly too large (the drop from my legs to waist is rather extreme) and picture one below shows Russell marking that adjustment up. Picture two shows the adjustment marked on the rear of the trousers.

Picture three shows the length of the trousers, which I asked for every so slightly shorter than pictured (we went for 3/8 of an inch shorter). While I do want a break in the front of my trousers, I want this to be slight. And the narrowness of the leg should mean there is minimal flapping when I walk.

The shoes, by the way, are oxblood wholecuts from Lodger – on the English contemporary last. Russell wanted to know, so I’m telling you too.

Finally, I did have a sneak peak at the jacket and a brief discussion about the length of the sleeves. I always like a half inch of shirt showing here (as a great locus of style) but the jacket sleeves at present do not reveal this. One problem is that I have rather long hands and fingers – so a short sleeve can look particularly short.

Russell said he would always go for between four and five inches of hand showing – and my sleeves were already revealing five. But I think I will still have the sleeves shortened slightly. Showing a little cuff is after all much more an Italian tradition than an English one.

Chocolate brown with canary yellow

It’s rather a shame that leather shoes are so often worn with suits. For nothing complements the patina of a well-polished leather more than strong colour.

Grey and blue wools are all very elegant, and there are mutually beneficial combinations – oxblood and navy, for example – but strong colours are unlikely to be found in suitings. The shoes are likely to bring out an aspect of the suit, rather than the other way around: an English tan that highlights the speckles of colour in Harris tweed.

Indeed, there may be a rule of thumb here: Strong colours shed light on their muted neighbours. So leather shoes (other than black) bring out aspects of a subdued suit; bright socks make the most of leather.

For socks are by far the easiest way to put strong colour next to leather. It is no coincidence that brands such as Domenico Vacca and Paul Stuart showcase their shoes with a rolled up sock inside. It makes the patina sing.

Let’s take an example. A really dark, chocolate-brown leather looks great with a bright yellow sock. Yet other bright colours – red is the first that springs to mind – do not. Thick, muddy brown is uplifted by canary yellow; red just looks crass.

It’s not until brown leather gets some highlights to it, and approaches tan, that red begins to work. Artistically, yellow has to work better because the pigment of the brown has more yellow in it than any of the other primary colours.

So when I wish to add a splash of colour below the waist, I pair bright-yellow socks with chocolate shoes. Probably two-hole derbies, or wholecuts, to expose a broad expanse of the leather to its acidic neighbour.

Reader question: Suit brands

Will, Minnesota: Simon, I wrote to you before on a style matter. As I’ve sought suits and separates lately, I’ve learned that while I thought I was a 40, I am truly around a 38 long – sometimes a 36. In-turn, I’ve learned that some designers will fit me better than others and in ways that I prefer. After having bought two suits, a Valentino and a Z Zegna, from Bloomingdale’s at more than 50% off, I write to you again.

I know that these names, as well as Hart Schaffner Marx, Armani, and many others are high-end brands. I know that Boss is a little bit lower and Ralph Lauren, except for his purple and black label, is lower still. Without giving me an exhaustive and exhausting list of names, please tell me the tiers of men’s suits and brands. Or if you’ve already done so, please direct me to the column link.

Dear Will, there is no obvious or easy way to rank the different designer brands. Much of the ranking you state here will be based on advertising, your tastes and on inevitably on price.

The key to comparing designer brands is to remember that you are paying for two things – design and construction. A $2000 designer suit is not twice as well made as a $1000 one. It may be made slightly better (say 10%, 20% more invested in materials and workmanship) but most of the extra price is for design.

Design is great. It brings beauty into the world. But most of the time when men buy a suit they don’t want to pay for design. They want better materials and quality. So just pick a design you like, irrespective of the price. You may have expensive tastes or cheap tastes. But work out what you can afford and pick the design you like best for that price.

This is entirely separate to quality of construction. I recommend a few things to look for below, but I would also recommend the relevant section of Alan Flusser’s Style and the Man, which goes into assessing cloth and construction in more detail.

- Check that the chest is fully canvassed. When you pinch the material around a jacket button, holding both sides of the cloth one in each hand, you should be able to feel a floating piece of material between them (this is horsehair or a horsehair blend, and gives construction to the chest).

- Check that the buttons are horn rather than plastic.

- Try holding the cloth and feeling its weight. It should be flexible to the touch, have a satisfying heft and spring back well when scrunched (as you can see, this ‘feel’ for cloth is something hard to describe).

- Check how large the armholes are. A smaller armhole is less efficient to make and more personal to the wearer. Cheaper brands make bigger ones to fit more people.

- Check that the trousers are at least half-lined. While some men prefer trousers unlined (particularly as it makes them easier to press) a lining is generally a sign of quality.

- Check the matching of patterns. Checks or stripes should match across pockets and across some part of the chest into the sleeve. As with many of these points, this really shows attention to detail rather than quality of construction – but that’s the best guide you have, you have to assume that attention will have been pursued elsewhere as well.

- Working buttonholes used to be a sign of quality, but so many cheap suits do it now that I would ignore this.

These are just a few things to check. Much of it is a question of taste as well. I hate a jacket that doesn’t roll naturally from the top button to the middle button of three. And it is harder to construct, so you could say it shows quality. But then some people do prefer harder-lapelled, ‘true’ three-button suits.

The other thing to remember when separating design and construction is that you are paying for a brand’s advertising, shops and runway shows. Armani spends more on this promotion than, say, Canali, which in turn probably spends more than Hart Schaffner Marx. Armani ads create desirability and cool, but you pay for it when you buy into that branding. Profit margins aren’t necessarily higher at designer brands, but costs are.

(Though often designer labels do use their position to charge higher margins. One former Berluti employee tells me that their profit margins can be higher than 75%, for example, charging almost 50% more than an English shoemaker I know with the same cost price.)

One answer to this, of course, is to get discounts – as you have done. Anything over 50% and you’ve removed most of the profit. Kilgour’s recent clearout sale got me rather a fever given that some suits were priced at £250, down from over £1000.

To conclude, don’t assume that brands have any set pecking order. Judge the design on its own merits and your own taste, not the label or the price tag. Then analyse the quality using my pointers and other research. And finally, get a discount.

Harrods discounts

For those out there looking for the last, final round of sales, Harrods started its extra discounts at lunchtime today. It finishes on Sunday.

This is the time to go at get 75% off. Happy hunting.

The launch of Gentleman's Corner

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I would soon be announcing an exciting new project. Well, it went live on Friday: Gentleman's Corner.

The site is dedicated to craft in menswear, with much of that looking at shoes but also including suits, knitwear, trainers and indeed anything that dresses a man. The philosophy is Ask Another Question - in other words, dig a little bit deeper than the normal PR found in men's magazines.

While I will be the editor-in-chief, we also have a range of different contributors from vastly different backgrounds - shoe designer to fashion journalist, sneaker freak to clothing novice. Please have a look, any feedback is appreciated.

Below is my first feature for the site.



The craft of tweed: Harris and Norton

Patrick Grant loves tweed. That’s evident from the length and depth with which the owner of Norton & Sons will talk about tweed. Indeed he was recently asked to speak about tweed, by the Harris Tweed Authority. He is making a documentary about tweed, with the BBC. Hell, his grandfather was a yarn designer.

But he loves one particular tweed in particular: Harris tweed. And more specifically than that, the Harris tweed made by Donald John Mackay in a small hut, on the edge of the beach in Luskentyre.

“If you look at it under a magnifying glass it’s amazing. Most yarns are very simple, they usually contain one or two colours. But a Harris tweed yarn will routinely contain seven or eight different coloured wools, which are blended together and then spun,” says Grant. “So at a distance it might look like a blue, a pale blue. But when you get up close you will see little bits of green and turquoise and navy, perhaps a touch of yellow. There’s an amazing richness of colour.”

That’s one reason Harris tweed is so easy and creative to wear with other clothes. All the different colours in the tweed can be picked up in your shirts and your ties and your handkerchiefs.

Mackay doesn’t make his own yarns, they are supplied by the main mill on the island. But it is the art of spinning them and creating individual patterns that impresses Grant.

“It’s hard to be prescriptive about what makes a Harris tweed beautiful. Some people just get it right. There is a science and an art to it. Weavers spend years and years learning the science, but then they have to create art out of their own imagination. Donald John Mackay just has a good eye.

“It’s hard to analyse. You could apply all your colour theory to it, a colour wheel etc, but often that doesn’t work. One combination will just resonate, while another that worked in your mind will look drab. In that way it’s much like combining colours in all areas of men’s dress. You need to learn from experimentation and experience.”

Mackay has other champions as well. In 2004 his company landed a contract from Nike to update a trainer called The Terminator – a basketball shoe from the eighties. Nike wanted to use a swampy green tweed to relaunch the shoe and Mackay ended up supplying over 10,000 yards of the fabric.

That led to something of a renaissance for tweed, with it being championed by Ralph Lauren, Madonna and Sarah Jessica Parker over the next few months. Then in February this year Mackay was asked by Clarks to supply the tweed for two ranges of boot it was launching, with an initial order of 1000 yards.

The two boots – a ladies high, seventies boot and a desert boot – were commissioned as part of Clarks’s celebration of 60 years of the desert boot, and will be available from August.

But for tailoring, the cloth is only found in two places. From that hut on the beach and at Norton & Sons. The 2000 tweeds that Nortons has available range from very lightweight cloths that aren’t really tweeds at all, referred to as worsted tweeds, to insanely heavy, 32-ounce tweeds that seem bulletproof. But the Harris tweed is by far the most popular.

“Of those 2000 cloths in all those weights, the Harris bunch is probably about 20. A tiny, tiny fraction. But the number we sell is 10 times that proportion,” says Grant. “We have tweeds from some fantastic mills: from Scotland, from Huddersfield, from a mill in the Cotswolds and Donegal tweeds that are now made over here. But Harris outsells them all.

“People connect to Harris tweed. They understand the history and the provenance of the cloth. There is something about the Isle of Harris, Lewis and that northern chain of Hebridean islands, that creates in people’s minds something quite special and romantic. The materials and the colours are redolent of the sea, and the grass, the rugged life, the farming.”

Not every client knows this when they walk into Norton & Sons. But they are inquisitive people and interested in what they are buying. And Grant admits he has some pictures of Mackay’s shed on the edge of the beach.

But it’s the people that make Grant want to go to the trouble to buy it himself, rather than just sourcing it from the bunch – from Harrisons of Edinburgh or a similar supplier. This is backed up by the sourcing of other products sold by Nortons, such as knitwear from William Lockie & Co and jewellery from Clive Burr: both small, independent British manufacturers. Or indeed the products under the relaunched E Tautz.

Grant is also heavily involved in the tweed industry – making the series for the BBC, as mentioned earlier, and speaking at an event for the Harris Tweed Authority that took place “in the aftermath of some rather unpleasant upheavals in the industry”. He is referring to the buying up of Kenneth Mackenzie and Parkend, two tweed manufacturers, by entrepreneur Brian Haggas in 2006. Haggas closed down the latter and reduced production at the former to four designs, refusing to sell to anyone else and producing exclusively for his own production. Since then Mackenzie’s has been mothballed also.

Says Grant: “I was there as the man from Savile Row, the man who loves the cloth and is there to tell people that they have fans and supporters all around the world. That they are not alone.”

Your pocket handkerchief is a collar

One question I often get asked is how to pick out the colour of your pocket handkerchief.

Well, I’ve written before (here) about harmonising in colours rather than matching – essentially picking out a second colour other than your tie’s that you think goes well with the shirt and jacket. Or, as someone put it to me recently, “so it’s like thinking of two ties that go with the outfit, and just using the colour of one of them for the handkerchief?” Yes, that’s a good way to put it. Of course, if you’re not wearing a tie, then the colour of your handkerchief should be thought of in the same way as the tie would have been (longer explanation here).

But. All this is to presume that you want a coloured, patterned or otherwise fancy pocket handkerchief. You may not. Indeed, your default setting should not be colour and pattern, but plain white linen. That’s in the pocket to start with. It is a conscious decision to add colour afterwards.

Bright, crisp white is the smartest colour a man can wear. This is why, back in the age when collars were starched and attached with studs, they were white. The body of the shirt may be striped or brightly coloured but the collar and cuffs were white. Because it is bright, because it is clean and because it provides the greatest contrast with the fabric of the jacket.

A strip of white around the neck and two around the wrists. It brings dignity and formality to any outfit, and today’s equivalent is the linen pocket handkerchief.

In the same way that today’s blue or pink shirts – that do not have detachable white collars – are a little more casual than those of old, the next option down your ladder of handkerchief choices should be something similar to the colour of the shirt.

Not exactly the same, necessarily, but similar. If the shirt is pale blue, go with a similar blue with a white polka dot. Or a darker, navy blue. Perhaps even a blue pattern with some white or yellow thrown in. The point is, the handkerchief will harmonise with the shirt if it’s dominant colour is the same.

White is the default; the second choice is to pick a colour similar to the shirt. Last is to pick something brightly coloured that plays a similar role to the tie (as described earlier on). Many men get this order entirely the wrong way around. They think that the handkerchief must play a similarly decorative role to the tie, as it is often silk and very much on display. That is your last choice – the sporty one, the more showy one, the rakish one.

Reader question: A suit for my wedding

Michael, Atlanta: I’m a long time reader and have greatly enjoyed your posts, and have even more enjoyed applying their message.

I’m about a year away from my wedding and am looking to have a suit made for it. I am looking at either a black with a white chalkstripe, or a medium grey with a white chalkstripe. A standard three piece, with three-button jacket, slanted unflapped pockets with a ticket pocket on the right, and an eight-button double-breasted peak lapel waistcoat. This will be accompanied by an unadorned white spread-collar shirt and plum tie and pocket square.

That, I’m aware, is quite a lot of look (stripes, peaks, buttons, and pockets) even though we are looking to incorporate throwbacks of vintage styling. I’m uncertain about the pairing of the waistcoat and the jacket – is having both peak-collared something that will look ridiculous? And the combination of single and double-breasted seems to make sense in my head, but is it commonly borne out?

Lastly, would black and white spectators work, or pull the whole thing apart and make it look even more like costume?

Dear Michael, you are right in your description of this a lot of look. To be honest, I think it is too much. But it can also be saved fairly easily I think.

Let’s start with the colour of the suit. Go for the medium grey, not the black. A black suit with chalk stripe can too easily make you look like a wide-boy trader or a gangster, and besides, black as a colour suits almost nobody. The mid-grey should be more flattering, seem more formal at the wedding and provide better use later on.

The pockets need to be quietened down a little as well. Unflapped pockets may look a little odd with a suit that isn’t that formal elsewhere, and a ticket pocket produces the opposite effect. Equally slanted pockets. It feels like you are trying to throw too many quirks into one area. I would pick just one: two unflapped, straight pockets, for example, or three with flaps.

On the waistcoat and jacket, don’t worry about the double and single breasted, but do worry about the lapels (the collar is the top section, around your neck by the way). Having both peaked will look too much – like you are trying to wear two outfits instead of one.

Instead I would go for a collarless waistcoat – I have a suit and waistcoat in exactly that configuration and the sweep of the waistcoat underneath the jacket adds subtle verve without being over the top. If you must have a collar on the waistcoat, make it a shawl collar – a very traditional look on a double-breasted.

And the advantage of paring back in all these areas is that it is the only way you’ll be able to get away with wearing spectators as well.

Sporty, monochrome wedding

Here’s a thought on wedding attire. It’s not really traditional and it doesn’t really fit with the rules. In that sense I suppose it is a way to break the rules.

Anyway. I’ve written before how the default attire at a wedding should be the smartest thing you have. If morning dress is not required or suitable, it should be smart, discreet and dignified. The best combination might be a navy blue suit in a smooth, worsted wool, white cotton shirt and satin tie. Single breasted. White linen handkerchief. Black shoes. It’s hard to think of anything smarter in a lounge suit; though perhaps a Macclesfield check in the tie would be a nice nod to tradition.

However, it does strike me as a shame that a man following this advice will end up wearing to a wedding pretty much what he wears to work.

It is a shame because today not many men wear suits casually. They don’t wear them at the weekend and they don’t wear them for sport. So the sporty end of the lounge-suit range is criminally underused.

Men don’t wear strong checks; they don’t wear cottons or linens; they don’t wear great weaves like hopsack. These patterns and materials are unsuited to the dignity of business, so they rarely make it into the office. And at the weekend jeans and sweatshirts dominate.

So social occasions like weddings are a glorious opportunity to wear these sporty combinations. At a wedding I went to recently a friend was wearing a bespoke tan linen suit, brown oxfords, a pink-and-white striped shirt, a sky-blue tie and a pocket handkerchief. He looked great – but it’s hard to imagine any other scenario where he or any other of my friends would wear a combination like this. The joy of rough cloths and bright colours would be lost.

As a defence to this flouting of the rules, I would also point out that weddings today really are more casual than they used to be. There are fewer formalities, there is less prescribed structure, hell most of them aren’t even religious. So while the sanctity of marriage certainly demands dignity in dress, people shouldn’t follow ideas of propriety derived from an entirely different occasion.

It is always good to draw in one or two ideas of tradition though, if only because they have created such beautiful archetypes for us. In this case I would highlight the use of monochrome as smarter and more formal. Paring down the use of colour immediately makes things more dignified.

For all these reasons my outfit to this recent wedding was: a pale grey Glen-check suit, white cotton shirt, dark silver tie, white linen handkerchief and brown shoes. Sporty in the pattern of the suit, but retaining formality through monochrome.

So this is one long self-justification, basically.

I did say someone else looked good though, right?

Reader question: Planning the week

John, Los Angeles: Many of my colleagues laugh when I tell them I often pick out five days worth of clothes on Sunday evening. But I find that taking the time to select outfits for the week on Sunday and actually hanging them in the closet makes my mornings much calmer.

It also allows me time to really explore and ‘shop’ in my closet, and to put together, even try on, new combinations. It also reveals possible repair or cleaning issues while there is still time to do something about it. If my schedule for the week changes, with certain meetings requiring different selections than I have already prepared, I still have the flexibility of moving days around.

I find that the whole enterprise keeps me from just reaching for my favourites and makes me look forward to getting dressed each morning. What are your thoughts?

I strongly agree with two of John’s observations. First, I never have time enough to think calmly about what I will wear that day, let along try on one or two options. Second, thinking about what I will wear in advance opens up many more possibilities. My imagination has more time to whir through its collective memory and the wardrobe permutations.

The first of these is a real pity. As Patrick Grant at Norton & Sons observed to me recently: “It is a real shame that men don’t take 10 minutes every morning to think through their clothing options. Even if it’s just to try on two or three different ties.”

But I have to say I never fail to know what I am going to wear in the morning. Such is my passion for all things sartorial, and my eagerness to experiment, that I have already put together two or three possibilities in my mind. The evening before is normally the time for this and, if I can’t decide, I lay out a couple of options to let them stew.

Indeed, such are the whirrings of my mind that I normally have more combinations than I need. This week, for example, was forecast to be bright sunshine for at least four days. To each of those days I therefore allocated one summer item I would like to wear – new unlined navy blazer; cotton/linen trousers in a strong blue from Florence; spectator shoes from Lodger; and a tan linen jacket/yellow tie combination. Except that two days later my mind had come up with more ideas and some had to fall by the wayside. How about those white trousers? Or the cotton jacket? You never wear those when it’s sunny.

To those without this near-obsessive bent, I recommend John’s approach. At least plan out two or three days. There will always be a day or two where you are out in the evening and don’t have time to plan, in which case you can reach for old favourites. But if there’s no time given to considering your clothes, there’s unlikely to be any joy in it either.

British bespoke - Part 3

My first, baste fitting for my bespoke suit at Graham Browne today. While I’ve had fittings at this stage previously with my Hong Kong tailor, this is the first time I’ve been able to ask as many questions and probe the details of this process.

The first image shows what the chest area of the suit looks like at this stage – the wool folded over with a generous inlay, lined with just the body (horsehair) canvas. The fold is held in place with long baste stitches and the sprouts of thread at the edges show where the mark stitches were that were pulled apart (see previous post here).

The second image shows the collar of the jacket. While there isn’t an actual collar attached, just over an inch of excess material is left above the neck (shown by mark stitches here) to simulate the collar when fitting.

Sewing together the jacket panels for this fitting only takes a couple of hours – which makes you feel slightly better when they say the whole thing will be ripped down into its individual components after the fitting, repressed and entirely re-cut.

This is one reason the amount of inlay left over at the edges is so generous: it allows significant reworking of the shape to be done after the baste fitting. As it is an investment suit, though, there will also be inlay left in the suit after it is finished – so it can be altered in the future. Bespoke will nearly always leave greater inlay here than ready-to-wear (which is always keen to shave off any extra costs).

In the third image the jacket is on and the lapels have been pinned back into position. Russell is examining the line of my rather rounded and sloping shoulders. Note also that only one arm is attached – the left. Only one arm is needed to judge the length and pitch of the sleeve, unless the initial measuring established that the client had one arm significantly different to the other.

The reason the left arm is attached and not the right is that it’s just easier. A sleeve is always sewn on starting at the front and working around to the back. This is because greater fullness (the difference in length between the sleeve and the armhole) has to be worked in at the front. A right-handed tailor works away from himself when attaching the left arm, therefore, but has to sew in reverse when attaching the right arm. So only the left sleeve is attached at the baste stage.

One of the most important things to discern in the sleeve at this fitting is its correct pitch (how it hangs in relation to your body – a little forward, a little back). If there is more material in the back of the sleeve, it hangs forward; more in the front and it will hang further back. The tailor makes a chalk mark on the jacket where your arm is hanging. Apparently my arms hang a little further back than average. Who knew?

It also hadn’t occurred to me that men tend to hold their arms unnaturally far back at the fitting – in the same way as they stand up too straight, as if they were on parade. The tailor has to make his customer relax in order to stand naturally, one of the favoured Savile Row methods being to tell a particularly ridiculous joke.

In the fourth picture that left arm has been stripped off and the shoulder seam is being uncut. Seeing the pieces being ripped apart is rather satisfying, and does make you feel like this length of cloth is being sculpted to your body; the measuring and cutting is rather abstract by comparison.

The shoulder was re-cut because Russell was not happy with the way it was lying, creating a little too much excess material across the chest. So the back and chest panels were pulled up and pinned again. Note also that the shoulder pads are not sewn in, just inserted and held there underneath the jacket during the fitting.

In the last picture you can see how the shoulder has been re-pinned a little tighter. You can also see the original chalk marks, now rather faded after all the work that has gone into the cloth, and the edge of body canvas and shoulder pad sticking out in the foreground. There are also small folds in this new shoulder line – where a slight excess of material will throw a little more fullness over the back.

The next (forward) fitting will be in two weeks time, where the largely complete jacket will be ready. Though it is still possible to alter a lot at the forward fitting, the tailor will try to minimise this as that construction takes around eight hours – four times as long as getting to the baste (or skeleton) fitting.

Oh, and I went for a deep green lining.

Get the basics right - it makes a big difference

I am aware that as my interest in fine men’s clothes progresses, and my education improves, the subjects on which I write can become more esoteric, even academic. Witness recent posts on the Blake construction of shoes and the minutiae of darts in trousers.

Wonderful as these facets of knowledge are, they make less and less difference to how good a man looks – and how long his clothes last. Having a hand-lasted shoe is great, but the difference between that and normal benchmade shoes is smaller than the difference between benchmade and cheap, glued products.

You don’t have to buy bespoke shoes or bespoke suits to look great. And the improvements you make on basic off-the-peg will make the biggest change to how you look.

So here are my tips for the man that wants to take it up a notch:

- Switch to made-to-measure suits. Save bespoke for when you make partner. Just find a great made-to-measure suit maker (A Suit That Fits, say, Suit Supply, or one of the many such tailors that wander around city offices offering their services.) The improvement on ready-to-wear is marked.

- Look after that suit. Hang it up at the end of the day, wear it no more than twice a week, brush it down occasionally and only dry clean it twice a year. Steam press it in between if it gets wrinkled.

- Buy benchmade shoes. As much as they may be disparaged on this and other style sites, good benchmade shoes from Loake, Cheaney or Grenson are a big jump up from the basic, glued, curly-toed, slip-on ones you bought in Shelly’s.

- Look after those shoes. Put shoe trees in after you’ve worn them, brush them down at the end of every day and don’t wear them two days in a row. They’ll look good and last three times as long.

- Buy expensive ties in conservative patterns and colours. In my opinion, expense shows off best in ties and in shoes. So spend more than you think you should on ties from the great tie makers. Not Armani, not Prada; but Hermes, Charvet, Bulgari. Wait until the end of the Ralph Lauren sale, when all the ties are reduced to £25, and pick on a Purple Label one reduced from £95. They just hang better.

- If you wear a pocket handkerchief, don’t scrimp there either. Wearing one is a signal that you think about your clothes and are willing to be noticed for it. Buy good quality white linen to start with. Then some dark colours – burgundy, forest green – and a pale blue, all in conservative patterns.

- Finally, match your socks to your trousers. Buy grey socks and blue socks. Not black. And make sure they are full-calf length.

Follow all of these rules and you will not extend your budget or your wardrobe dramatically. But you will be a hell of a lot better dressed.