Bespoke shoes at Cleverley: Part 1

“The time has come, the walrus said,
To talk of many things.
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax,
Of cabbages and kings.”

No plans yet to write about cabbages. But it is certainly time to talk about bespoke shoes. I set an appointment last week to go see George Glasgow at GJ Cleverley to be measured for my first pair. Rather as I did previously with suiting, expect a series of posts here on every stage of the process.

There’s something rather charming about being measured for shoes. At Cleverley the first stage is to stand on two facing pages of a book, so that your feet can be traced onto the paper. It feels rather odd standing on a book to begin with, but doing so in your socks in The Royal Arcade, while a man such as Mr Glasgow runs a pencil around your toes, is even more peculiar. Still, here stood stars of stage and screen alike – not to mention royalty.

When the shoemaker is tracing your foot the key is to keep the pencil upright. The smallest change in angle will mean a millimetre difference on the last, which can be the difference between comfort and pain.

He will also sweep around your instep, with the pencil at 45 degrees, in order to indicate the height of your arches. Looking back through the Cleverley measuring book, there is a substantial difference here between men. Some, like myself, have almost an inch in difference between the outline and the inside of the arch. (“Healthy and strong,” Mr Glasgow called it. He’s such a tease.) Others have merely a few millimetres. They will require greater support inside the shoe, and the waist will not be able to cut in quite as far underneath.

The length of your foot is also measured. At Cleverley this is done with a wooden rule dating back to 1928. It still looks in pretty good shape – no doubt due to the substantial brass fittings at the joint. While this length is a good guide for the shape of your last, it will always be made 1½ sizes longer than the measurement, to allow for your big toe rolling forward as you put your weight on the ball of your foot.

(As an aside, this difference is only one size on a slip-on shoe. It has no natural mechanism to tighten onto your foot, unless the model includes elastic at the sides, so the fit has to be tighter.)

Next the circumference of various points is measured. First your joints – between the base of your big and little toe. Then just behind the joints, to give an indication of how quickly the foot narrows. Next around your instep – roughly where the top of the laces would be. And finally from that same point on the top of the foot to the back of your heel.

The thing that struck me as these measurements were being taken was their consistentcy. At each point my right foot was 10-and-something inches, while my left was usually 9-and-something. Height just replaces width as you move towards the back of the foot.

It also put into numbers what I already knew, that my right foot is almost a half size smaller than my left, but significantly wider. While the first is very common, the latter together with a narrow heel makes me a good candidate for bespoke.

Finally, Mr Glasgow ran his hands over my ashamedly hot (not to say sweaty) feet. He was looking for any bumps or peculiarities, such as hammer toes, swollen joints (most common on the big and little toes) and spur bones around the heel.

Many of these are caused by men wearing ill-fitting shoes for much of their lives – or shoes that have not properly been worn in or maintained. Mr Glasgow found no such oddities, most likely because I am too young for my feet to have distorted much.

As a final point, some shoemakers insist on measuring a man’s feet at a particular point in the day. Your feet grow in size notably as you walk on them and keep them encased. Cleverley does not consider this significant, not even noting the time the measurements were taken. For Mr Glasgow the natural give of the leather is sufficient to cope with the daily fluctuation.

Next: styles and designs

The view from the front (Savile) row

Today was the first menswear show in London I have ever felt inclined to go to – the collaboration between E Tautz, Gieves & Hawkes and Hardy Amies at the latter’s beautiful premises at 14 Savile Row.

Only the second time London Fashion Week has featured a menswear day, this was the first show specifically to celebrate Savile Row brands. A small group of 80 of us, including His Royal Highness Prince Michael of Kent, was treated to Amies’s collection on models occupying the front room, followed by runway shows from Gieves and then Tautz.

It was an odd mix of presentations. The front room was too small for more than a dozen people at one time to see the Amies collection, so many returned upstairs for coffee. And the Gieves collection was rather uninspiring, though I was distracted by the Edward Green shoes the models were wearing which, being brand new, slipped and slid rather on the carpet.

E Tautz, however, was a different matter. Patrick Grant introduced each look, explaining which school he had stolen the pattern for the scarves from, which grannies in south Wales had knitted the mittens, and precisely how a weaver had rescued tweed patterns that had been thrown out with the trash (that’s the pattern, above).

The silk was woven by “guys in Sudbury, Suffolk” and the bow ties made by “our friends down the road in Old Street”. Regular readers of Permanent Style should have no problem identifying either of those two.

Glen checks were very popular, usually paired with knits or at least knitted ties. The great coat shown here was rather inspiring, its rising rows of buttons making even a skinny young boy look manly. And the kilt? Well I’d never wear it but it’s the most attractive kilt I’ve ever seen. Those leather straps at the side were nice.

My favourite piece, though, was undoubtedly the short double-breasted casual jacket in an exploded herringbone (below). The narrow crossover, long pockets and chunky weave made it a wonderful classic/contemporary piece.

Doubtless a success for Tautz. Perhaps Grant is taking his cues from Victoria Beckham – after all it was her running commentary that ignited her recent collection in New York.

Segun Adelaja: A tailor in an emporium

Segun Adelaja knows the industry. The day we met we ended up talking for a long time about the expansion of small brands like Berluti, their raw materials and supply chains. About what happens when a small company is bought out and how you manage quality in the midst of rapid expansion. His shoes are made by an ex-Berluti maker, so perhaps there is some bias there, but he freely admits to owning pairs himself – indeed to owning almost every brand of shoes.

It’s hard to stop talking to Segun (She-gun), actually.

And I suppose that theme runs though his shop and his products. He’s tucked away at the back of the Quadrant Arcade (off Regent Street), his shop is unpretentious – not to say sparse – and his website hasn’t been updated in quite a while. There’s nothing wrong with it, but the press articles are from 2002 and still reflect the time when he was more of a visiting tailor and shirtmaker. The Collections section has been “coming soon” for a long time.

Segun is more about word of mouth. Not that he’s understated in person, but such is the community of Nigerian (his native land), English and other customers from across Europe that he has never really explored marketing or the internet.

Although his origins are as a visiting tailor, today Segun is more of a host to an severely edited emporium. He is the only outlet for Lorenzo Villoresi (of Florence) fragrances in the UK. He is one of very few places that stock Gallo socks (Edward Green sometimes carries a couple of pairs). And he commissions his own designs in large holdalls from Swaine Adeney & Brigg.

Shirts, trousers and jackets, on the other hand, are made to his own designs in Italy. And I have to say it was the made-to-order nature of the trousers that grabbed my attention. They are beautifully made, with hand-sewn trouser curtain and notched waistband, as well as nice design touches like side straps in a variety of colours, widths and materials.

But most importantly, they are all adjusted free of charge. You can have the seat smaller or bigger, change the rise, alter the waist or the hips, as well as adjusting either the length or width of the legs. The legs are made deliberately wide so they can be taken in – I had mine adjusted from 28cm to 22cm across the bottom.

Segun has the eye of the tailor still, explaining to me how he thinks it necessary to lower the rise if a man has a large belly, or raise it if he has a large bum. And with the mind of a tailor it just seems unacceptable that someone would walk out with trousers that don’t fit him. The price, around £180, doesn’t change no matter what you want. Even ordering an entirely custom pair isn’t much more.

I was never sure where to get trousers before. It seems extravagant to have my tailor make them – the figuration is not difficult. But ready-to-wear trousers are too far the other way, never really fitting. This seems like a nice compromise.

Thomas Lyte: Real craft and British quirks

I was introduced to a brand recently called Thomas Lyte. Better known for their silver work (it’s their responsibility to maintain and refurbish the FA Cup), they also have a growing selection of leather goods with an admirable focus on craft.

I visited the leather workshop in south-west London last week to take a look at how the bags are put together.

The leather they use comes from a small German tannery called Breuninger, which Thomas Lyte effectively saved from insolvency when it bought a large order of mustard-coloured grain leather a few years ago. Now functioning and solvent, Breuninger has retained the mustard dye (together with a grey) exclusively for Thomas Lyte.

The vegetable-tanned leather uses a method called tipping to bring out the fine grain the company has stamped on it. Essentially this means dying the leather twice, once before and once after stamping, the second time using a darker dye that sits between the raised grain and adds contrast.

Having written before, in my piece on Bown bags, about the hand-inking of cut edges, I was glad to see that Thomas Lyte also uses this method. They try to avoid cut edges wherever possible though. (A cut edge being where the leather has been cut, leaving a raw surface that needs to be covered with something, like ink or paste.)

On a bag’s handles a cut edge is pretty much unavoidable. But on side panels or other parts of the bag, the edges are always turned – which requires skiving the edge to make it thinner, turning it over and then stitching it down. This leaves a cleaner, smarter finish but takes longer.

Thomas Lyte’s leather products are always fully lined, with silk. This can create engineering problems, such as a tight corner where the silk has to be sewn into it on the inside. But it is more attractive, particularly in the flower motif printed on deep pink that they often use.

Also – and I love this fact – all the pockets of all the wallets are lined with silk too. Many manufacturers don’t line the pockets, only do so halfway, or use less expensive material. Because you can’t see it very easily. I check that every time I pick up a wallet now.

To segue from craft into design, I’m a fan of their coin purses that fasten with magnets along the edge. Not only do they keep the pocket shut, but when it is open they cling to the coppers so everything else comes out first. Assuming you’re not searching for 2p to put in a tip jar, this saves much scrabbling around.

Design is all about British icons. From the pillar box, Thomas Lyte’s designers took the kicking plate that runs around the bottom and transferred it to the leather goods. So the bottom section of the bags and the wallets is in black bridle leather, contrasting with the grain calf leather on top. Practical for the bags, as bridle leather is much hardier, but more a question of continuity on the wallets.

From the Spitfire plane, the designers took the curve of the tail and echoed it in everything from bottoms of the bags to the tags on all their zips (see picture above). And lastly, there is a faint reminder of a fairground’s helter skelter in the lines of the pockets of a wallet.

I think Thomas Lyte is a craft-orientated company that is just discovering what it wants to do in leather goods, with a leaning towards the slightly funkier, irreverent end of the design spectrum. For the moment they are only online. But watch this space.

Photography: Andy Barnham

Book review: Bespoke by Richard Anderson

Richard Anderson can write. This quickly becomes apparent as the reader embarks on the story of his time on Savile Row – from dishevelled apprentice to Huntsman’s youngest-ever head cutter. The realisation that a book is to be chronological, and start at the very beginning, is normally accompanied by a long intake of breath. Fortunately, even the description of Anderson’s father taking his 17-year old to the job interview is entertaining.

It helps that the story of Huntsman’s takeover reads like a genuine thriller, with high stakes, espionage and betrayal. And throughout the 20-odd years described, characters such as Colin Hammick, Brian Hall and Dick Lakey necessarily breed amusing anecdotes. Such as the time Lakey tried to rescue 10 pairs of white trousers by washing them at home, only for the zips to stain the crotch; then adding lemon, only for it to add its own mark; and then successfully washing them clean, only for foxes to tear them off the washing line and eat them.

But Anderson’s writing has its own rhythm and pathos. A liking for short, one-sentence paragraphs and chapter-ending cliff hangers means the story tumbles along.

The latter sections on Richard Anderson Ltd, after the fall of Huntsman, are nowhere near as self-serving as I had been led to believe. The style switches from chronology to analysis, enabling short sections on women in the industry, a day in the life and ready-to-wear clothing in Japan. The second of these three chapters is particularly interesting for an insight into the running of a bespoke firm, and the challenges in figuration, for example, that come up every day. Such as the wadding, canvas, styrofoam and even plasticine used to try and deal with James Fox’s tricky shoulders.

And while some will bemoan the fact that suits under Savile Row names are made in Japanese factories for local clients, the description of how this functions is fascinating.

For tailoring enthusiasts there are several insightful sections on the practice of cutting. The description of how Anderson learned to cut trousers for the first time, for example, and then later how to take measurements ahead of his first trip to the US. Indeed, for those not enthused by technical detail the passages where Hall describes the chalking of back and foreparts could even be too much.

There is, finally, a surprisingly in-depth glossary. I can now identify a bar tack, describe the nap on various cloths and relate the origins of Silesia (named after a region of Poland because of the inventor’s wife’s sympathies for a country being partitioned between Germany, Austria and Russia. The descriptions only suffer from the inevitable difficulty in describing the look and feel of different cloths without imagery.

Highly recommended.

Reader question: Differences between bespoke tailors

CS, Los Angeles: I have been reading PS for the last few months in an effort to educate myself on various matters of style. First and foremost, I want to thank you for the time and effort you put into your work in this area. I suspect that you have a day job (and I believe you mentioned having at least one daughter in a post), so, from the perspective of another young father-professional, your work is all the more impressive.

Please forgive the bluntness, but I was hoping to get your views on why it is you chose the tailors you did for your first few British bespoke items. Is it simply the price range of the larger names that caused you not to try them out or is it a value calculation? Did you feel that you had the same options with Graham Browne that you might have had with a ‘bigger name’ shop?

Dear CS, thank you for your question. I cannot afford Savile Row at this point in my life, so that limited my decision. But I have also over time learnt the various ways in which bespoke tailors – all of whom deserve the name – differ from each other. And that informs the value calculation.

The first point to note is that the materials are all the same. Unless you want the exclusivity of Huntsman Opus or some such record cloth, you can find the same wools and linings at any bespoke house. Everyone uses Lesser, Minnis, W Bill etc and the same lining books.

Second, the process is the same. Both GB and one of the more famous Savile Row names will take an equal number of measurements, create a unique paper pattern and cut the cloth by hand, creating a basted suit that will be ripped apart and re-cut, and remade for a forward fitting. Then the final suit will be made, which can be altered again. In this way they are both entirely different to made-to-measure.

Assuming some minor changes are made at the final stage, this means visiting the tailor five times. Many Savile Row tailors will insist on more than this. That’s more expensive as it means more staff, more cutting and more time. But whether that is worth it depends on fit, which will be discussed later.

Third, the style and design options are unrelated to price. Some tailors, such as Anderson & Sheppard or Huntsman, and more known for a particular style and are more likely to stay with it. Others have no particular house style, but dislike experimentation or anything out of the ordinary, as it takes longer.

This is a question of personality rather than price. Russell and Dan at Graham Browne are always surprisingly excited about experiments – as demonstrated by both my and Guy Hills’ (of Dashing Tweeds) commissions. Some Savile Row tailors are equally impressive in that regard.

So those are the similarities. What are the differences? Well, Graham Browne does a few things with a sewing machine rather than by hand. For example, it attaches the layers of chest canvas together by sewing machine. These are still not tight stitches, and the canvas as a whole is secured to the jacket by hand, to ensure movement, but that construction of the canvas would be done by hand at most good Savile Row houses. It takes ages. And so it is expensive.

Personally, I love the way that my Graham Browne suits have adapted to my chest and feel personal. Far better than any expensive off-the-peg suit that had a floating canvas (Ralph Lauren Purple Label, for example). But a Savile Row suit might adapt better there – I don’t know, I’ve never owned one.

Another difference is that Graham Browne does not make its own shoulder pads. They are pre-constructed. Unless you have unusual shoulders, though, I don’t think this makes a substantial difference.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly for the price, Graham Browne offers little after-sales service. They cannot sponge and press suits onsite. With good Savile Row houses, this is included in the price and can be done for years to come. And while GB would be happy to carry out minor alterations after the fact, it will not substantially alter and refurbish a suit several years down the line without some cost. Good Savile Row houses will – it’s part of the service.

These last three points are all part of a value calculation, as you put it. They are all things that GB has opted to do without in order to charge less. And I’m perfectly happy with that – the construction is great and the fit fantastic, which are the priorities with bespoke.

Then there is definitely a premium for a big name (however small) and it costs a lot more to have large premises on or around Savile Row. That’s obvious if you look at the prices of Savile Row-trained cutters that now work somewhere else in the country (like Thomas Mahon) or in smaller premises (like Steven Hitchcock).

But, I think the most important thing you get, or should get with a Savile Row tailor, is consistency and quality of fit. Savile Row head cutters are at the top of their game. It is a prestigious position, and they are very good. You can have confidence that they will make you a very well-fitting suit, where you couldn’t with a smaller less-known name. It’s less risky. Not that the biggest names don’t sometimes get it wrong – but you’re on safer ground.

You can also justifiably be more demanding on Savile Row (back to the idea of service), changing things or requesting more fittings. The tailor is likely to be more demanding on that score as well.

There is a chance that there are tiny points of fit on a Graham Browne suit that would be improved on Savile Row. But I can’t see them and I’ve had suits made for a while now. I think Russell is a good cutter and others think so too.

Would I have a Savile Row suit made if I could afford it? Yes, I would. But given that it would cost three times one from Graham Browne, I would have to be earning at least three times what I do now.

Skip the basted or the forward fitting?

I recently commissioned my third single-breasted suit from my tailor*. At this stage my pattern for a single-breasted jacket is pretty much cemented. The balance works well, the sleeves have been adjusted to just the right length and small issues like the height of the waist button have been ironed out.

So it makes sense to speed the process up. At the moment I effectively have three fittings: basted, forward and final. As I always end up having something small changed when the suit is completed (such as the sleeve length or trouser waist) the final appointment is effectively a fitting.

The choice is basically to skip either the basted or forward fitting. If I skipped the basted, the cutter could send the cloth to the jacket-maker immediately, without having to wait for me to come in for a fitting. It would also save the time it takes for the jacket to be basted (say half a day).

If I skipped the forward fitting, the jacket maker would not have to send back his work at all, so the time saved would be slightly greater: no time waiting for me plus no lost time in couriering the jacket (twice).

Really though, the choice comes down to whether I am more confident in the fit of my jackets or in their design. The basted fitting is mostly about balance – it is the tailor’s biggest opportunity to get the figuration right and re-cut the cloth if anything is wrong. The forward fitting helps in this too, but it is mostly about me seeing the design in its near-finished form. It is not too late to alter the button positions or the roll of the lapel, or to spot any mistakes.

I’m not bad at designing suits, but my tailor is a lot better at fitting them. I’ve designed a dozen or so, he’s cut hundreds. So I plan to skip the basted fitting from now on. The jacket maker won’t like it, as he’ll have to pause in his work halfway, but better that than a botched design.

* A three-button, single-breasted model with patch pockets, turn-back cuffs and a collar tab; in mid-grey, nine-ounce Minnis flannel. The patch pockets have an outside welt that matches the depth of the cuffs and of the welt on the breast pocket (non-patch). Buttons will be whisky-coloured horn.

Hand sewing at Edward Green

I was fortunate enough to be able to tour the Edward Green factory in Northampton last week. A new building (as they’ve moved around a few times since leaving what is now the John Lobb factory in the centre of town) it nonetheless has a lot of atmosphere and personality. This is due in no small part to the personality of the staff, who delighted in teasing each other about which job best showed off their talents, or indeed which angle was best to photograph them from.

One aspect that particularly caught my eye was the hand sewing of the apron on a Norwegian split-toe. This is the Sandhurst, a pattern revived from the 1930s archives that was the precursor to Edward Green’s famous Dover. It has been updated in two different styles to celebrate EG’s 120-year anniversary: a grain leather version in tan, with a round toe and external welt to give it a country feel (202 last), and a dark-brown calf version with a severely squared toe that would look well in the city (888 last). Two very different looks with the same model.

The apron has to be sewn by hand because the two parts of the upper are at right angles to each other. A machine can stitch two parallel pieces of leather in any arrangement, but it can’t do angles.

The sewing is done by pig’s bristle that is bound to the thread, which it draws through a small cut made by an awl. The bristle is narrower than a metal needle and can move through the leather at angles a needle cannot.

The hand sewer prepares the pig’s bristle by cutting off its root, sanding the broken end to ensure it’s sharp and then splitting the other end to allow it to be bound with the thread. Several strands of yarn are then twisted together with the split bristle and rubbed down with beeswax. The thread is then rubbed hard with leather to melt the wax, ensuring that thread and bristle are bound together. The beeswax also helps seal the stitching on the shoe.

Doing the operation here is Gary Finedon, who joined Edward Green when it split from Lobb and has been hand sewing for 20 years. He makes around 20 such uppers a week, as does Green’s other hand sewer, Andrew Peach.

It’s important to develop a rhythm and not stop halfway, as that usually ensures the stitches are evenly spaced. So of course I interrupted Gary with about four stitches to go. He tactfully finished the last few while listening to my questions, then put the apron down to give me his full attention.

I never realised that the reason the split-toe seam has that distinctive finish is that this same hand sewing technique is used on the inside of the toe, to join the front two pieces of the upper. It’s that hand sewing underneath that creates the dimpled effect on top, which is so often highlighted by the polish.

I was also fascinated by the refurbishment process at Edward Green. There seemed to be a lot of old shoes around waiting for this treatment, and the picture here shows the sock of one pair that had been worn away pretty badly inside.

The two main reasons shoes are brought in is that the sock has worn away or the collar on the top of the heel has split. The latter is usually due to men not using shoe horns, stamping down on the collar and gradually destroying its structure. The thread that runs around the inside of the collar will often split as well.

Edward Green replaces the sock and insole, resoles the shoe and repairs anything like the broken collar. Everything but the upper, which retains its personalised contours, looks just like new. Not bad for £180.

My thanks to Euan, John, Hilary and everyone at Edward Green for making me feel so welcome.

Gaziano & Girling: The benefits of both sides

While up in Northampton last week, I stopped in to see Gaziano & Girling’s new workshop. And Tony was kind enough to show me round. There aren’t many shoe makers in England that combine a bespoke and ready-made business in the way that G&G now does, both responding to client’s requests and designing new collections for wholesale and private-label work.

These two sides of the business inform each other in some interesting ways. For example, working with clients on their ideas for bespoke can create inspiration for a ready-made collection. And while some other brands get input from clients through special orders, it is not the same proportion or relationship as that gained by bespoke. You can see some of the slightly more daring G&G bespoke ideas here, from stingray through to laser designs. These are all waiting to go to Japan with Dean for a trunk show.

“Having a ready-made business also teaches you rigour,” comments Dean. “Manufacturing forces you to be disciplined and consistent. If a bespoke shoemaker makes one pair wrong, he can tweak it or redo it. You can’t do that with an order of 100 ready-made.”

Bespoke shoemakers without any manufacturing, on the other hand, have a slightly narrower perspective. For example, they often have to use merchants for sourcing leather. A business with bigger volume can afford to order its own leather in bulk, and deal with the tanneries directly.

“I think it also teaches you how much tolerance men have for the fit of their shoes,” says Dean. “Bespoke tends to focus quite narrowly on how a man’s shoes should fit, according to fixed ideas or a golden formula. But if you watch a man try on sizes, you realise how much personal preference plays a role. You remember there’s a person on the other end.

“Some men prefer very tight, others quite loose; the Japanese will nearly always go for a size longer and narrower than you’d think. There’s a difference between having the size that ‘fits’ and the size that a customer thinks looks good.”

And of course, bespoke shoes inform the quality and design of ready-made, as these pictures and Gaziano & Girling’s burgeoning reputation attest. Characteristic design features include the peaked toe-cap and aggressive waist treatment.

Finally, a quick tip from Dean on polishing: try mixing the water you use with a little surgical spirit, in around a 4:1 ratio. Brings out the shine just lovely.

Good luck to Dean and Tony in their new home. (And Daniel, pictured below - apparently a regular reader of Permanent Style!)

Reindeer bag from 1786?

For those with a desire for unique accessories, GJ Cleverley has just added some new pieces made from the Russian reindeer hide that was dragged up in 1973 from the Metta Catharina von Flensburg, a Danish brigantine that was sunk in 1786 - despite being anchored in Plymouth Sound.
Cleverley has exclusive rights to all of the hides, from which only the finest are used for shoes and bags. The first pair of shoes the firm made in the leather were for Prince Charles. The signature piece is the Gladstone Bag, with a Racing Green goatskin lining. But that does cost £4,500. The wash bag is a snip by comparison at £425.

Pictures here of the items as well as the leather being dragged out back in the seventies.

Crossover with women's wear: Lalage Beaumont

Let’s get one thing straight. I don’t know anything about women’s wear. Nothing, nada, zip. But I am interested in the crossover between menswear and more classic women’s wear.

The older the woman and the more classic her taste, the more her coats, jackets and shirts are influenced by menswear. Both are dependent on detail. The styles have to be classic so the focus is on material, shape and little touches of personality.

Lalage Beaumont is a case in point. The key features of her pieces are always cloth, buttons and cuffs. Strong colours are kept in order by complex tweeds and textured silks. The back of her jackets and coats are rarely plain – whether it be a full belt or a decorative string of white rope. Buttons are handmade and unique.

It’s like menswear taken to an ornamental, colourful extreme. Where a man’s tweed experiments with tiny, subtle touches that get lost in the whole, these women’s versions weave in ribbon and frayed ends. The green tweed shown here, from Clarenson in France, includes in its materials cotton, viscose, silk, polyester, polyamide and polyurethane. It’s a little bit more exotic that plain wool.

The yellow tweed (top) is closer to a man’s jacket – from Lynton Tweeds in Carlisle. In a mossy green it wouldn’t look out of place on Savile Row. But woven in there are similar variations in material and texture, bringing a level of decorousness that is central to women’s wear.

I was interested in the silk dresses and jackets too, the purple ones pictured here being from Lalage’s Spring/Summer 10 collection. She points out that the texture of the silk enables her to use very bright colour – the ribs and grain of the weave ground the colour in the same way as the tweed.

You can also see the flip-back collar, split cuffs and woven buttons. The parallels with menswear are obvious. Paul Smith used similar cuffs on his suits last season. And something in me wants buttons like that on a blazer.

This isn’t really surprising given that Lalage spent most of her career designing both men’s and women’s wear. Her first role was at Aquascutum. They sponsored her last collection at college and, when she left, offered her a design position. After quitting briefly, and spending that time teaching as well as freelancing at Burberrry, she returned to Aquascutum as chief outerwear designer.

That was being thrown in the deep end, but she learnt a lot about the commercial and international side of the business. Like what other countries think is English – for Germans its loud checks, for the Italians it’s far more conservative. “All the Italian women would want was a two or three-button jacket, with slanting pockets and vents. A hacking jacket, basically. You could vary the cloth, but that was about it,” remembers Lalage.

Ten years at Chester Barrie followed, launching women’s wholesale and bringing a lot of men’s construction techniques – such as canvassing and cut – to that range. Again the ‘county’ look was what European women wanted and that was when Lalage developed her interest in men’s details: turn-back cuffs, Prussian collars and Great coat-like belts.

She was head of ready-to-wear at Mulberry for two years, both men’s and women’s, before working in New Zealand as a merchandiser. Then five years ago she launched her own label, now based on Avery Row just off Bond Street.

Don’t worry, I don’t foresee many other pieces on women’s wear. But it’s interesting to explore the influences of our subject.

Different ways to give a tie spring

A good tie has some form of ‘spring mechanism’ so that, after you have untied it roughly, tugged it out of your collar and hung it up, the mechanism gradually returns it to its natural shape.

This is achieved through the slip stitch, which runs the length of the tie from one tack to the other and requires some slack so that, when it is compressed, it can ‘spring’ back into position. On some ties, you will see this slack as a small loop of thread protruding from the narrow end. Off the top of my head, my Hermès, Drake’s and Bulgari ties certainly have it.

However, this is not the only way to create some slack. The excess thread can also be tucked back inside the tie, sometimes even secured to the slipping of the tie itself or to the back of one of the labels. This can be done at the narrow or wide end of the tie.

So why are several ways of achieving this ‘spring’ still being used? “You might wonder that, as I  did once when I first started in the trade,” says Martin Brighty of Hunter’s.

“I was told by the head slipper (seamstress Lil Groger of Holliday & Brown) that the women tie makers would move from firm to firm, bringing with them different techniques. They were often told to use the style of the firm, but if they could they would retain their own method as it was faster – and they got paid per tie. These days the girls again all move between companies, some work for two tie makers at a time, depending upon who has the work. So construction can vary; Hunter’s has both loop and tucked-back ties.”

There is no particular advantage to any of these methods. But one obvious difference with the loop is that you can see it – the spring mechanism and so the craft is on display. The others are less obvious or can’t be seen at all. So some manufacturers prefer the loop in order to prove the craftsmanship involved in their ties.

There aren’t many reasons for not having a loop, but Martin’s colleague David Walker knows one: “I remember selling ties in Harrod’s back in the day, and these Nina Ricci ones were very expensive, £85 or so. One day a man came in and complained that his tie had fallen apart. ‘It just came away in my hands,’ he complained. Turned out he had cut off the loop, thinking it was a loose thread.”

So that’s one disadvantage of an obvious sign of craft.

[Many thanks to Martin and David for their help with this and other posts]

Tie facts from Peckham Rye

Following on from the last, rather popular post on Peckham Rye and Hunter’s founders David Walker and Martin Brighty, here are some more insights from the interview:

- When you turn a tie in your hand and it seems to change colour slightly, this is because the light is reflecting off the warp. The warp is one direction of the weaving (the other being weft) of the silk. The warp is subtler and sets the foundation for the tie’s tone. While I have written about warp before (in a piece on Vanner’s) I hadn’t cottoned on to this way of revealing it.

- Woven ties will often fray slightly along the front edge over time. If you run a small flame (from a lighter, say) quickly along that edge, it will burn off the stray threads and not damage the tie. The same can be done with loose threads in the main weave. (This technique is used with manmade fibres in other industries, but only where you want them to melt and so fuse together. Silk will not fuse, just burn off.)

- Hunter’s makes a lot of ties for military units. And so many have been amalgamated recently that new designs are coming though all the time. Usually the designers take the dominant colours of each unit and try to find the best combination of them. There’s only a limited number of colour combinations out there though, plus over time the tone of the colours can change – if units have used cheaper tie companies, often the colour over the years comes to look nothing like the original design. That’s one advantage of a history in the industry – at Holliday & Brown they had swatches going back to the 1920s and earlier. So they could check the original swatch.

- The old hand-worked, shuttle looms could weave greater detail than today’s mechanised ones, though obviously nowhere near the speed. “In that old book we had a swatch of the Bugatti Racing Club, which from memory was a royal-blue ground, with a very thin – like one pixel – stripe of black, four pixels of gold, four of red, back to gold, then the black again. You couldn’t achieve that detail today, those looms don’t exist,” says David.

- Back then England made the bulk of the world’s ties, which explains why Holliday & Brown was making for Bugatti. English salesmen spent their lives travelling the globe – Buster Brown of Holliday & Brown used to spend nine months on the road (six of those in the US), all by train and steamship of course.

- When making bespoke ties, a man’s neck size is as important as his height. A short man with a very thick neck may be more in need of a bespoke tie than one of above-average height. And when tall men do have bespoke made, they need to have a wider blade – usually four inches. Otherwise it will just look too skinny.

The history of Hunter’s and Peckham Rye

Martin Brighty and David Walker have been around the tie industry for a long time. They first met at legendary English tie-maker Holliday & Brown 20 years ago, brought in to replace the sales director and admin director at the time. Indeed the famous ‘Buster’ Brown first taught Martin how to make ties.

But a few years after they joined, Holliday & Brown was bought by Michelson’s. And four years after that, both were made redundant (this was the early nineties).

That spurred them to start the brand Hunter’s, which has been quietly making handmade English ties for most of the high-end fashion labels, Savile Row tailors and Jermyn Street shirtmakers ever since. It’s probably fair to say they are one of the two last bastions of traditional English tie-making – the other being Drake’s.

Many of Holliday & Brown’s customers followed Martin and David, but “you never know whether the people that said they would buy from you actually will. And even if they do, you don’t know if they will the second season,” remembers David.

The US had been a big client of Holliday & Brown, so the two of them flew over to drum up support early on ­– having put together a collection of blankets with the help of Vanners – and used the resulting orders to get a bank loan. Production was done by around a dozen hand tie-makers that they knew in the UK, some of whom also worked for Holliday. “And a few of those girls are still alive today and making for us,” says David.

There aren’t many of these at-home tie makers any more. Drake’s has its own factory. But traditionally ties were made by outworkers that had several clients and got paid per item. Weaving, equally, used to be a cottage industry until it was centralised by factories like Vanners.

Martin and David had a small crisis three years ago when the one woman that made all their silk scarves retired. She had several people working for her, usually for three or four months of the year (scarf-making being seasonal work). But the workers got tired of the seasonality and either went to work in Tesco or returned home to Italy.

Eventually they found a girl and her family in Oldham, who now make all the scarves. The tough thing with silk scarves is the fringing – holding many different coloured threads, bunching them together and knotting them effectively. Some that Martin and David trialled previously either used the wrong fringing thread or made knots that gradually loosened.
She used to work for a hand-roll hemmer (hand rolling handkerchiefs, headscarves etc.) and took over that small business when he retired. So it all gets passed on, in bits and pieces. Until someone goes to work in Tesco.

The other half of David and Martin’s operation, of course, is Peckham Rye. Now well-known for its skinny ties and silk scarves, the brand was so successful in wholesale that customers kept asking where the Peckham Rye shop was. Initially they were in Harley Street, then Covent Garden, and now in Newburgh Street (just off Carnaby St) since July last year. It finally feels like a space that suits them – cosy, quirky and decorated with Private Eye covers. As hopefully these pictures demonstrate.