Pictures of the Toby Luper suit

 

Apologies for the frankly terrible picture of me. I had to take it on my mobile phone - you get a general idea of the fit though. Other pictures show the side buckle and hand-sewn buttonholes.

Final suit from Toby Luper

The last post on this suit was back in March. With both of us being away at various points in the summer, and Toby’s schedule coming down to London from Leeds, we only managed the final fitting in August. As I had mentioned in a previous post, I was impressed with Toby’s attention to detail in the fit – a prime failing of most travelling tailors. The double-breasted fitted well through the shoulders and back, as previously described, and the trousers hung superbly from the waist.

However, I requested two small alterations. The first was to have the shoulders taken in a little – Toby’s style is towards the larger shoulder and wider trouser – so we brought them in by just a quarter inch. And I had the trousers narrowed slightly from the knee downwards, to finish with an opening of eight inches. The final suit came back last week.

I’m very pleased with the suit as finished, and it received some appreciative comments on the details during a recent meeting at Kent, Haste & Lachter. In particular, those gentlemen noted that the side buckle was positioned on the seam of the waistband, rather than the waistband itself. This is a detail I like and will incorporate on future suits – it allows the trousers to be about an inch higher while not really altering the fit, as the buckle remains in the same place on the hips. The fact the waistband is split at the back, with an internal securing strip, also helps with the style.

Toby’s suits are made at Cheshire Bespoke, which has an excellent reputation and makes for one or two Savile Row names as well. All the buttonholes are sewn by hand - those on the front are even sewn twice by hand, on the front and back (an old practice that was supposed to make the insides more presentable if the fronts flapped open). The collar is attached by hand and the sleeves put in by hand also, as is clear from the stitching in both places. The lining is loosely attached, though by machine, in that double-thread style that a lot of the upper end ready-made brands like Ralph Lauren and Ozwald Boateng use. The waistband of the trousers is attached by hand, while all other parts are done by machine. The pick stitching up the internal lining is by hand.

So overall a good option for off-Savile Row at £1800, particularly given Toby’s eye for fit. I can’t vouch for the cutting, but Toby says all customers are made individual patterns.

Hemingway Tailors will be in North America in a couple of weeks, touring along with Harvie & Hudson for shirts – dates below. In the US people are free just to turn up; for Montreal you need to make an appointment with Lindsay: +44 (0)113 200 8775

Sunday 3rd - Wednesday 6th October
Montreal
Omni Mount Royal, 1050 Sherbrooke Street

Thursday 7th – Saturday 9th October
New York
The Intercontinental Barclay, 111 E48th St.

Sunday 10th – Wednesday 13th October
Washington DC
The Washington Club on 1135 16th St (NW)

Thursday 14th – Saturday 16th October
Chicago
The Fairmont Chicago, 200 North Columbus Drive

I also hear good things about Toby’s concierge service, The Hemingway Club, which was launched recently.

The commissions of Timothy Everest

Timothy Everest is a beast of many parts. A tailor who began his career sketching designs for Tommy Nutter, lauded at one point as a saviour of Savile Row alongside Ozwald Boateng and Richard James, he now keeps a delightfully eccentric townhouse in Shoreditch that produces true bespoke clothes for some rather flamboyant clients.

On the other side of his enterprise is the consultancy, design and licensing work, which includes advising Marks & Spencer for the past 10 years and launching a branded Autograph line, designing the suits for the 2010 World Cup England team, performing similar services for various Olympics teams and helping Asian clients style ‘English’ collections. Oh, and he also did the outfits for a variety of films, including Eyes Wide Shut.

Fittingly, this advisory side of the business is situated on the other side of Commercial Street, in an old block that looks very different from the Georgian tailoring house on Elder Street. It is the latter on which we will focus here.

I am particularly interested in the way Tim’s advisory work informs unique bespoke commissions for some individuals and companies. Indeed, the terms commission and collaboration merge very quickly, as one suit becomes a uniform or a product line. I highlight four such commissions here.

The first is for the renegade Swiss watch company Urwerk, which produces traditionally made pieces that are so modern I frankly don’t know how to tell the time on them (check out the website). The team of three (Felix, Martin, Jancine) went to Tim to commission a set of suits they could wear as a kind of uniform to presentations and meetings.

Tim came up with charcoal suits (13 ounce Lesser) that use occasional yellow details to make each one individual (black and yellow are the company colours). Each is also a different ensemble – one a three-piece, one with a skirt, one with an action back. Keeping the traditional in mind, the suits have a grosgrain inlay in the lapel that then runs down the whole facing of the suit. That design is echoed on the waistcoat.


The second commission was a cycling jacket for Luke Scheybeler, the co-founder of cycling brand Rapha. This went through many iterations, the first of which you see here and the last of which became a collaboration sold by Rapha. The colours here were a little experimental, therefore.

This version features three pleats across the back (two at the side, as in an action back, and one in the centre, the top of which is shown here) to enable the cyclist to reach the handlebars comfortably. The foreparts button up underneath the pocket flaps, to give the legs room to swing and reveal reflective material. The same happens with the turn-back cuffs and melton under the collar. The back has two buttoned pockets, later reduced to one. In a nice twist on tradition, the jacket was fitted on Luke while he was sitting on a bike, rather like the way tailors used to riding britches sitting on a saddle.

I love the detail of the hand-sewn triangle stopper at the top of the centre pleat.


Commission number three is a copy of an old Brioni travel blazer from the 1960s, made for Julian Koski (though his was navy with red stitching). Aside from the beautiful hand stitching around all the edges, the jacket features a cigar-case pocket in front of the right-hand outbreast pocket, a strap to hold your Financial Times in place in the hip pocket (originally, with Brioni’s ads, a Wall Street Journal), and – purely for the eccentricity of it – one epaulette.

The jacket has proved very popular with Tim’s customers since it was first made, perhaps because this version has hung so temptingly in the cloth room ever since it was made as a prototype. Customers have had versions with the strap on the other side, no cigar pocket, a bigger cigar pocket and a glass-case pocket, as well as different colour cloths and stitching.

Tim is a big believer in marrying retail and tailoring. Customers are used to the retail experience and find it a double challenge to describe what they want and then wait months to get it. To make the first easier, Tim keeps items like this around the Elder Street house to inspire people.

Which is my excuse for showing the last item. Not a commission originally, but a summer blazer in pale grey with plain silver buttons. It is cut short and, at least partly as a result, has appealed to younger customers. Doubtless the trousers they were with it will be equally cropped. Pulling back the cuff reveals some pale yellow lining, as well as the handwork that keeps the cuff in place.

Details soon of a design of my own.

Photography by Andy Barnham

Flannel windowpane, the American way

London manner for Springtime in Paris

Esquire, May 1936: "Anthony Eden has exerted an enormous influence on continental fashions this year, as witness this turnout featuring such characteristic Eden touches as the black Homburg worn with a white linen waistcoat and white gloves.

To American eyes the effect is somewhat dandified, but the Continent is always fertile ground for the dandy manner. The suit is of flannel with a faint blue overplaid. The shirt is of fine batiste with a white laundered collar, the specialty of a famous Paris shirt maker. The large knot foulard bow is a typical French shape which has gained London acceptance. The sack wrist gloves are light-weight white pigskin.

Americanisation of this outfit may involve dispensing with the white gloves and the rattan stick and substituting a soft felt or straw hat for the Homburg. But the combination above is not too extreme for Metropolitan acceptance."

Nice to hear Eden lauded for his elegance, and interesting that such finer points would be dialed down for the American audience. It's probably fair to say that, accepting some fairly awful dressing around the UK, the same difference in formality remains today. I'd wear the American version of this outfit, though with a long tie rather than bow. Flannel with a windowpane check, in particular, is a must-have commission for this winter.

Reader question: Indiana Jones

Greetings Simon,

I discovered your blog site early this summer. First off, I wanted to thank you for taking the time to write such wonderful and informative articles on your blog. I have learned a great deal from reading your articles and look forward for the new ones each day. Ever since encountering your site I have been paying more attention to the subtle details of my wardrobe and have gone through a process that includes tailoring articles of clothing I already have, slowing acquiring new articles of clothing, and purging articles of clothing that do not suit me anymore. My wife thinks I'm a bit crazy but I always like to believe that in whatever you do you should put your best foot forward and pay attention to the little details, and reading your articles has helped and is still helping me to do so. Thank you for that.

Now to the question at hand. The other day while watching one of my favourite movies, "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark", with Harrison Ford, I noticed one of the suit jackets that he was wearing seemed to have a 'band' sewn into the back of the jacket just above the waist (see image). The image was taken directly from the movie at 17':03". I also noticed this detail on another character’s suit jacket, where the jacket was all white. The movie takes place pre-WWII so I figure mid-1930's. I have never seen this detail on a jacket before but I was curious as to its history if any. I did some preliminary research on it but could not come up with anything substantial. I figure I would try asking you given your wealth of knowledge on the subject.

Thank you in advance.

Thomas Stepat
San Diego, California
USA

-

Dear Thomas,

Thank you for your kind email, and I'm pleased you enjoy the blog. It sounds like you have set out on a journey that will be very rewarding in years to come.

The jacket in that picture has a half belt. This harks back to military jackets and coats that had a functioning belt all the way around the waist. You can see the real version today in trench coats and similar overcoats.

Many jackets retained the detail of the belt, merely as a decorative item, as it gives greater focus to the waist. It is simply a strip of self cloth sewn across the waist. ‘Sports’ jackets still have that detail – you will see it on safari jackets and hunting jackets, for example. The Huntsman shooting suit I have written about here has one.

The other advantage to a half belt is that it allows the tailor to build in pleats easily between the belt and shoulders, as your image shows here (though that also requires a different shoulder pattern to a normal suit). Again, sports jackets often had pleats built into the back in this way in order to help the wearer move his arms, whether shooting or playing tennis.

If you want to incorporate a similar design detail on a jacket yourself, I would recommend taking a picture to your tailor and making clear what you want in terms of pleats – one central, two at the sides or multiple, as the jacket has here. I would suggest having it in an odd jacket rather than a suit, however.

Hope that was helpful

Simon

E Tautz at London Fashion Week

This Wednesday may well prove to have been the last day of summer here in London. Bright sunshine, 24 degrees and plenty of bright young things flitting about Somerset House – one of the settings for London Fashion Week.

I like dipping into this world of fashion, going to a few shows at the now dedicated menswear day every season. It’s a close, frantic body of gossip and movement, punctuated by the odd string of models strutting to music. It would be funny if it wasn’t so serious.

Few shows suit the aesthetic of Permanent Style, but one that does is E Tautz, both in terms of style and craft. Patrick Grant followed up last year’s success, co-hosted by Hardy Amies and Gieves & Hawkes, with his own show this year in the Navy board rooms overlooking Somerset House’s central square.

(The square, incidentally, was full of cafes, coffee and the now ubiquitous street photographers. If only any of them either styled or photographed as well as Mr Schuman.)


A Tautz collection tends to be driven by a few ideas in cloth and one or two in shape. This season (for Spring/Summer 2011) the cloths were fresco, wool/silk mixes and slub silks – which emphasise the points at which strands of silk join, to form a knobby surface. The shapes were double-breasted jackets, cut with large lapels with plenty of belly and roped shoulders, and slim trousers cut very short.

I loved the use of fresco, in particular the various weights, from 9oz in the trousers to 14oz in the trench coats. As Patrick admitted, much of this collection will drop into Harrod’s and elsewhere in December, so there had to be a few weightier pieces. Another was a Harrington jacket in lambswool, featuring a nice central pleat in the back.

The shape of the double-breasted jackets worked well when worn casually and undone, something reflected in the knitted wool version. When unbuttoned, the strong shoulder and big lapel helped to retain some shape. It’s a look that would work less well in a suit.

Colour use was lovely. A chocolate hopsack jacket; RAF blue fresco trousers; dark olive slub silk tie worn under ivory cotton and cashmere sweater. The shape generally of the trousers and shorts does not appeal but they are definitely aimed at a market different to mine – a Modish and rather schoolboy look that Patrick described as “Molesworth meets Monty”.

Top 10, again

Permanent Style is glad to have been named one of the top 10 blogs to peruse during London Fashion Week by AskMen in the US. Not that we'll be at many of the shows, most exhibiting a style of too transient a nature. But Tautz is set to have a good one, following up on last year's success.

Update on The Hanger Project

Kirby Allison over at The Hanger Project in the US has been pioneering the development of the best hangers in the world over the past two years. But it was probably inevitable that someone like that, with the restless urge to improve design, would turn his attention to other accessories in a man’s wardrobe.

So a quick update. Since we last profiled The Hanger Project, Kirby has introduced luxury garment bags and mother-of-pearl collar stays.

The former are made from a premium 12-ounce 100% cotton twill fabric and entirely made in Dallas, Texas. The cotton breathes better than the synthetic materials such bags are normally made out of, and the outside is brushed for softness, while the inside is kept rough to prevent. The bag, at 30-inches long and 25-inches wide with a four-inch gusset, is designed to be just long enough to accommodate suits in double-rack closets. The gusset is fused to add extra structure to the bag, preventing it from collapsing onto the garment. The bag can be fused because it has a diagonal zip, which has the added advantage of making access to the garment easier. The close-up image here of the hook shows that it comes through a large buttonhole, which is a far cleaner and stronger seal than the wide slice most other bags use.

I told you he was geeky.

The collar stays are just made from lovely mother of pearl. The only technical part is that the stays are relatively thick (1.8mm) and rounded to stop them piercing the shirt cloth. I’ve had that happen to me, and it’s a pain. I ended up using one pair the wrong way round.

Another addition to Kirby’s collection is a 15.5-inch wide hanger – an extra small size for those with a narrower physique (below a 38-inch chest). That brings the total to four widths of hanger. Also look out for Saphir Medaille d’Or shoe polishes and other products, coming in October.

Wear charcoal with black

There are very few suits with which I would not naturally wear brown shoes - a deep, burnished chocolate looks better with everything from navy herringbone to grey check.

But charcoal is an exception. The only other is probably black, which is restricted to evening wear (though the French have a curious fondness for the black suit).

Charcoal brings out little in brown shoes: something about the darkness and simplicity of the colour demands black calf. There is little subtlety or movement to a dark grey suit. Even a mid-grey worsted with little surface detail has variation in tone as it moves which complements a brown shoe, such is its usual patina.

And of course charcoal is just very dark, likely the darkest and most devoid of colour in a man's wardrobe. If one's shoes look best when they are darker than the trousers above them, black is the only option.

This suitability of charcoal and black is particularly true for a flannel suit, as in the illustration above (Ralph Lauren, A/W 2010). The only exception here might be a dark brown suede shoe, perhaps a slip-on, the matching of textures enough to distract from the disparity in colour.

Few men, particularly in London, wear brown shoes well. One recommendation I would have for them is to always wear black shoes with charcoal.

Inspirational 6x6 DB in lovat green

For town wear during the warm weather

Esquire, August 1934: "Despite the fact that current fashion seems to sanction the use of sports clothes almost everywhere during the hot daylight hours, there are bound to be many occasions when you'll want to be slightly more dressed up.

Here, for example, is an effective outfit consisting of a light-weight double-breasted flannel suit lovat green, worn minus waistcoat, with a pale blue broadcloth shirt wtih medium length pointed collar attached, a black foulard tie with purple spots, a light-weight felt hat of a very light tan that has a smoky cast (and notice that it has a black band) and light-weight brown wing tipped shoes.

When a waistcoat is not worn, a leather strap watch guard in the lapel button hole takes the place of the usual vest watch chain. Worthy of note, too, is the fact that this jacket is cut to be worn with either two or three buttons closed, a fashion that is fast gaining in popularity with well-dressed men in the east."

The combination is a lot more sophisticated when green, blue and black with purple spots - unlike the grey and white it looks in the photo. Damn fine in fact, and I'm suddenly reconsidering that summer suit in DB rather than SB.

Also, the optional three-button closing that is usually worn as two appeals to me. It is more like the three-roll-two I usually prefer with single breasteds and harks back to the DB's functional military heritage. The 6x2 is rakish, perhaps even a little silly, by comparison.

Bespoke shoes at Cleverley: Part 9

Last week was my second fitting at GJ Cleverley on the bespoke pair of cap-toes in the Anthony Cleverley style I ordered at the beginning of this series.

Having found that there was a little too much excess across the vamp, above the joints of the toes, at the first fitting, the last was whittled down and the uppers relasted to reduce that excess. Dominic Casey, who originally checked and lasted the shoes for me, conducted this fitting as George Glasgow has been in hospital (get well soon George!).

Dominic noted that they often allow more excess than might seem natural through this point of the shoe to create a graceful curve from the instep down to the vamp, before it curves up to the point of the toe. Obviously if the shape of the foot were followed exactly this slope down from the laces would be rather sharp.

The fit was much improved. Dominic recommended that the best way to check the fit was to make sure the leather was touching but not pressing both the big and little toes, and that there was just a little headroom above those in between. One should not go on the way the shoe bends at this point, as the lack of a sole means there will naturally be greater bend and hence wrinkling.

It is also important to remember at this point that once the sole is in place there will be greater support through the arches, given how high and close the waist will be cut. There is, though, more support at this stage than you might expect as the heel stiffener runs right up to the arch, stopping halfway along it - most ready made shoes have far shorter stiffeners (though I'm glad to say that my Corthays did have long ones, upon close inspection by Dominic).

Elsewhere on the shoe, I appreciate how closely the quarters fit around my ankle, keeping the foot in place. As Dominic put it, I am "terribly thin through the ankle" and as such few ready made shoes fit as tightly there.

The shoes now go back to Andy, who will add the sole and create and attach the heels. Depressingly or excitingly, depending on your point of view, we are still a few stages off the shoes being complete (wait until we get to staining and finishing!).

A lovely gabardine, but lose the hat

Now everybody's going in for gabardine

Esquire, August 1935: "We've been talking about gabardine for so long that the only expression we have left on the subject is a tendency to yawn now that the season has arrived in which the whole country seems suddenly to have gone goofy over it with a wide-eyed air of discovery. Well, you'd better excuse or ignore our boredom, because it's very good although, like sex, it had been around for quite awhile before everybody began taking it up.

The light cream colour shown here is this season's most desirable shade, in or out of town. The jacket looks very fine with white or grey slacks, and so do the trousers with a brown Shetland checked tweed jacket. This is the single-breasted model with a long lapel roll. Note the unflapped pockets and the side vents. The accessories consist of a brown and white candy striped shirt, plaid bow tie, brown reversed calf town shoes and a sennit straw hat with a club coloured band."

A gorgeous colour gabardine and particularly fine with the suede shoes. Of course I would go with a long tie, perhaps in a woven brown, and lose the hat. Unflapped pockets also look wrong on such a casual suit - but then, as pictures like this show, rules fluctuate just like fashions.

The opening of Trunk Clothiers

[Cotton jacket by Beams Plus, shirt by BD Baggies and bow tie by Drake's]

Tomorrow is the official opening of Trunk, an innovative new boutique in London’s Marylebone. Though the shop has been welcoming passers-by for the past few weeks, as new merchandise arrived and the builders finally put up those rails in the basement.

Being in Marylebone, ten minutes walk from Selfridge’s but surrounded by a residential community, there are a fair number of passers-by: men in their thirties attracted by the shop window, containing understated but somehow sharp pieces of clothing. And those men mix with the knowledgeable visitors that are there to seek out brands that they have discovered are only available here in the UK.

For this is Trunk’s business model: stocking great Italian, Japanese, Swedish and American brands that already have followings among London residents, but could only be found abroad.

[Shirts by J Crew and jackets by Beams Plus]

J Crew, surprisingly, has never sold in this country and is in Trunk with a collection of washed and hyper-preppy shirts. BD Baggies, a new one on me, has even softer and casual American work shirts, while Kitsune (made by a Japanese gentleman, in France) is the opposite end of the scale – formal dress shirts with fine stitching and sharp, unfused collars.

Regular readers will remember Piombo, which I discovered while wandering around Milan last year. Great jersey cloths and use of deep colours, as I recall. Well Piombo is now in Trunk, the only outlet for it in the UK. Mats Klingberg, whose idea this whole venture was (and neighbourhood this is), has picked out Piombo as the provider of the most formal items at Trunk – hopsack jackets and unlined overcoats, in conservative navy but great cloths.

[Grey knitted jacket by Barena and navy corduroy jacket by Woolrich Woolen Mills]

The greatest discovery for me though was Barena, a Venetian company that does soft tailoring and knitwear that is disarmingly sharp. A double-breasted grey jacket, for example, cut slim in a knitted wool but with unfinished edges intended to echo the fisherman of the Veneto.

It’s also great to see the whole range of Slowear products here. For those that don’t know Slowear, it is a group of similarly craft-minded companies that specialises in one area each: Incotex for trousers, Zanone for knitwear, Montedoro for coats/jackets and Glanshirt for, well, shirts. Incotex, in particular, has a great reputation.

[Boots by Common Projects, belt by (ki:ts), bag by BAG'n'NOUN]

There are some standards here as well – Drake’s ties and handkerchiefs, Sunspel T-shirts etc. And a fair few casual brands that are less known to me, like Beams and Woolrich. Overall a great range for any discerning gentleman, with a similar style and attitude to craft.

As with any personality-driven venture, the clothes here are the one’s that Mats loves, the ones he shops for in Europe and the ones he wears himself. That has always been a very daunting idea to me – trying to sell your own dress sense to others. “It’s certainly a little frightening, but I’m finding it fascinating just in the first few days seeing which brands people go for. For me and them it’s a process of discovery,” he says.

Good luck to him.


[Handkerchiefs by Drake's, jacket and overcoat by Piombo]

Photography by Andy Barnham

Permanent Style in GQ

A Permanent Style column, on the forgotten rule of black tie (cover your waist!) is on GQ.com today.

Read it here

Huntsman tweed suit: Part 2

Following up on the last post in this series, on Huntsman tweed, this runs through the style of a shooting suit and being measured.

The suit shown here is three-button, but I opted for a more classic Huntsman one-button front in order to make it better for wearing casually. While I hope one day to wear the suit for shooting, I think with the five-button waistcoat underneath it will be warm enough.

What will also help is the weight of the cloth (14-ounce) and the neck closing on the jacket, which features a buttoned-back tab under the collar and facing button to secure to. This is a feature I have on a couple of my casual suits, though I normally combine it with a button under the lapel as well.

Additional buttons are found above the hip (bellows) pockets as well, so that the flaps can be buttoned back for rapid access. Other pockets include a poacher’s pocket on the inside of the jacket and four on the waistcoat – what is known as a postboy’s waistcoat. Unlike the example shown here, however, I will have no flaps on the lower pockets as they are unlikely to be used when actually shooting.


The back of the jacket will feature pleats (known also as an ‘action’ or ‘bi-swing’ back) to make it easier to raise one’s arms to shoot, and a purely decorative half belt. The sleeves will also be cut slightly larger – a ‘dirty’ sleeve – in order to help that shooting action.

The choice between plus-fours and plus-twos is largely a personal one. I went with plus-twos merely to have less material around the knee. And side straps on the waist.

The plus-twos required one extra measurement in the fitting room: the top of my calf, which meant rolling my trousers up for David Ward to see them properly. All of a sudden I felt rather like a schoolboy. The long socks and flannel trousers didn’t help.

David will be cutting my suit. He has just this week joined Huntsman from Norton & Sons as a cutter. Readers with long memories will remember flattering words about David from Patrick Grant, owner of Norton & Sons, in a previous interview with Patrick on Permanent Style.

I was impressed with the exacting measurements, which were both more numerous than other tailors and involved a few little quirks. Unlike elsewhere, David kept my jacket on for the majority of the measuring (something mentioned in Richard Anderson’s fond memories of Huntsman in his recent book), used a square rule placed under my armpit to judge the size of the sleeve head, and took three photographs – front, side and back.

Interestingly, he also pinned the centre point between my shoulder blades, once found, and used that as a starting point for several measurements. The same was done for the small of my back.

Next: The cutting

Photography: Andy Barnham

Big-scale tweeds and the right cap

Irish tweed jacket with elbow pads

Esquire, September 1938: "The Irish homespun tweed jacket that seems to be so much a thing of patches is really the latest trick at the smart Eastern universities. The alleged patches are buckskin elbow pads and gun pad, an idea copied from the shooting jacket. The elbow pads are supposed to absorb a lot of desk-leaning punishment but the shoulder pad has to get by solely by its decorative merits. The slacks are also new - of natural colour covert cloth, narrow in cut and worn short so that they don't break at the cuff. Accessories include a tan pincheck shirt, Irish homespun tie, velour finish Tyrolean hat and blucher shoes.

The other suit is of Shetland in a broken herringbone pattern, worn with a soft flannel shirt, regimental striped tie, silk foulard handkerchief, the new small shape varsity tweed cap, brown wool cable-stitch hose with 'lightning' pattern and reverse calf ski front shoes with crepe soles and heels."

Plenty to admire here. I love the scale of the pattern on both jackets and the cap sounds ideal - too many eight-piece caps are over large and drown the face. The description of the trousers sounds bang up to date, and looks good for it. Then there's buckskin again.

Albam: Craft for the weekend

“This is the point that your girlfriend starts worrying,” says Albam co-founder James Shaw, bent over the stitching on the company’s new Ventile mac. “See this round the cuff? The stitching varies slightly where the maker took her foot off the sewing machine, changing the pressure momentarily. It’s not perfect – it’s handmade, personal.”

I don’t know much about casual clothing – I’ll leave trainers and denim to other geeks – but the craft at Albam has a lot in common with bespoke tailoring. It’s all about individuality, as with that stitching, and craft and value. Coats, T-shirts and knitwear are made the old-fashioned way because there is a belief that it is better – it lasts longer, it wears better and it works.

I rarely speculate what Permanent Style readers wear at the weekend (indeed part of me hopes they wear full tweed and neckerchiefs). But if it is chinos and sweatshirts, I would hope they are made by a brand with the same attitude to craft as their tailor. Like Albam.

James and Albam co-founder Alastair didn’t start making clothes in Britain out of any ethical stance and they refuse to be poster boys for that movement. They were just living in Nottingham and wanted to try and make a T-shirt; so they went to the local factories to see if they could do it.

The first one failed, the second was better, but by that time they they were already importing their own yarn out of frustration. The T-shirts are made in that factory today, each by a single woman moving the cloth around by hand on a pedal-operated machine that James describes as “a cross between a car and a one-man band”. The motivation is not philosophical: “It’s just a nice way of making a T-shirt.”

They started with very limited runs, having “spent most of our frighteningly small amount of money on business cards and stationery”. Factories were convinced to make six items, as uneconomic as it might be. And today shirts are usually only made in runs of 70 in each colour; there will be just 100 of the shawl-collar cardigans across five sizes.

What began as necessity is now a nice push for quick sales among loyal customers, anxious not to miss out on new lines. I realised that to my cost a couple of weeks ago, when I popped into the shop and fell in love with the Alpine jacket. Made of Ventile like the new mac (a pure-cotton fabric used by Arctic explorers, as synthetics can freeze and crack), it has taped seams and would have been perfect for cycling into work. But they only had two left, both in big sizes.

Fortunately, I did get some great chinos – and here’s another tailoring link. When James and Alastair were coming up with this cut they went to a trouser cutter, not a designer, without any preconceptions of what they should look like. The result is jeans and chinos that fit a lot more like suit trousers, with a higher and darted waist. We’re not talking wear-with-braces height, on your belly button, but just an inch higher than normal jeans – making them far more comfortable and yet still narrow and stylish through the leg.

“When trousers are designed for fit they are surprisingly comfortable,” says James. “At least, surprising for all those who have been wearing tight jeans on their hips.”

The other great design element is the coin pocket. You know that little pocket normally tucked inside the side pocket on trousers, which is too small and narrow to get anything in, and even if you did get anything in you couldn’t get it out? Well here it’s wider, shallower and an inch below the waistband. You will actually put change in there.

Albam is also good value for money, rather like bespoke. It’s easy to be cynical about pricing: without knowing a brand’s exact margins, ‘value’ can seem like so much marketing. But once you’ve talked through the elements that go into an Albam product, you’re convinced as you can be without getting out the accounts. It’s rather like a recent comment on my series about making George Cleverley shoes, which said: “By the time you’ve read all the posts you feel exhausted. You just want to give them the two grand and not hear from them again until the things are done.”

Production in England (and shirts finished in Portugal) is obviously more expensive. But materials are the big expense. The fabric most hiking jackets are made out of will cost you £1 or £2 a metre; that Ventile stuff is more like £20. And RiRi zips (see my post on their quality here) will set you back around another £10 each. Suddenly it’s surprising the chinos are only £89. But again, there is little pretense: “I’d like to make clothes that are like Marks & Spencer used to be. When you’d go in wanting a navy cardigan and find exactly what you wanted, well made and well cut, for a decent price,” says James.

Every season James and Alastair like to think they improve the clothes they do, gradually but methodically. The piece that first made them famous, a fisherman’s cagoule, has gone through several iterations – adding a better button, then a better thread, later a stronger draw cord, eventually corozo-nut buttons, finally better corozo buttons. They are happy to upgrade items when customers notice theirs have been superseded. “And our customers notice,” says James. Apparently some are just as obsessive about cotton macs I am about welting.

New lines drop into Albam all the time. The best place to keep up to date with them is the behind the scenes blog, but look out on Permanent Style for updates as well. Rumour has it they might even be making some of those Alpine jackets again. Here’s typing with crossed fingers.

Photography: Andy Barnham