Factory visit: Dent's gloves

I finally made it down to Dent’s heritage gloves factory in Warminster, and learnt a lot more about the traditional process behind English-made gloves. There were some interesting parallels with several other crafts, including tailoring, shoemaking and shirt making.

The leathers used most often are hairsheep, deerskin and peccary. Hairsheep comes from African sheep that, as you could have guessed, have hair rather than wool. It is very thin while remaining strong and flexible, and is most often used for women’s gloves, though British army gloves are unlined hairsheep. Deerskin is thicker, from North America and has a grain, which hairsheep does not, and peccary is softer, from South America and with a distinct pattern of three-bristle holes.

The skin is soaked to make it more malleable and then cardboard patterns for the two gloves laid on each side of the spine. The leather is stretched again slightly by hand along the length of the glove, squeezing perhaps 11.5 inches of leather into a 9-inch wide pattern. This is so that when you put the glove on, it stretches across the palm to allow easy access but then springs back to its previous shape.

The cutter then marks around the pattern with his nail – the cutters have rather long nails for this purpose. Rather like chalk on worsted, the nail impression can be removed without leaving any trace. That square of leather is cut out with shears. These look rather like those used to shear sheep: wide-handled and made from one piece of metal, without a hinge. Shears that would be more recognisable to a tailor are sometimes used, but one-piece shears are simply quicker to pick up and put down. Marking with the nail is also valued for this reason.

The purpose of the table cutting is to select the right area of the leather, without any blemishes and matching both gloves. The actual cutting of the glove shape, however, is done on a hand-shaped metal frame. The leather is stamped down onto its sharpened edges with a hydraulic press. The cutting of gloves is therefore a mixture of the two methods used for cutting the leather for shoes – clicking by hand and using a press.

For each size of glove there is a different frame and, while each has the same proportions of palm size to finger length, there are inserts that can be used to shorten or lengthen the fingers. Dent’s used to make versions with shorter fingers for the army and for Japanese customers, but that has ceased to be economic. It doesn’t at present offer a bespoke service either, largely because of the difficulty of getting people measured accurately at the various department store concessions.

Next, the gloves are stitched together. Along with the main part of the glove, there is a separate thumb, three fourchettes (the gaps in between the fingers) and usually three quirks (triangular pieces also used between the fingers, to allow them to move more easily in different directions). Add on the same number of pieces for the lining (minus quirks), as well as any straps and hardware, and you have up to 52 pieces that have to be assembled.

The stitching is done on old Singer sewing machines. They are so old that they pre-date those in Singer’s own museum, and the only way to repair them is to harvest equally old models that Dent’s collects. These machines also stitch horizontally. A flat-bed sewing machine, with a vertical needle, doesn’t allow you to turn the glove in enough directions. The bed itself prevents you from moving the glove underneath the plane of the table.

I remember being impressed by the dexterity with which Turnbull & Asser’s seamstresses worked around the points of shirt collars on their flat-bed machines. But seeing a glove being sewn, you realise that method’s limitations.

Some of the gloves are also entirely sewn by hand. It’s easy to spot those because the stitching is much bigger and more noticeable. Interestingly, I find that men tend to assume the gloves with finer stitches and with stitching inside the glove (inseam, as opposed to prixseam) are of better quality. But the first is done by machine and the second is much easier – like the inside of a jacket, turning the seam in allows you to hide any mistakes.

Finally, the gloves are ironed. This is largely a question of presentation. When the gloves have been sewn they look just like they will after someone has worn them a few times – soft and crumpled. For retail, though, they must be smoothed and pressed. This is done on a heated metal hand-form, on which the gloves are placed and stretched finger by finger. And a very traditional tool is needed to straighten out the tips – half a wooden clothes peg. There’s one for every colour of glove.

Thank you to John, Jeremy and everyone else who showed us around the Dent’s factory. Good luck in your new premises.

The trip also included a tour of the Dent’s archive, with gloves made for Charles I, Elizabeth I and Nelson (with real blood stain). More on that another time.

Photography: Andy Barnham

Livery at Henry Poole

The way Keith tells it, in the late eighties the Royal Household had a decision to make. The livery of the Household and Royal Mews was in pretty poor shape. It had largely been made in 1902 (for the coronation of Edward VII), some had been remade in 1937 (George VI) and there were some alterations and repairs in 1953 (Elizabeth II). But since then it had sat in storage with no planned, regular maintenance.

They could decide to replace like for like, replace the gold lace with synthetic, or pare down to a genuine but smaller collection. “Admirably, they decided to replace like for like, which has kept us in business pretty consistently,” Keith says.

Keith Levett is head of the ceremonial department at Henry Poole and the only person still consistently making livery on the Row. It’s a far cry from the days when Poole’s had a separate department with over 60 tailors on the corner of Clifford Street (now Richard James).

It would have been a shame to switch to synthetic lace, or Mylar. Gold lace behaves in a certain way. It fades over time, in unison with the ageing and darkening cloth. Mylar starts unnaturally bright and stays that bright forever, even as the red cloth around it ages. Most of the military uniforms use Mylar now, and it looks noticeably brighter.

You can see how real gold ages in the three shots below, showing a new coat, one from the 1930s and one from 1875.

For those that are interested, the gold lace is in fact a core of linen warp and silk or cotton weft, wrapped in a base metal that has been gilded with gold. It is called orris lace. It is about 2.5% gold, and worth £60 a metre. You can see the core and gilded metal being unravelled here:

Below are the three types of woven lace, which correspond to different formalities of dress – the widest is ‘full state’, the middle ‘semi-state’ (or undress) and the thinnest is a navy lace. The first two are only woven for the Royal Household and Mews, by a firm in Lyon.

Hand & Lock, the most famous English embroidery firm, doesn’t weave its own royal lace any more. But Keith was fortunate enough to see the old Hand & Lock looms on Lexington Street in 1989, just as he started at Poole’s and a few weeks before they were closed down. “Most were early nineteenth century, but some were the old Jacobean looms,” he says. “They made beautiful stuff, though so slowly and in such small quantities I could probably stitch in on quicker.”

The lace ages very well. The base metal just gradually oxidises. What falls apart on the old coats is the silk stitching that holds it down. As you can see on the shot of the shoulder of a walking groom’s livery below, a strip of velvet is sewn onto the cloth first, and then the lace is stitched down on either side. The lace is heavy but malleable, and the velvet has a deep pile, so the former tends to move (‘walk’) as it is sewn. Matching up all the rows of lace on the front of the coat can be tricky.

Those silk stitches aren’t really worth repairing, because it would “be like painting the Forth Bridge”. As soon as you sew up one area and turn the coat over, another would come undone. The job would be endless.

Another challenge is sewing areas like the cuffs shown below. In order to remain rigid, they are sewn onto a layer of buckram. This has been glued to the cloth, and as it is sewn the glue slowly melts with the heat of your hands and the needle. The more it melts, the harder it is to get the needle through, until finally it starts to squeak as it is pushed. Then it’s time to stop and cool down.

“People say that livery work is coatmaking taken to the next level, but I’m not sure I’d agree with that,” says Keith. “It’s heavy work, but the biggest challenge is getting the aesthetics right – the waist height, the shape of the pockets and the overall cut. If you get it wrong, it just becomes very expensive theatre costume.”

That might sound like a relatively abstract differentiation, but once Keith points out the differences between three models – 1875, 1930s and current – you can see how the shape of the waist and flare of the skirt has changed quite dramatically.

The liveries that result are gorgeous, both in their designs and the painstaking handwork that stitches on each row of lace. The number of these stitches, and the way they can be seen on the surface if you look closely (as with the cuff pieces above), gives each piece great character.

The refurbishment of the Royal liveries, as well as preparations for the Jubilee in 2012, will keep Keith busy for a long while to come. And if you look down into the basement of 16 Savile Row (Poole’s owns the basement next door to the main shop), you will see Keith’s workshop itself refurbished over the coming year, including the more prominent display of its royal warrants.

[It should be noted that the top image is of an old Gieves coat, being repaired by Keith. All the rest were made at Poole's.]

Reader questions: The menswear classics

Some questions are known as the menswear classics. These are the queries that columns like GQ’s Style Guy, and websites like Permanent Style, get every few weeks – no matter how many times they have been answered.

What should I wear for my wedding? Can I wear brown shoes? How do I tie a bowtie? You know the ones. I’ve answered them all before but I know that a blog is not the easiest thing to browse (trust me, I’m working on it), so below is a selection of my answers – I hope they prove useful.

If anyone has any fresh quries on these topics and they are not covered below, please let me know and I’ll put them in the queue for a ‘reader’s question’ post.

1. What should I wear to a wedding?

Unless the wedding is black tie, which is largely a US affliction, the answer is that you should wear your smartest suit. Probably navy, with black shoes, white shirt and a silver woven tie. It only looks like a business outfit because people don’t wear suits in any other context any more. And with the addition of a crisp white handkerchief and fresh flower, it probably won't look like any office you know anyway (see picture, a wedding shot from the 1940s).

Alternatively, and fully conscious of the propriety mentioned above, wear casual summer suiting: linen, cotton, buff waistcoats and flowers in the buttonhole. Men don’t get to wear this kind of thing at all today, which is a crying shame, so grab the opportunity of a summer wedding.

Overriding both suggestions is, of course, any guidance you have from the wedding party.

More details in my post here.

2. How do I wear a pocket handkerchief?

Stuff it in. Don’t try and produce a perfect line, or a perfect set of points. Wearing a handkerchief already risks looking affected. Don’t make that a certainty by making its arrangement overwrought.

A silk handkerchief is most easily pushed down into the pocket and then folded over the back. See post here.

A linen handkerchief looks when folded square and then stuffed – the Mad Men look but not so fussy. See post here.

3. I can’t find suits off the peg that fit me. What should I do?

Start by getting them altered. You should be changing the waist of the jacket, the length of the sleeves, the waist of the trousers and the length of the trousers. Doing so will make your suit fit better than those worn by 80% of men out there. Because they don’t bother.

Just make sure the shoulders and neck fit you well, as they are the hardest bits to alter. More details here.

Then, look at made to measure. Although not bespoke, it is a big leap again from ready to wear suits that are altered. Reiss does a good service it has just introduced, and many brands have sprung up that largely do just MTM – Suit Supply, A Suit That Fits, Cad and the Dandy. Plus many brands that say they are offer bespoke mean MTM. Ask if you will have your own paper pattern, preferably cut by the guy measuring you. That defines bespoke.

Post on made to measure here.

4. Can I wear brown shoes?

Yes. They suit more colours of suiting than any other leather and are only inappropriate at some formal occasions or quite formal professions (often the law, for example). Brown leather is also much more satisfying to polish, as you can create your own patina over time.

Just remember to wear a shade of brown that is as dark or darker than your trousers. No tan shoes with navy suits please.

More details here.

5. Can I wear brown in town, white in winter etc?

Yes to all these so-called rules. You can break them, just as long as you know why they are there.

Not wearing brown in town is an old rule telling you to not wear to a business meeting what you wear on the farm. The same applies today, of course, but more importantly it is reminding you to consider the propriety of any occasion when you select your clothes for the day. That’s worth remembering.

My post on this particular rule can be found here.

But I also run a series on these rules – just Google ‘the rules and how to break them’.

Whisky on Burns night

This is not a lifestyle blog and will never become one. But, given the celebrations that will going on tomorrow night I thought readers might be interested in a recent conversation with Ian Buxton, a friend, prominent whisky writer and contributor to Gentleman’s Corner.

I turned to Ian because I’d recently gained an interest in whisky, having been given a bottle of Oban for Christmas. I was surprised how much I liked it, but it was hard to know how to develop the interest further. Most whisky books (including Ian’s most recent – ‘101 Whiskies to Try Before You Die’) are lists or histories, interesting empirically but little use to the beginner trying to learn which whiskies he likes.

Ian’s suggestion was to try miniatures: “Rather than spend £30 or £40 on a bottle of whisky that you might not like, take that money and spend it on a handful of miniature bottles. Go to a good stockist like the Whisky Exchange in London and ask them for a variety clustered around a taste you already know you like.”

Whiskies are classified in different ways, but the useful Flavour Map on Diageo’s website plots them on two axes – smoky versus delicate and rich versus light. Oban (14 year old) falls squarely in the middle, so I plan to try a few miniatures that are smokier or more delicate, richer or lighter, until I discover the flavours I like. Of course, Diageo’s site only lists its own brands, but getting an idea of the other Diageo names and the descriptions given to them makes future selections much easier.

Whiskies used to be classified by region as well, as different parts of Scotland made identifiably different flavours. “But that’s not really the case any more,” says Ian. “Everyone can’t make every flavour, but many distilleries have the ability and are trying to make different flavours in order to cover different parts of the market. Or to follow trends – the current vogue for smokier whiskies, for example.”

Miniatures aren’t just for airlines and cash-poor tramps, apparently. Most of the big names do miniature versions of their whiskies, and if stores don’t have a particular brand then sites like Just Miniatures are bound to.

Ian also recommends David Wishart’s book ‘Whisky Classified’, which takes a more rigorous approach to whiskies and their flavours.

Enjoy Burns Night (and wear a velvet jacket).

Leather cycling shoes at Quoc Pham

Leather makes a lot of sense as a material for cycling shoes. It’s wind-resistant but breathable, sturdy if thick or reinforced, and moulds well when closely fitted. It’s only real disadvantage is its weight and – when compared to synthetics – its cost.

But interestingly, aesthetics is also a big factor. If you look through a conventional range of mountain-bike or road shoes, you will see little touches of leather (or imitation leather) on most of them. The construction is normally a mix of plastic, mesh and rubber (or carbon) composites. But there will be strips of what looks like leather, because it’s attractive.

While Quoc Pham will expound the practical benefits of leather, it is for aesthetic reasons that he first made his ‘Fixed’ cycling shoes. “To recapture some of the romance of the classic cyclists, the elegance and the beauty of them and how they looked,” as he puts it.

The Fixed style (above) isn’t really a cycling shoe in the sense that I’ve used it above. It doesn’t affix to the pedal; it doesn’t have a cleat. It is a light, streamlined shoe designed to be worn with plain pedals or toe straps. The sole is reinforced to improve the transfer of power to pedal, but there’s some flexibility to make them easy to walk in.

The Tourer is new, coming out this March. Again leather throughout, but a replacement for the mountain-bike shoe, with cleat. It looks rather clunky compared to the sleek Fixer, but trust me it’s a lot more attractive than normal mountain-bike shoes.

Quoc was brought up in the UK and studied at St Martin’s, but now lives in Taiwan where his shoes are made. Impressively, given the cost of the Fixed, they are all lasted by hand. He is proud of the fact that his shoes are made in a factory that otherwise makes Goodyear-welted dress shoes – not sports shoes.

“The problem with sports shoe manufacturers is they don’t appreciate leather, or any quality materials for that matter,” says Quoc. “Because they’re not used to making precise lasts, it’s hard to get a close fit.” Quoc showed me a prototype for a new cycling shoe that is Goodyear-welted, with a cream rubber sole. There’s also an ankle-boot version of the Tourer.

There’s another connection between dress shoes and Quoc’s cycling shoes as well – the lacing. Have a look at the diagrams on his site. The laces skip a crossover and then tuck through themselves, in order to spread the pressure over a wider area of the foot. And then they are finished off with what some would call a Berluti knot, other’s – that prefer their history – a surgeon’s knot. Because you don’t want laces coming undone when you’re hurtling along.

Dressing advice for chubby and tubby

Again we pause for the forgotten man

Esquire, March 1935: "Last month we got ourselves in very solid with a large number of citizens, or vice versa, by stopping to reflect, via one of these fashion pages, that somebody loves a fat man. So again we guide the gentleman of girth, even unto such a relatively skittish department as that of spectator sports wear.

"Chubby, on the left, models a slenderizing outfit consisting of a fly front covert cloth topcoat in natural tan, worn with a grey diagonal cheviot tweed, a blue and white even stripe cotton flannel shirt, a black silk crochet tie, a green felt snap brim hat, brown suede shoes on a town last, reddish capeskin gloves and the omnipresent red carnation.

"Tubby, on the right, less convincing now than when his coat is buttoned, wears an outfit that shows the same tendency to emphasise all the long lines, accentuate the sharpness of the collar points and the taper of hat crowns, trousers and sleeves."

I hate to disagree with the editors of Esquire, but I think both men could do more to elongate their looks. Tubby should wear a deeper V-neck, slimmer trousers and get rid of the turn-ups. Chubby could also remove his turn-ups, and a fly-front coat is not particularly slimming. It creates a solid expanse of cloth without the relief of buttons.

Do keep your jacket buttoned though. Otherwise what's the point of tailoring?

Altering the neck of a suit

This is an alteration to an old flannel suit, pinching in and raising the neck of the jacket slightly to correct a collar that currently stands a half inch away from my neck.

This, of course, is one of the last alterations you should have done. It can easily be messed up by an inexperienced tailor and it will minutely alter the shoulder and back balance. It’s one of the reasons you should always make sure the shoulders and neck fit you if you’re buying a ready-made suit and are planning to have it altered.

But a collar that stands away is a most irritating fault, on a par with sleeves that are too short. Plus the suit has sentimental value – it was the first suit I ever had made for me, a grey double-breasted with just two buttons from Edward Tam in Hong Kong.

Over time, Edward’s tailors have shown their quality (I did not appreciate at the time that the lining is entirely sewn in by hand, and this on a £250 suit) but his fitting less so. Most of the jackets seem to stand away a little at the neck and be rather square in the chest.

Russell took off the collar to see how much inlay was left underneath and, interestingly, showed me how that excess had been snipped at the edge. This is sometimes done to excess on the inside of a curve, to ensure that it doesn’t prevent the cloth on the outside from curving naturally. It is often used on the armhole of a waistcoat, for example.

How great things have aged: Bentleys antiques

It’s easy to think that people have always appreciated vintage items like leather luggage, bags and accessories. But back in the early eighties, that wasn’t the case. It was only in the middle of that decade that taste in the UK started to turn away from the obviously new and towards the idea of beauty in the aged.

Tim Bent, whom I met recently, started his antiques business back in the mid-eighties. One of his first customers was Jeremy Hackett, who was starting out selling second-hand clothing and wanted the leather accessories to match. (Jeremy is still one of Tim’s biggest clients, along with Ralph Lauren.) It was another 10 years, the mid-nineties, before vintage became really fashionable though.

Tim maps out the past 100 years like this: At the turn of the century, your great-grandparents owned and used handmade leather luggage like this; your grandparents appreciated it and perhaps used it; your parents though it was nice, but impractical, either selling it off or putting it in the attic; this generation is appreciating that luggage all over again (though Tim might have bought it off your parents in order to sell it back to you!).

Heavy, hand-stitched leather like this survives very well. But it is still rare to find pieces with no imperfections at all – stitches ripped or water damage. Water is often the worst culprit: “When water is left to sit on luggage like this it evaporates slowly and draws all the moisture out of the leather. It ends up looking like it’s been burned,” says Tim.

So the pieces collected have none of these problems, just a great patina that’s been built up over a 100 years or more. The only restoration required is leather cream and polish, to feed the skin and get it glowing again. Just like shoes, only thicker and so thirstier.

Most of the items shown here are pre-WWII, from the twenties or thirties – though luggage is very hard to date precisely, particularly once it has been sold on from the original owners.

Age is one of the biggest determinants of price, along with rarity and whether it’s crocodile or Vuitton/Goyard/Hermes. Most of the small cases here are between £500 and £1000, though smaller items (collar boxes, for example) would be a hundred or two.

I was particularly interested in the different structures of briefcases from this period. One, seen in the set of dark brown cases above, was thick moulded leather, made by exerting a large amount of force to bend it to the desired shape. No frame, a slightly liquid edge and no need for a substantial lining.

The second structure, made contemporaneously, used a thin steel frame around the top and bottom edge that different sections of leather could be stitched around. Often the steel would be in separate pieces, one for each edge. The difference in appearance is considerable – a frame makes the case seem modern; without it it’s an antique.

I don’t think I would use a vintage briefcase like this day to day, but I’m interested in the possibilities of trunks and small carry cases, used as storage and decoration at home, and possibly hand luggage for travel. The leather cigar cases are also beautiful, but proportionately more expensive as they are mostly from the 1850s.

Tim has a vast collection, including old Maxwell riding boots and tiny football boots (made as salesman’s samples). A small part of it is stored down at the Bentleys shop in Walton Street, west London. An even smaller amount is now available in the new Gieves & Hawkes layout, at No 1 Savile Row. Check it out, as well as our friends bespoke shoemakers James Ducker and Deborah Carre around the corner.

Three years and still growing fast

I always seem to miss Permanent Style's anniversary, and last year was no exception.

On December 14, this blog was three years old. It now gets over 120,000 hits a month on average, an increase of almost half in the past year. Over 2000 different people read the site every day.

In that year Permanent Style featured in GQ, The Financial Times and The Rake for the first time, as well as in several new sites online and several lists of the best blogs in the world.

I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to all my supporters and readers for spreading the word. Here's to another great year.

Rapha: The advantages of merino wool

My love of tailoring and benchmade shoes is in part a passion for their raw materials: wool, with its versatility and ‘intelligence’ in the way it reacts to temperature; and leather, which moulds and ages so beautifully.

As with the renaissance in suiting over the past few years, makers of cycling kit have been rediscovering traditional materials. The increasing popularity of cycling has created a market for more expensive and better-made clothing, including that made of wool.

“Everyone today is looking at better materials, and realising the virtues of leather and of wool,” says Simon Mottram, managing director of Rapha. Rapha, founded in 2004, was one of a number of companies that re-introduced merino wool to the market.

“Leather is naturally water resistant and becomes personal with age, merino wool has these wonderful wicking properties, and both breathe naturally. Most modern synthetics are trying to emulate what nature already does very well – though obviously more cheaply.”

I’ve been a cyclist, and commuted by bike, for the past 10 years. But the crossover between cycling and both wool and leather didn’t occur to me until recently. I’ve been exploring it over the past few months and this will be the first of an occasional series on the subject, beginning with Rapha and merino wool.

All cycling jerseys used to be made out of wool. I have a rather nice knitted vintage one from Belgium. But wool was gradually replaced with synthetic materials: they were more robust, more comfortable and cheaper to manufacture. Then, in the past five years, merino wool started to win some of that market back – as a high-end market emerged. Compared to the old wools, merino is far lighter and softer to wear. It is also usually made today using flatlock stitching, a mercerised finish and seams positioned behind the shoulders, all of which make it more comfortable.

Wool has several advantages over synthetic materials. It wicks moisture away from the body quicker and (perhaps more importantly) can hold more of that moisture – about three times its own weight. This gives the water time to evaporate, where on a synthetic shirt it would be pushed back on to the body. Wool also doesn’t get smelly – even synthetics with ‘anti-bacterial’ treatment will need more frequent washing.

So what are the disadvantages? It’s not as durable, light or stretchy. Cycling jerseys go through a lot of punishment, holding heavy items in several pockets, which are frequently accessed. Pockets in a garment made entirely of wool can sag. Wool also can’t be double-stitched easily, making it more fragile. And it’s not machine washable.

Plus wool is on average 10 times more expensive than a synthetic. “You can make a synthetic-mix material for 30p or 40p a metre, call it Tech-Dry or Dry-Fit and convince the customer they are buying something technical without much advance in performance,” says Mottram.

The best option is normally a wool mix. Many of Rapha’s clothes use a branded product called Sportwool. It is 52% merino and 48% polyester, making it more robust and able to be double stitched. The producers also say that this combination, with the polyester on the facing of the wool, wicks moisture away quickest – the polyester helps draw it up, but the merino can hold it.

Other considerations pull the proportions of wool or synthetic cloth in different directions. A longer, hotter ride requires a lighter cloth – so the lightweight jersey is 25% merino, 75% polyester. For city riding, how a cloth looks and feels at the other end is important, so the long-sleeved polo shirt is 100% merino.

“Perceptions are also important,” says Mottram. “Racing cyclists want a cloth that feels fast – stretchy, lightweight and aerodynamic. And there’s still a prejudice against wool. So no matter how well it performed, a wool product would be disadvantaged.”

Rapha is experimenting with other natural materials to try and achieve this lightweight feel. A small amount of cashmere makes a jersey feel softer and lighter, for example. Silk makes it feel even smoother. But silk is useless at wicking away moisture – the fibres are too tight. “Time triallists used to wear silk jerseys in the old days,” says Mottram. “They were incredibly light and wind-resistant. But by the end of the trial the rider was soaking.”

My favourite Rapha piece is another experiment – the tweed softshell, pictured at the top of this piece and below. This uses a conventional wool cloth, woven in Germany, as the outer layer but then is bonded to a wind-proof middle layer and a soft, synthetic inner layer by Schoeller in Switzerland. This is the same construction as any softshell (and many other waterproofs, such as the Burberry trench coat) but the wool replaces the normally synthetic outer layer. It’s too heavy and inflexible for long rides, but perfect for the city. Unfortunately it also costs £50 a metre – which as Mottram says “is suiting prices, dangerous territory for sportswear”.

Also worth a mention is the treated wool used in Rapha's collaboration with Timothy Everest, for a tailored jacket that performs well on the bike. Readers will be familiar with the design from this previous post.

So why don’t professional cyclists wear merino, or any of these intelligent mixes? Apparently, for years the riders were pawns in a very commercial game, taking whatever bikes and equipment were given to them. “They had no power, and they got through thousands of pieces of kit a year – so their backers weren’t going to pay £15 more for a jersey,” says Mottram.

“That’s changed gradually in recent years, most notably with Lance Armstrong’s work with Trek and Nike. He has the curiosity to experiment and the power to make it happen. No one’s wearing merino yet – it hasn’t come that far – but I think they will at some point.”

Merino cycling gear is expensive. A basic short-sleeve base layer from Rapha (otherwise known as a T-shirt) costs £50. But then any natural product in a field of synthetic mass production is going to be. And it’s satisfying to cycle to work (in a field of bright-yellow lycra) in clothing that is not only better looking and natural, but more functional as well.

Future pieces in this series will look at Brooks saddles, Quoc Pham shoes and Dashing Tweeds, as well as Rapha’s gloves (both goatskin and African hair sheep leather). Any other suggestions welcome.

Learn from Beau – Simple colours and fastidious fit

It would probably surprise the modern suit wearer to learn that his clothing originated with Beau Brummel, a regency dandy pictured here in a navy tailcoat and an elaborate linen cravat in a famous caricature by Richard Dighton.

But you should see what his contemporaries were wearing. Brummel turned away from embroidery, britches and lace, in favour of plain cloth and simple colours. Clothes were fitted rather than draped. Tailoring gained greater importance.

It’s worth remembering these origins of the suit when building a wardrobe today. Brummel’s colour palette, as shown here, was largely limited to blue, white and buff, with black leather accessories. He rightly observed that elegance is achieved with simple, well-matched cloths that suit the wearer and don’t distract from him, throwing the eye from brocade to bauble.

Add in grey as an option for the suit or tie, and you have the foundations for modern business dress. Navy suit, blue shirt and silver tie; grey suit, white shirt and navy tie. With worsted and flannel, single and double-breasted, plus all the patterns in each, there are scores of permutations.

Then concentrate on the fit. It was a novelty in Brummel’s day to have clothes tailored to fit close to the body – wrapping and hanging from the body were the norm. Brummel’s cut was perhaps a little tight, and revealing, but then he was hardly a modest character, despite his choice of cloth.

Modern trousers shouldn’t show off your thighs. But great tailoring is incredibly and subtly flattering. Instead of spending £40 on a new tie or handkerchief, get the waist of that jacket taken in. Would you rather look better or just different?

Vintage silk weaving at Penrose

The decorative instinct of Mitchell Jacobs, one half of the team behind accessories brand Penrose, is something I’ve written about briefly before. But I had a chance recently to delve further into the craft behind the weaving and finishing of Mitchell’s designs.

I was particularly interested in the Debussy scarf shown above, the blue version of which I often wear with a navy overcoat. While it is silk, the weight of the yarn and the way it is woven create a matte finish and much more substantial handle. It avoids the flyaway, effete look that puts me off many silk scarves.

The silk is woven on vintage, pedal-operated looms, which are all 140 centimetres across. The scarf is cut across from selvedge to selvedge and then folded over and stitched by hand, creating a tubular shape. The pin fringing at the edges is also done by hand, stripping down each individual thread.

The yarn is very dense to begin with and the old-fashioned loom enhances this effect. It and the antique finish were inspired by a 1950s Italian scarf Mitchell wears when touring by motorcycle.

I know the designs, and particularly the colours, are not to everyone’s taste. But for me they are more interesting and original than the traditional paisley and polka dot silks.

The Debussy design here was apparently taken from a medieval book cover Mitchell found in an Antwerp flea market. So I suppose it is traditional in its way too.

Penrose’s website is now much improved and can be found here. But there is still little to browse in terms of product – for that you’ll need to go to Harvey Nicks, Selfridge’s or Liberty in London, or Bloomingdales (New York) and Shrine (Chicago) in the US. Other stockists here.

Persian lamb collars and hats

With that coat, she should ask him in

Esquire, February 1936: "The point is, it isn't every guy can get a coat with a fur collar, from which we argue that it isn't every gal can get a guy with a fur collared coat so we want to shout worldly advice to the lady. We don't think she should be quite so indegoshdarnpendent.

"Of course, it isn't every girl can have a coat and hat of Persian lamb, either, so maybe she knows best. Persian lamb, they tell us, is the ultimate fluff in women's wear this year, and here's a man wearing a double-breasted town ulster with Persian lamb collar and lapels. Only he didn't get the idea from any woman. Old King George's boys started it for men. Their coats, as it happens, are also lined with eastern mink. Yours can be too, we suppose, if you insist and if your insistence is prepaid. Anyway, this coat is a medium weight town ulster with military lines, worn with a rough finished derby and dark grey suit."

Fur and wool collars are popular again with the luxury brands this year, but they always seem to be favoured by the brash and the undiscerning. Although rarely real fur, and so not that expensive, it is a showy style on a par with large alligator accessories.

In the 1930s this appears to have not been the case - it suggested money, but not the wrong sort. And Persian lamb is certainly very practical on snowy days like the one pictured. The warmest of hats, the Astrakhan, is made of it after all.