Postcard from Quarona

Quality control that resembles an odd art installation at Loro Piana's knitwear facility in Sillavengo, down the road from the Quarona headquarters.

In the area this week for three chapters in my next book: The Finest Menswear in the World. More tomorrow.

More photos on www.andybarnham.com

A Borsalino from Lock & Co - my second hat

I’ve had my first proper hat – the brown Voyager from Lock & Co written about here – for over a two years now and it’s been worn pretty intensively. Indeed, it could probably do with a re-blocking at some point. That will be a separate post in the future.

For the moment, I’m focused on what to do to expand the hat collection and so take some weight off the Voyager. It was bought deliberately because its soft construction and dark brown colour made it very versatile – good with both suits (if worn with brown shoes) and more casual clothes. Now it’s time to find two more hats, one more casual and one more formal.

Here I’m going to concentrate on the latter. Several things make a hat more formal. It tends to be made with a thicker felt, and therefore be harder. It tends to be lined, giving it structure internally. It tends to have a thicker ribbon. And it will tend to a broader brim.

Linings are pretty impractical as they are the first thing to wear through, but they certainly make for a smarter hat. A broader brim isn’t necessarily more formal but there is an association there – the original English trilby was the racing felt, and in these circumstances a horserace is not a formal event.

The Voyager is a thin, unlined felt with a thin ribbon and a relatively narrow brim. All these things make it easy to roll and travel with, as well as being more casual. I’m talking here only about trilbys and fedoras by the way – what most men would think of as a proper hat – and nothing more extravagant like a Homburg or a bowler.

With these things in mind, I went down to Lock & Co last week to browse through the options. The Chelsea is a lovely shape with quite a narrow brim (probably the closest thing here to an original racing felt) but quite square in the crown. The Madison is slightly broader in the brim but had too high a crown for me.

(You can tell how arbitrary the trilby/fedora distinction is by the fact that Lock classifies the Madison as a trilby and the Chelsea as a fedora, despite the latter’s brim being narrower.)

In the end, I chose the Borsalino. It has a noticeably broader brim than the Voyager and so is a departure for me, but I loved the shape elsewhere and the softness of the felt. Borsalino says it makes all its felt with wild rabbits rather than farmed ones.

I also considered a grey Voyager because I love the style so much, but with the addition of a broader ribbon – something Lock’s does cheaply and quickly.

A dark grey or black should be the default formal choice, rather than navy. Hats are more like shoes than suits in that way.

Permanent Style tweed

While up on the isle of Lewis two weeks ago, I designed a herringbone tweed with Iain McLeod at Breanish Tweed. This will be available to all readers from now until the end of the year. In January the orders will be collected together and Iain will weave the desired length of tweed. It will then be sent out to readers in February.

We deliberately went for something quite conservative. In part this was so that it would have a wide appeal, but it was also driven by the two friends that had agreed to join with me to place the minimum order: we needed to find something we all loved and would be worn often.

The dominant colour will be a mid-grey - very versatile, very wearable, at home with jeans as much as gabardine. The yarn is called 'silver', but as you can see it is a touch darker than that name implies and has some significant variation in the tones. The other yarn is called 'bracken'. Although mostly tan, this has far more colour in the yarn, with greens and other browns in there.

While the weft of the cloth will be entirely silver, the warp will be silver and bracken combined. Overall, therefore, there will be three times as much silver as bracken, so the grey colour will dominate. The herringbone will be 8x8 - meaning each of the diagonals in the pattern is made up of eight threads. This is the larger of the two standard herringbone patterns, the other being 4x4.

The herringbone pictured below is also an 8x8, so you get an idea of the size, but it has all green going one way, all brown the other. The Permanent Style herringbone, with grey also in the weft, will be both subtler in pattern and dominated by the grey.

We decided not to make up a sample of the tweed as it would have added significantly to the cost, and I wanted this to be as affordable as possible. Hopefully the example pattern and the yarns give a good enough impression.

It will be made in a lightweight Shetland wool. At 10 ounces, it is pretty much the lightest tweed you can get from woollens, and is proportionately soft as well. As mentioned in my first post on Breanish, the weaving is done on a 90-year-old Hattersley loom, in exactly the same way tweed on Harris and Lewis has been woven for centuries. It is also warped entirely by hand, something only Breanish still does on the island, giving it that one extra level of hand work.

The Permanent Style tweed will cost £70 a metre. But before you get too excited, this is a single-width loom, so you need twice as much as for a normal jacket, coat or suit. The amount of cloth varies significantly by customer and I therefore recommend you get advice from your tailor on the precise length required. For me, 5 metres is sufficient for a jacket and 7.5 for a suit. So I'd be looking at £350 for a jacket's cloth.

This is a discount on Breanish's normal rates, especially for Permanent Style readers, and it includes  VAT - so readers outside the EU save 20%, making it £58 a metre. All non-US orders should be made through Breanish and payment will be through them as well. Price does not include postage or taxes. You will have two options on postage, Airsure (cheaper) or FedEx. Contact Iain Mcleod at info@breanishtweed.co.uk.

All US orders need to be made through Jodek International, Breanish's agent - David Douek at info@jodekinternational.com.

Thanks everyone. I hope you like it.

Cleverley bespoke luggage introduced

While on the subject of bespoke luggage, Cleverley recently started doing its own pieces with two old guys situated down in its Cornwall workshop. Leather bags were previously made by the Robert Simpson factory that also makes for Tanner Krolle and others, and I visited here. Smaller and non-bespoke pieces will continue to be made there.

This piece is particularly lovely - an alligator briefcase made of one piece across the back, without a seam. It is hard to find top-grade alligator skins that are big enough to make single pieces like this. It's in midnight blue with violet suede lining and was commissioned by a client in Beverly Hills. Nice.

Bespoke leather at Dunhill

Just over a year ago, Dunhill began offering bespoke leather services at Bourdon House in London. Tomasz Nosarzewski, whom readers might remember from my visit to the Walthamstow Dunhill factory last year, began spending every Thursday at Bourdon House in order to take bespoke orders – as well as perform services like repairs and embossing for customers.

I’m a big fan of these onsite services, as hopefully my series with Claire from Hermès demonstrated, and I find it no surprise that the spur for the new Dunhill service was Tomasz’s tour round Asia. He talks about how exacting Asian customers of Dunhill were and Claire spoke similarly about those that visit her on Bond Street.

To clarify, not all of Dunhill’s leather products are handmade at the Walthamstow factory (hand stitching, inking, cutting etc). It’s a small operation and only produces a few lines at a time, the current models including a briefcase and structured weekend bag. These pieces are labelled Alfred Dunhill rather than plain Dunhill.

It was always possible to have items custom made in Walthamstow. A customer anywhere in the world could select a model and a leather and the order would be emailed over. Bespoke is different. It means starting from scratch, with specific needs, paper sketches and trial models. A famous perfumer, for example, recently had a leather cube made that folded out to display the scores of test tube samples he carried with him.

“This is the height of what we do, both technically and creatively,” says Tomasz.

Following a discussion with the client, Tomasz creates a mock-up for the customer made from ‘salpa’ (Italian). You can write on it, you can cut it, you can rip it apart and propose a new shape. The material is very cheap but behaves enough like leather. In the example below, it was decided to turn the handle around 90 degrees so that the seam would be on the side, to make it easier to carry. It also looks more masculine that way round.

Tomasz aims to make just one sample per customer, but some make several changes and one even insisted on seeing the piece complete with its lining. Other examples of recent pieces include a camera bag and a car key fob complete with the embossed logo of the auto manufacturer.

Do customers usually have specific ideas about what they want? “It depends. Most customers have a decent idea, but they want to be guided. They want advice about how things should be arranged, about the leather and so on,” says Tomasz.

It’s hard to give an idea of price, but as a basic guide a simple document case in plain calf leather will start at around £1500. Given that Asian customers are ordering sports bags in green, matte, crocodile leather, price can’t be much of an issue for most of Tomasz’s clients.

Dunhill also has a nice video of a document case being done in Walthamstow:

Hawick, Vanners and Robert Noble - Duchamp factories

Good friend Eric Musgrave - author of Sharp Suits among other things - has got a great job, going around the country making films of all the factories where Duchamp has its products made. It's almost as good as my excuse of writing a book about them. I'm not sure I could present to camera quite as effectively as Eric though; I prefer staying the other side of it.

Here we have Hawick cashmere, Robert Noble and Vanners ties. You can find more from Eric at the Duchamp TV site. Enjoy.

Review: Edward Green Top Drawer boots

I ordered my first pair of Top Drawer boots from Edward Green back in January and they arrived in May, which is a little better than average for made-to-order shoes from the Northampton makers in my experience. I ordered Compton boots in a new brown colour, described as bronze, which is as dark as you’d probably like to get without switching to black (or indeed the new slate).

I was interested in Top Drawer because bespoke often seems a little too pricey for my budget, and as I’ve written before, I find the most pleasing aspect of bespoke to be the aesthetics rather than the fit. I have slightly awkward feet (big size difference, low arches, verging on hammer toes) but obviously not awkward enough for the fit of bespoke to be a big advantage.

The heel and waisting on the Top Drawer do not disappoint. Although the heel is perhaps not pitched at the back as much as some bespoke shoes, it curves in very nicely to the waist, which is beautifully rounded and trimmed close to the upper.

Edward Green calls it a London waist, which involves a fiddle – a strip of leather, above – being used in the waist in addition to the wooden shank. The welt is trimmed close (below) and then the waist drawn in and beveled, which is where most of the extra work and therefore price comes in. The waists are also tightly tied with fabric as they move around the workshop to ensure they retain their shape – a little like a corset. The shoes are then dried very slowly, often with damp cloths put on them to slow the drying.

The waist is not styled in a point, as with Gaziano & Girling or Alfred Sargent Handgrade, but rather a nicely rounded finish that is suitable for having initials nailed into. That nailing is done very neatly and with a certain flourish – better than I have seen other makers do.

Interestingly, the thing I noticed most about Top Drawer was the quality of the leather. Edward Green says there is nothing particularly different about it; the TD department just gets first dibs on what comes in from the tannery. But I feel it is noticeably more luscious and pliable, and certainly polishes up very well.

The only negative for me would be that the lovely black staining on the sole of the boot seemed to crack finely all over, as soon as they were worn (see second image at top). The finish may just have been too fine to deal with that use.

Of course, I should really be writing this review in five years’ time, because you would hope the individual attention received by Top Drawer will lead to greater quality in the make. Stephen Barnes, one of Edward Green’s most experienced staff (above), makes most of the Top Drawer.

Says Stephen: “I'll work on just four top drawer shoes a week and will do nearly everything on the shoe. I'll pick the components, ensuring we use the very best and the most suitable: a more malleable sole which can withstand the fiddling, a stiffer insole.

"It's very rewarding because each pair I'm working on from start to finish. It’s not about being a small part in a big machine – each pair's my own project. It's just about making the best pair of shoes possible."

Maybe I’ll just wait two years. See you then.

(Above, Kibworth Top Drawer)

Breanish Tweed: Unique luxury

Breanish Tweed has all the hallmarks of a Harris tweed weaver: old single-width looms stored in draughty sheds; decades of experience in hand weaving; a stunning but hostile location that constantly reminds one of tweed’s insulating properties. But Breanish is deliberately not Harris Tweed.

Breanish falls down in several key respects. Its wool does not exclusively come from the Blackface and Cheviot sheep on the island. That wool is not woven by one of the islands’ three mills. And most of its tweed is too lightweight. Legally, therefore, it fails.

But in terms of craftsmanship, it is as good if not better than the other tweed weavers on Harris and Lewis (the two halves of what is essentially one island). There are over 100 tweed weavers on the island, mostly one-man and one-shed operatons. Yet Breanish is one of only about a dozen left that use the old single-width looms. It has two of the old Hattersleys, one 40 years old and one over 90 (shown top). Most weavers don’t want to use these cumbersome, iron machines – the younger one, Bertha, was bought by Breanish for a bottle of whisky. Several more are stored in a separate shed, to supply spare parts.

Breanish is also the only weaver on the whole island to still do its own warping. This involves stripping off the yarn from the cones supplied by the mills and lacing them by hand around a wooden frame about three metres wide (above). The resulting length is pulled off in plaits, before being ‘beamed’. That requires the wool to be run across two beams in the roof of the shed, with one man holding it down to retain tension, and then wound onto a big metal drum (below).

Beaming adds about two hours to the total of two days that it takes to weave 40-60 metres of tweed. But it enables Breanish to do much smaller runs because it doesn’t have to reply on the warp supplied by a mill. This is one of the reasons why Breanish started weaving more unusual cloths, such as cashmere, lambswool and vicuña: it was only economical in these smaller runs. As a result, Breanish has now become unique in the world of luxury, handwoven wool. It supplies everyone from Norton & Sons to United Arrows.

Breanish's weaving style of 2x1or 2x2 depending on the pattern (that metric refers to the number warp threads to weft threads) is also exactly the same as Harris Tweed. It is possible to weave one by one (a traditional plain weave) but that requires a restructuring of the loom to shift to from four boards to two. And it makes no difference to softness or longevity – that’s down to the wool used.

Breanish’s small runs also mean it can do bespoke orders for those that take the time to visit, and a post next week will give the details on a Permanent Style tweed that I designed while up on the tip of nowhere. It’s a nice subtle herringbone with heather woven in, using the Shetland wool that is slightly softer than the more traditional Harris Cheviot. It will be available to order throughout December, at a special discount for Permanent Style readers on the normal bespoke price. The tweed will then be woven in January and delivered in February.

This trip was part of the research for an upcoming book, The Finest Menswear in the World, based on visits to factories and ateliers around the globe. More details here next year.

Photography: Andy Barnham

Local stockists of Le Snob: Tailoring

Two lovely but accidental run-ins with my book, Le Snob: Tailoring, this week. First I stumbled across it in my local bookshop in Peckham Rye, Review, though strangely in amongst the craft books and sewing guides. And then I found it is being stocked by the Waterstone's around the corner from work, which is nice because I know the new owners make management select these things personally now. Apparently the manager liked the Moleskin-like format. Initially I could only see the whisky and champagne volumes in the Snob series, but it turned out Tailoring had been bumped up to the Christmas table. A nice gift it is too.

So if anyone wants a signed copy, the Ludgate Circus branch of Waterstone's now has several. Don't all rush at once.

Gary Cooper: Enduring Style

This is the second book of photographs I have had to review in recent weeks, the first being Anderson & Sheppard: A Style is Born. Even the packaging is the same, with both coming in the same brown canvas slip case. But the important similarity is the emphasis on photography.

Of the 190 or so pages in Gary Cooper: Enduring Style, Bruce Boyer’s essay on Cooper takes up 12 pages. Ralph Lauren contributes a two-page introduction and Maria Cooper Janis gives us one page at the end. They are all well written, with Boyer’s history in particular (and unsurprisingly) both eloquent and erudite. He breaks down Cooper’s love of bright colours and patterns, as well as giving us passages like: “Real style is never right or wrong. It’s a matter of being yourself – on purpose.”

But this is primarily a book of photography, as is the Anderson & Sheppard tome. Their primary use is therefore inspiration. They will remain on our coffee tables if a casual flick through consistently reveals styles that we wish to emulate. Enduring Style has one prime advantage here: all the photographs are new, being released for the first time by Cooper’s daughter Maria for the book. It is fresh information on what Cooper wore from day to day. And as the pictures are largely taken by his wife, Veronica (Rocky) Balfe, they show us a casual, unguarded Cooper at rest or play.

Cooper liked Anderson & Sheppard, among others, and much of the tailoring is soft. Jackets are unbuttoned, pockets often patched, and his ties seem so lightweight as being incapable of remaining vertical. Casual shirt collars and unstructured and flop where they will.

Interestingly, despite Boyer’s descriptions of paisley sports shirts and Mexican guayaberas, pattern is largely confined to a strongly checked tie. The shots are of course in black and white, and we are therefore denied the cherry red or Kelly green of the sports jackets Boyer describes. But the overall effect is one of subtle tones and soft textures, whether accurate or not.

That extends into casual wear too. For sports or fishing Cooper is dressed in whites, the shirts thin and tight, showing off his slight frame. The trousers are fuller and long, giving full depth to pockets and a resulting air of easy nonchalance. Hunting or safari jackets always retain a handkerchief in the breast pocket.

When he was young Cooper favoured tighter jackets, sometimes double-breasted. But he is at his most stylish in later years, when the shirt collar is occasionally left outside the jacket, or a neckerchief is tied around the neck. One of my favourite photos is from 1956 and features Pablo Picasso. In it Cooper is wearing his white shirt unbuttoned but knotted at the waist, as some women do in summer. It could easily look affected, but with him it seems like the most natural thing in the world.

Thank you Bruce and Maria for putting together such a lovely book. And I’m sorry I won’t be there this week for its launch.

A postcard from Harris

Up in Harris, or rather Lewis, this week at Breanish Tweed. More next week.

Photo: Andy Barnham

The Merchant Fox

Douglas Cordeaux took over the running of weavers Fox Brothers in 2009, along with his friend and Dragon’s Den resident Deborah Meaden. When he moved down to Somerset, despite high expectations, he was blown away by the manufacturing handwork and global distribution of Fox. Being an inquisitive man, he asked about other such craft the region, and discovered leather tanning in Colyton, willow weaving in Somerset, belt making in Dorset and many others.

Which brings us round to the point of this post. That collection of craftsmen was brought under the umbrella of The Merchant Fox, an online retail venture launched by Fox Brothers last month. It has sofas, bags, ties and baskets, dressing gowns, cushions and cufflinks. And today a raft of new items was added, including caps, hats and jewellery.

Not all of the makers are from the south west. There is a collaboration with Globe-Trotter, for example, to make a suitcase lined with Fox flannel and featuring leather corners made at Bakers of Colyton. Dressing gowns are made at Budd, in Fox flannel (above). And bags are made by Chapmans in Cumbria, with that Bakers leather.

Long term, though, the aim is to support local craft. Additions to the group will be more on the scale of the willow weaver. “We’d like to create a kind of local guild, with meetings at the Fox mill,” explains Douglas. “We can offer support, advice, and perhaps most importantly access to our distribution network. People in Japan, for example, that are Fox customers would love this level of craft. We can put them together.”

An overarching theme is getting each craftsman to produce what they love the best, rather than what is most commercial. So the leather used in the bags is a directional grain, which is more expensive to work with as panels can only be cut one way, leading to greater wastage.

This leads to an idiosyncratic but very personal collection of items. I never knew I would find baskets and sofas so interesting – but I suppose it was just a question of something pushing the right craft and provenance buttons.

“That realisation is a wonderful thing to achieve,” says Douglas. “There are so many great things here that I discovered and want to try and communicate to people. To shout about them, when previously many of them were barely whispered about.”

Fans of traditional English craft should cheer very loudly indeed.

Anderson & Sheppard, haberdashers

Anderson & Sheppard is opening up new premises on Clifford Street. And my, hasn’t there been a fuss. Those that have fussed the most might have done well to remember that A&S used to do ladies’ wear and ready to wear. (Which is why you occasionally find old A&S jackets that aren’t quite up to bespoke standards).

Not that the new shop will include either. No, it is to be a haberdashers. Always was. It’s a natural step, given that the Old Burlington Street shop is less than half the size of 30 Savile Row (where A&S used to be, and Boateng is now). More space is needed, and there are beautiful rugs, sweaters, umbrellas and hats (have you seen the hats? Racoon and rabbit!) in the new shop that need a good home. Bear in mind, too, that A&S used to sell sheepskin slippers from No 30; a haberdashers is not much of a departure.

Not that the new place will be based on the old A&S, either. Rather, its inspiration is the old Dougie Hayward store, when the great man was alive. For the driving force behind the shop is Audie Charles, Hayward’s assistant for 30 years and a woman who has dressed all the greats that that role implies. Audie talks with great fondness of the men who sought out the store’s accessories and knitwear, dressing gown and casual clothes. The key was the editing and the fit, with everything being made for the store.

Most of the A&S stock will also be made just for Clifford Street. We had a long discussion about the right waist size, armhole and depth of ‘V’ on a sweater. There will be casual trousers, casual shoes, holiday wear and lots of colour. The makers will be British and European, with some classic Italian summer pieces that you rarely see in London.

It will be what the A&S customer wants for the weekend or for travelling. The difference to Drake’s, just across the road, will be that the goods will be less classic, more unusual. The word ‘eccentric’ was used.

Much like Old Burlington Street, the desired atmosphere will be clubby, with comfortable furnishings and big fitting rooms. Much of the boxed-in feel of the back of the shop will be stripped out, to create a long vista. There will be curiosities, but not the wholesale offering of furniture or furnishings.

It will open next year; hopefully near the beginning. But then they haven’t even knocked the walls back yet.

Photo - Andy Barnham

Reader question: Building a wardrobe

Dear Simon,

First I would like to thank you for introducing me to a whole new world of fashion. At 36, I found myself feeling lost in time and unsure how to dress. I will confess I have never been the most fashionable or dapper person, but I always wanted to be presentable. I found myself still clinging to the fashion of my 20's, which was mainly trainers, jeans, some shoes, some funky T-shirts and all that. I realised that the people on the tube that I would look to for inspiration were getting younger and younger as I myself got older.

Then I watched American Gigolo and it hit me. This is what a man my age is meant to dress like. I started researching and was delighted when I came across your blog. I have started to build out my wardrobe slowly. But now to my question. I am not a wealthy man. I work in finance and do well enough for myself, but I can't regularly spend a month's rent on a suit. Are there any tricks of the trade, ways in which I can build out my wardrobe with as much quality as possible while still having enough left over to go out in the evenings?

I see your blog as an inspiration, but almost everything in it is out of my reach.

Sincerely,

Youssef

-

Dear Youssef,

I think this is probably an experience shared by many readers, which is why I am writing a fuller post as a response. I’m pleased that the blog still serves as inspiration, by the way, as my search for the best in different aspects of menswear takes things out of some readers’ reach.

The short answer is there are no tricks. Building a wardrobe costs both money and patience. Sales shopping, for example, saves money but is very unpredictable and therefore unlikely to be an effective way of acquiring the classics.

But there are a few definite ways that you can go about this more effectively.

First, work out what your priorities are. For every few hundred pounds you save up, there will be a near infinite range of quality you could invest in. The higher the quality, the fewer the items, and so the longer the wardrobe will take to build. If you are starting a job or building a formal wardrobe from scratch, you will have to accept that quality and fit will have to be sacrificed in order to build a professional set of clothes for the working week.

If you are in need of nothing, however, as you seem to be, and this is more of a personal quest, then more can be spent. You just need patience. Get a great navy suit with the basics – floating canvas, good cloth, classic styling – and have it altered everywhere it needs to be. Then a decent pair of benchmade shoes that cost at least a third of that price. Start with black and dark brown lace-ups. Move on to a cashmere sports jacket, etc. Invest in shoes, jackets and ties. Shirts, trousers and socks can be more basic.

The key with this wardrobe building is to begin with very classic items that will be versatile enough to work in many different settings. That will make it easier to be patient. The rewards in a few years’ time will be worth the wait.

Of course, there is still a range of choices and priorities here. You may have to weigh up different suits that all cost the same but have different levels of style, quality and fit. A heavy cloth may last longer but not be, to you, as stylish. Some RTW suits are actually made better than the basic MTM or bespoke, which prioritise fit.

For me, fit is always the most important. It is one of the reasons I have always championed City tailors like Graham Browne, who cut by hand but don’t have the same level of make as Savile Row. This is how most men used to dress, in the days of the combination tailors like Burton’s. And they were a lot better for it.

I hope this is helpful, Youssef. The hardest thing for men to understand today is the patience required to build a good wardrobe. You may only buy one or two suits a year to begin with. They may not last long because they are worn intensively. But they will last long enough to overlap, allowing you to spend more or buy more next time and increasing that overlap.

Depending on your means, it will take three to five years to feel good about what hangs in your wardrobe. But you could have thrown away 20 T-shirts in that time.

Have fun

Simon

[Picture: Andy Barnham]

The slip stitch: The secret of a good tie

A recent piece in City AM by Permanent Style sung the praises of the slip stitch, and gave some advice on maintennace: article here.

Ignatious Joseph customer service

Ignatious Joseph of Düsseldorf makes very nice shirts. He gave me a couple a few years ago and their quality has told in that time. Good single-needle stitching; soft, floating construction collars; domed mother-of-pearl buttons sewn on by hand in the ‘chicken foot’ style; perhaps most noticeably, very soft and lightweight cottons; and all, as I said, lasting well.

But I write here about his customer service. Technical aspects of a shirt are all very well, but they are really just suggestions of how well a shirt will wear and live over time. In his Style and the Man Alan Flusser lists the aspects that he thinks make a good shirt, including some of those above. The list is significant in that almost none of the points are functional; they are rather decorative: indications, at best, of the care that has gone into making a shirt.

Customer service is reassuring because you know the company will be with you in the long term. Even if quality slackens on rare occasions, the customer service will rectify it.

Not that there were any faults with my Ign. Joseph shirts. But having initially requested a couple of gingham-check shirts with double cuffs, I quickly realised this was foolhardy: most of time I would wear a check like that casually rather than formally, so a single cuff would be more practical. Easier under knitwear.

I asked Ignatius whether this could be changed, and it was. By the factory in Italy, at remarkable low cost, in a few weeks.

Customer service is particularly important to brands like this one that do not have their own retail presence. Ignatious Joseph is sold through separate retailers, including H Herzfeld in New York and Vincci in London. Without that personal connection to the customer, service and philosophy become more important. I’m glad to say Ignatious is on the right track.

Cloth offer at J&J Minnis

Those that order their cloth themselves might be interested to know that J&J Minnis has a special offer on its website for the Crown Classic bunch, as it is being phased out. This is a lovely selection, weighing 320-350 grammes in a Super 100s wool with a touch of cashmere, that I have had made into suiting before. It has a nice handle yet wears well.

It is being sold at £20 a metre plus VAT and postage, until stock runs out in the various designs on offer. I highly recommend it.

The atelier atmosphere of Timothy Everest

I had a fitting last week on a jacket at Timothy Everest. A summer jacket, in entirely the wrong season, but I get these timings so wrong that I’ve ceased worrying about it. I didn’t have enough lightweight jackets this past summer, so I ordered one for next. If I left it until Spring I’d only forget.

Afterwards I wandered around the various floors of Tim’s Spitalfields atelier, and it occurred to me that I’ve spoken most in the past about the design aesthetic that makes Tim unique. But lots of people design; they are called designers. The important thing to remember about Tim is that he is a tailor that approaches design, rather than the other way around. It makes a fundamental difference to the quality of the output and the types of designs.

This is best reflected in the various people busying themselves around the place. Pictured, upstairs, is Cassie, who has just finished her apprenticeship as a coatmaker. She’s been at Timothy Everest for about a year, having previously started her apprenticeship at a Savile Row house. One of the reasons she loves working here, she says, is the atmosphere. And you can see why, as casual chatter floats in from next door and you glance out of the window at the sunny garden below. Here Cassie is stitching on and then pressing the collar of a jacket, trying to get the tension right.

That chatter is coming from Lloyd, head cutter (above), who is working on a series of pinstripe suits for a movie star (who will remain nameless). Undercutter Rhiannon is on the board opposite (and pictured top), marking out a similarly striped suit for the same character. And then behind them we have Laura (pictured below), who is affixing some rather affecting braiding to a black trouser. Apparently the Mayfair branch has some rather extrovert clients.

Missing from the picture montage is Annika, the senior coatmaker, who generally does the complicated work on things like Tim’s travel blazers. They require saddle stitching in two rows round all the edges, which takes time. About three days to make the whole jacket, in fact. Then there are two trouser makers in the basement and one more coatmaker across the road.

It’s a lovely little clubhouse, and I do wish every tailor on Savile Row had this kind of space to create their own, unique atmosphere.