The Tailor & Cutter - politicians

Magazine covers have come on quite a way haven't they? Eden isn't looking at the camera and Winston hasn't even got his eyes open.

Still, the clothes certainly deserve comment. Anthony Eden's fastening of both his jacket buttons, for example, and the peak lapels on the single-breasted suit. The former could be a question of cut - jackets were cut for that purpose at one point - but the fit hardly recommends it and I would suggest all modern men stick with the fastening of just one, the waist, button. The peak lapels I find interesting, as mentioned in the previous Tailor & Cutter post, particularly as I'm considering the best cut for a new evening suit, in a navy mohair mix. 

All those fond of bow ties should note that Winston Churchill's has exactly the right amount of shirt space in which to play. See how well it is framed. Then again, his three-button jacket is cut so high that the space would not be that much greater if his jacket were done up. 

Finally, as a general point from a man that likes his suits to look lived in, I'm pleased to see that both men's clothes are characterfully wrinkled. Nothing worse than a suit that looks new. 

O Mast now at Drake's

I was recently given a copy of the lovely documentary about Neapolitan tailoring, O Mast, an extract from which can be seen above. For the first time it is now available at the Drake’s store on Clifford Street in London, having been previously only available through The Armoury store in Hong Kong, or its website. Those two brands should tell you that good friend Mark Cho is behind the distribution of the documentary, and he tells me they are working on another to be released next year. Good news indeed.

Written, produced and directed by Gianluca Migliarotti, O Mast is a beautiful hour-long wander through the ateliers of Naples, with the best of the breed interviewed on everything from local culture to the relevance of different fittings. If I was a tailor, I would like to be filmed like this.

Sartoria Vergallo, second fitting

Some pictures here of the second fitting of a navy suit from Sartoria Vergallo, in a wool/cashmere mix. Feeling much better now – as they say, the first fitting is for the tailor and the second is for you.

I can feel the shape of the jacket, which achieves that wonderful Italian effect of being soft in the structure yet strong in the silhouette. The length has been corrected in both body and sleeve and as ever I love the Italian shape to the breast and patch pockets.

More to see at the final fitting, and better photos hopefully – hotel rooms are not great for this kind of thing.

First post, with more details on Vergallo, here. Vergallo is a regional tailor from Varese, just outside Milan, that began visiting London recently. At £1800, fantastic value for bespoke Italian tailoring.

Bresciani - factory visit

Most of the factories I visit present few surprises in the manufacturing process. I’ve seen a lot of looms, from Hattersleys made in 1910 to the latest air-pressure machines that make up most of the production at Loro Piana, Zegna and others. But I’d never seen how socks are made until I visited Bresciani a few weeks ago, in Spirano.

Socks are made upwards. This is slightly surprising at first, rather like seeing how bananas grow (also upwards). Two serrated discs, slightly larger than the circumference of a sock, knit the yarn fed in from cones above them. The whole machine is circular, and no more than three feet wide.

The sock gradually grows into a plastic tube at the top, before shooting up – when it has reached the desired length – around a corner and down into a little basket. There are four different types of machine at Bresciani – for plain socks, micropatterns, woven patterns, Argyles and delicate materials like silk and cashmere. The Argyle model is by far the most complicated, with around a dozen different cones sitting around it in a multi-coloured halo.

The socks that come out are open at both ends. The only other production step is to sew up the toe. Now, for a long time quality socks have proudly described themselves as ‘hand linked’. This is not hand sewing. It means that the two sides of the toe have to be fed onto a serrated wheel by hand, one tooth per strand. Four people at Bresciani do this work – a large portion of a workforce of only 30.

But around 10 years ago a machine was finally produced that can do the same work. Bresciani has three of them at the moment and is buying a new one each time one of these workers retires. According to the lovely Massimiliano Bresciani, who showed us round, there is no difference in quality. You can see the process very clearly on the machine in fact – it has to be done quite slowly, so you can watch each thread being linked on.

Quality in socks comes from these processes, the materials used and – perhaps most important of all – the quality checks. More people do this at Bresciani than any other job. Their wastage is high, and I love the fact that there is a room where batches of socks are tested on both a ‘typical’ house hold washing machine and an industrial-sized dry cleaner.

There aren’t many sock producers of this type in western Europe any more – depending on your definition, one or two in the UK and three or four in Italy. French and Spanish producers have been bought or closed down. So it’s not hard to try all of them, and in my experience Bresciani makes the best. What I can’t tell you is what leads to that quality. It is in all likelihood a combination of all the things mentioned here, plus functional design and research.

On a personal level, I love the fact that a big chunk of the Bresciani workforce is immediate family. Massimiliano’s father (the founder), wife, brother, son, sister-in-law and sister-in-law (by blood and marriage) all work there. Of the two sisters-in-law, one attaches the cardboard labels and the other hand makes all the sample books. It is, if you will forgive me, a close knit group.

Photos: Andy Barnham

The Tailor & Cutter - overcoats

This extract from The Tailor & Cutter from 1935 should give some ample inspiration to those considering which of the winter coats to snap up in the sales after Christmas.

An interesting point to note in the styling is the prevalence of peaked lapels even on single-breasted models – which was more common in the period, even on suits, than most of those fond of timeless rules would like to admit. Note also that all the outbreast pockets are decorated with a pocket handkerchief, on those coats that have them.

The style in the bottom right is an interesting one, not often seen in fashion plates of the period. This is likely due to its relative informality, with both the double-breasted style and wide belt. Indeed, there is a progression of formality in the extract as a whole, beginning with this coat and passing to the SB opposite with its patch pockets, swelled seams and split sleeves. We then go to the SB in the top left, before finishing with the DBs in the centre and top right, which differ only in their button configuration.

Those last two coats are also far more tailored than those around them – see how the line narrows below the waist. This is one of the pleasures of having a bespoke coat made. Ready-to-wear coats today usually lack shape because the manufacturer wants them to appeal to as broad an audience as possible.

But a coat doesn’t have to be bespoke to flatter in this way – have that coat you buy in the January sales altered and the effect won’t be too dissimilar.

Zimmerli: The Underwear Project

Of all the factories I have visited for the current book, the contrast between product and production was greatest at Zimmerli.

The production facility is a small, two-storey building in Coldrerio, a Swiss town just across the border from Como. Walking through the front door, the first thing you see is a dog-eared poster of David Beckham, wearing a Zimmerli vest. Next to it is a large photo of the Zimmerli team, taken a few years ago in front of the hills across the road. There are no more than 50 people, with the handful that have left highlighted by the snapshots of their replacements that have been glued over the top.

Upstairs are 30 women, mostly middle-aged, working at flat-bed sewing machines. Other male wearers of Zimmerli underwear, including another Beckham, and a huge Vanity Fair cover decorate the walls. The place is clean and pleasant, but distinctly lacking the glamour around the Zimmerli stock in Harrod’s and elsewhere. These are £50 pants, in some cases.

This is not the Zimmerli headquarters, which lie further north in Aarborg. That was where Pauline Zimmerli Bäurlin first started making socks for her children back in the middle of the nineteenth century. But the other local facility, the cutting room down in Mendrisio, is if anything even less glamorous. On the first floor of a warehouse in an industrial zone, the four staff slice up 20-foot lengths of cotton on an old machine that used to cut denim. The view is of a parking lot and railway lines.

None of this really matters, of course. I always say I love factories because you escape the marketing and bullsh*t of brands, their stores and their PR agencies. You can’t put a spin on a factory – this is simply how the product is made.

Zimmerli’s quality is down to the incredibly fine materials it uses, from Sea Island Cotton to incredibly lightweight Egyptian cottons. Turning from the factory visit, therefore, to my Underwear Project, of all the brands I tried Zimmerli is really the only one where the quality of the material is consistently noticeable.

That goes for some aspects of the construction as well, such as the fine single-needle seams and flat seams around parts of the underwear. The sewing machines that do that work aren’t particularly special – it’s just a question of giving more women more time to do the work.

In that way, and perhaps unsurprisingly given the cost, Zimmerli is unquestionably the best underwear I tried as part of the project. My only word of warning would be the styles, some of which can be a little old-fashioned. The Boxer-Short (252-842 in Royal Classic), for example, although it looks like a standard short, is very long in the leg and plain in design. In a thin, almost translucent cotton, that can be a little disconcerting. The shorter boxer, called a Pant (252-8851), is a good fit but surprisingly tight around the back of the leg.

There is a huge amount of variety at Zimmerli (Royal Classic alone has 12 shapes of underwear) so it shouldn’t be difficult to find a style that you like. But I recommend spending the time to do so.

Photos: Andy Barnham

Graham Browne Christmas offer

For all those around between Christmas and New Year, Graham Browne are once again doing a special offer for anything ordered during those three days - December 28 to 30.

A two-piece suit using stock cloth - the bolts on the wall plus a few that are coming in specially - will be £725. Normal price is £890 and up.

Also, any suit using cloth from the bunches (and therefore priced normally) will come with a spare pair of trousers for free. If you wear a suit most days, an extra pair of trousers is well worth it.

Russell and Dan will be around on those three days between 10 and 3.

Cifonelli Japanese jacket

I love Lorenzo Cifonelli's constant innovation in his menswear designs. Some I like more than others, but I love the embroidery of the Japanese symbol for love on the lapel of this grey jacket. I'd go for a bit of subtle embroidery on a sports jacket. Lorenzo, though, says this piece is intended to be a sharp, sexy piece for the evening. The slim peaked lapels and one button certainly lean that way.

Loro Piana: Quarona factory visit

My favourite room at the Loro Piana facilities was the first one they took us too: a vast warehouse, 50 metres or so high and stretching perhaps a hundred off into the distance. We stood on a metal viewing gallery about halfway up, watching a mechanised robot scoot along and up to coordinates that had been punched in by a researcher outside. He came back with a small plastic crate full of cones of cashmere yarn. The warehouse contains over 250,000 kilos of the stuff.

We saw three different arms of the Loro Piana operations in and around Quarona, northern Italy. In Quarona is the corporate headquarters, including archive books of bunches going back to pre-World War One, and all the finishing and quality control for woollen and worsted cloths. In Roccapietra the woollen yarn spinning is done, and you see the big bags of fluffy cashmere that come in, the 40-metre-long machine that combs it into yarn and the state-of-the-art laboratory that scrutinises its purity. Finally, in Sillavengo, a wholly-owned subsidiary does all the knitwear production (that’s them with the tube lights, doing a bit of quality control).

It was great learning how knitwear is made – and therefore why it is so hard to alter. It was great seeing how rough cashmere or even vicuna is until it is brushed – often still with dried thistles, incongruously. And it was interesting to learn how fly-away wool is spun into something that doesn’t just pull apart like candy floss.

But in the end looms are looms. Most of this is not that different from any other high-end weaver, mill or knitwear producer. What makes Loro Piana so fascinating to visit is the scale and the innovation. You have to experiment with an awful lot of cashmere combinations before the cheapest storage option is a futuristic warehouse ruled by a cone-sorting robot. Quality has to be a really important selling point before you fund a laboratory with six people pulling, twisting and magnifying cashmere hairs to make sure the suppliers are giving you the very best.

At the other end of the scale, innovation in new materials often requires a lot of time and money for very little output, at least initially. This thread starts with Tasmanian wool in the 1970s (effectively the first branded cloth), through vicuna (LP was granted 10-year exclusivity to effectively save the camelid from extinction), baby cashmere (one hyrcus goat produces just 30g of the stuff in the first year of its life) to, most recently, lotus flower cloth. At the moment LP is producing 50 metres of it a month. It is using that to make 10 made-to-measure jackets around the world.

Visiting Loro Piana, you get the sense at every stage that this is the forefront of technology in wool and woollens. It’s an invigorating experience. (The beautiful valley and surrounding Alps don’t hurt either.)

Photos: Andy Barnham

Sartoria Vergallo: A visit to Varese

There are a few provincial bespoke tailors in the UK, but not many. Italy has more, though again far fewer than there used to be. The advantage of a provincial tailor is normally a quiet preservation of tradition; and price.

While in Italy a couple of weeks ago I was pleased to meet Gianni Cleopazzo, who runs the third-generation tailoring house Sartoria Vergallo in Varese, about 45 minutes outside Milan.

Gianni is the sole cutter in the lovely white townhouse in Varese’s centre that houses the firm. While it has always been small, Vergallo has expanded in recent years to seven tailors making under Gianni, with three hired in the past 18 months.

That demand is down to three things, that you can put in your desired order: Gianni’s soft but formal north-Italian tailoring; the fact that he visits London every month; and the fact that he only charges €1800. When the big Milanese names are charging closer to €4000 for the same level of workmanship, you can see why Gianni might be popular.

It goes without saying that everything is made by hand – this is bespoke. In fact, like many Italian tailors, Gianni goes a little bit further than the English in a few ways. One noticeable one is that the darts in the forepart of the jacket end at the hip pocket. Below the pocket it is one piece from front edge to side seam.

There is no real advantage to making the forepart this way; it is just harder. Extending the dart below the pocket makes it easier for the cutter to shape the bottom of the forepart and stop it swinging forward. It is a shortcut, if a fairly unimportant one. Of the Italian tailors I know, certainly Liverano and Caraceni in Milan make that way.

The style of Gianni’s suits has a lot in common with those in Milan: it is noticeably softer in the chest and shoulder than anything English, with beautifully curved breast and hip pockets, but is not as soft as Neapolitan tailoring. There is even a hint of roping to the shoulder. The armhole and gorge are high, with a close waist and narrow, cuffed trousers.

The Vergallo tailoring name goes back three generations to 1943, but Gianni learnt nothing from them. It was founded by Carmelo Vergallo in San Cesario di Lecce, a village of tailors in Salentino, south Italy. He handed on to his son-in-law Francesco Cleopazzo in the 1970s, who moved the business to the booming town of Varese in the north.

Francesco, Gianni’s father, was very successful but fell ill before he could hand down any expertise. Gianni, initially, didn’t want to go into tailoring and started working in retail instead. After a year he realised that was a bad idea and went to train with another Varese tailor, before studying at the Ligas school in Turin – a technical school for the menswear industry. He then reopened his father’s business, and made it far more international than it had been previously. Gianni has since been recognised by the Italian National Academy of Tailors, which includes the Roman Caracenis, Solito and Puppato among its members.

I’m having a navy two-piece made with Gianni, in a cashmere-mix cloth from Cacciopoli. (A Neapolitan brand with great jacketings – cashmere/wool in winter and linen/silk/wool in summer. Their worsteds are licensed to others but look at the jacketings bunch when you can).

This is the first fitting, which was good apart from both the arms and the body being almost an inch too long. Having seen examples of Gianni’s work at every stage, however, and fitted on both himself and his friends, I’m not worried.

Gianni is back in London on Wednesday, when I will have my second fitting. For updates on his itinerary, check out the contacts page of the website or email Luca, who organises the London visits and translates for Gianni - luca@sartoriavergallo.it. He can also add you to the mailing list.

Expect one or two more posts before this project is done.

Photos: Andy Barnham

Fox Flannel: Factory visit

When you approach the town of Wellington over a rolling Somerset hill, you are greeted by a row of chimneys silhouetted against the horizon. This is the outline of the old Fox Brothers facilities, which at its peak employed over 5000 people and pretty much was Wellington. Today most of the buildings lie empty or have been knocked down for modern flats. And Fox employs 24 people.

There is good news though. Last week the planning application went in for Fox to move its weaving operations, office and administration to the old, long weaving shed on the opposite side of the road. That’s gone unused for a while, but was only recently released by a developer who had wanted to build a series of bungalows. He didn’t realise he would have to divert a river to do so – the very river Fox used to dump indigo and all sorts of other horrible things into.

The weaving will now be next door to the old Counting House, which currently houses the Fox archive and The Merchant Fox operations. The latter was launched recently to promote other local crafts such as tanning and basket weaving – see post.

Most old manufacturers have a small, well-preserved archive that is primarily for visitors. Fox has more wool samples than it knows what to do with. When Douglas Cordeaux and Deborah Meaden took over Fox a couple of years ago, they found archive books and boards being stored in a skip. It is now slightly better off, piled in the attic above the Counting House. There are thousands of seasonal cloth collections here, some of them in paper packaging unopened for 100 years.

It is the oldest and most comprehensive cloth archive in the country. Brown gun-club checks with a bright green overcheck; olive and purple combinations that look as fresh as if they were woven yesterday.

In the archive room itself are customer ledgers for every period of the 20th Century, showing how tastes changed each decade and how little the weights did between seasons. Fox wove the first khaki cloth; it had the largest army contract of any textile manufacturer during WWI; it has been supplying Gieves & Hawkes, or Hawkes, constantly for over 100 years.

I’m sure I’ll write more about the actual weaving and finishing of Fox Flannel some other time. It’s an interesting story of trying to get the best out of both very old and very new machinery. In the meantime, I keep thinking what a field day menswear designers would have with the incredible range of cloth and pattern here. They’d have to work in the attic though.

Christmas suggestions

If you’re anything like me, Christmas shopping begins in earnest this week. Just long enough ahead to get everything done, but little enough time to inject a little panic into the process.

Here are a few suggestions from a few of my favourites.

I recently bought a couple of the cable knit sweaters from Will at A Suitable Wardrobe, and highly recommend the single ply knit in particular. Be aware of the sizing though – the single ply comes up quite a lot snugger than the double ply.

My favourite Drake’s item, on the other hand, is the untipped and hand-rolled grenadines they do – unfortunately only in an 8cm size, but I’m pushing for 9cm.

On the subject of ties, Turnbull & Asser has recently introduced a lovely cashmere range, all made at their factory that has recently moved to new premises. I particularly like the tipping in T&A paisley, which will eventually feature on all ties.

Hangers make great Christmas gifts, but from Kirby’s selection I would recommend his Santa Maria Novella shave sets (above). It’s great stuff.

People probably aren’t that familiar with English retailer Lissom & Muster, but they have a really nice eye for accessories as well as nice staples for riding and outdoor activities. I recommend the Cherchbi bags or sage green silk handkerchief.

If you have a chance to pop into Trunk Clothiers, my favourite emporium in London, watch out for Mats’s personally commissioned knitwear and scarves under the Trunk label. Grey, navy and natural, beautiful slim cuts and oversizes.

For retail by post, no one beats the packaging of Mes Chaussettes Rouge. Lovely gift boxes and handwritten cards. I suggest a few pairs for father.

For small leather goods, Ettinger’s range is unbeatable and that mustard yellow lining has always appealed.

But again, if you're in London and want something really unique, Tim's antiques at Bentley's in Gieves is worth a visit. See his gifts page here (Hermes cigar case above).

If you’re heading off anywhere hot over the winter, I hate you. Only joking. Make sure to get some Orlebar Browns or, if your taste is more to the decorative, some Chuc’s bathers. And Mr Porter has the best selection online of classic sunglasses (Persol pair, bottom).

It’s actually cold enough to have to wear gloves now, so buy a Peccary pair at Dent’s, or socks to warm the other extremities, at Corgi.

Liverano and Nackymade at The Armoury in London

In my previous job I used to travel to Hong Kong twice a year. Great place to go out, but not great shopping: all overpriced luxury brands or, at the other end of the spectrum, hard-sell tailors that would offer a ‘bespoke’ suit in 24 hours. So it was just my luck that the year I stopped visiting, Mark Cho set up The Armoury, a great menswear emporium just across the road from the office, in the Pedder Building.

Like any good emporium, it is a focused selection by a man with uncompromising views. It also stocks some familiar names with some less familiar ones. So alongside Drake’s, John Smedley and Gazinao & Girling, we have Florentine tailor Liverano & Liverano, Spanish shoemaker Carmina and glasses maker Nackymade.

I know Carmina fairly well, but not Liverano or Nackymade, so it’s fortunate that both will be in London at the end of this week as part of an Armoury pop-up shop. Antonio Liverano (top), founder and head cutter at the bespoke tailor will be there to show off his work and take any orders that men are inspired to make. And Naoki Nakagawa, the craftsman behind Nackymade glasses, will be equally receptive.

Liverano’s tailoring style is described as closer to the Milanese style than Neapolitan, being clean and sharp in construction, but with a certain unique eye for texture and colour – classic without being dowdy is the phrase used. Nakagawa, on the other hand, is a one-man operation from Kobe who specialises in bespoke designs and sizes – if you have trouble finding glasses that fit, he may be worth a visit.

The shop will be at the Rook & Raven Gallery, 7/8 Rathbone Place, just north of Tottenham Court Road tube, from this Friday to Sunday. The plan is that all Armoury artisans will visit over the next few months, and obviously the tailors will be back for fittings.

Do pop along.

Postcard from Spirano

At Bresciani today, in Spirano just outside Bergamo. Lovely socks, and some nice sheep too.

They'll be the socks chapter of my upcoming book.

More photos on www.andybarnham.com

Postcard from Switzerland

In Coldrerio and Mendrisio, Switzerland, today to visit Zimmerli underwear. That's the cloth being cut in Mendrisio.

Zimmerli will be included in The Finest Menswear in the World as the producer of the best underwear.

More photos on www.andybarnham.com