British Bespoke – Part 3

My first, baste fitting for my bespoke suit at Graham Browne today. While I’ve had fittings at this stage previously with my Hong Kong tailor, this is the first time I’ve been able to ask as many questions and probe the details of this process.

The first image shows what the chest area of the suit looks like at this stage – the wool folded over with a generous inlay, lined with just the body (horsehair) canvas. The fold is held in place with long baste stitches and the sprouts of thread at the edges show where the mark stitches were that were pulled apart (see previous post here).

The second image shows the collar of the jacket. While there isn’t an actual collar attached, just over an inch of excess material is left above the neck (shown by mark stitches here) to simulate the collar when fitting.

Sewing together the jacket panels for this fitting only takes a couple of hours – which makes you feel slightly better when they say the whole thing will be ripped down into its individual components after the fitting, repressed and entirely re-cut.

This is one reason the amount of inlay left over at the edges is so generous: it allows significant reworking of the shape to be done after the baste fitting. As it is an investment suit, though, there will also be inlay left in the suit after it is finished – so it can be altered in the future. Bespoke will nearly always leave greater inlay here than ready-to-wear (which is always keen to shave off any extra costs).

In the third image the jacket is on and the lapels have been pinned back into position. Russell is examining the line of my rather rounded and sloping shoulders. Note also that only one arm is attached – the left. Only one arm is needed to judge the length and pitch of the sleeve, unless the initial measuring established that the client had one arm significantly different to the other.

The reason the left arm is attached and not the right is that it’s just easier. A sleeve is always sewn on starting at the front and working around to the back. This is because greater fullness (the difference in length between the sleeve and the armhole) has to be worked in at the front. A right-handed tailor works away from himself when attaching the left arm, therefore, but has to sew in reverse when attaching the right arm. So only the left sleeve is attached at the baste stage.

One of the most important things to discern in the sleeve at this fitting is its correct pitch (how it hangs in relation to your body – a little forward, a little back). If there is more material in the back of the sleeve, it hangs forward; more in the front and it will hang further back. The tailor makes a chalk mark on the jacket where your arm is hanging. Apparently my arms hang a little further back than average. Who knew?

It also hadn’t occurred to me that men tend to hold their arms unnaturally far back at the fitting – in the same way as they stand up too straight, as if they were on parade. The tailor has to make his customer relax in order to stand naturally, one of the favoured Savile Row methods being to tell a particularly ridiculous joke.

In the fourth picture that left arm has been stripped off and the shoulder seam is being uncut. Seeing the pieces being ripped apart is rather satisfying, and does make you feel like this length of cloth is being sculpted to your body; the measuring and cutting is rather abstract by comparison.

The shoulder was re-cut because Russell was not happy with the way it was lying, creating a little too much excess material across the chest. So the back and chest panels were pulled up and pinned again. Note also that the shoulder pads are not sewn in, just inserted and held there underneath the jacket during the fitting.

In the last picture you can see how the shoulder has been re-pinned a little tighter. You can also see the original chalk marks, now rather faded after all the work that has gone into the cloth, and the edge of body canvas and shoulder pad sticking out in the foreground. There are also small folds in this new shoulder line – where a slight excess of material will throw a little more fullness over the back.

The next (forward) fitting will be in two weeks time, where the largely complete jacket will be ready. Though it is still possible to alter a lot at the forward fitting, the tailor will try to minimise this as that construction takes around eight hours – four times as long as getting to the baste (or skeleton) fitting.

Oh, and I went for a deep green lining.

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Get The Basics Right – It Makes A Big Difference

I am aware that as my interest in fine men’s clothes progresses, and my education improves, the subjects on which I write can become more esoteric, even academic. Witness recent posts on the Blake construction of shoes and the minutiae of darts in trousers.

Wonderful as these facets of knowledge are, they make less and less difference to how good a man looks – and how long his clothes last. Having a hand-lasted shoe is great, but the difference between that and normal benchmade shoes is smaller than the difference between benchmade and cheap, glued products.

You don’t have to buy bespoke shoes or bespoke suits to look great. And the improvements you make on basic off-the-peg will make the biggest change to how you look.

So here are my tips for the man that wants to take it up a notch:

- Switch to made-to-measure suits. Save bespoke for when you make partner. Just find a great made-to-measure suit maker (A Suit That Fits, say, Suit Supply, or one of the many such tailors that wander around city offices offering their services.) The improvement on ready-to-wear is marked.

- Look after that suit. Hang it up at the end of the day, wear it no more than twice a week, brush it down occasionally and only dry clean it twice a year. Steam press it in between if it gets wrinkled.

- Buy benchmade shoes. As much as they may be disparaged on this and other style sites, good benchmade shoes from Loake, Cheaney or Grenson are a big jump up from the basic, glued, curly-toed, slip-on ones you bought in Shelly’s.

- Look after those shoes. Put shoe trees in after you’ve worn them, brush them down at the end of every day and don’t wear them two days in a row. They’ll look good and last three times as long.

- Buy expensive ties in conservative patterns and colours. In my opinion, expense shows off best in ties and in shoes. So spend more than you think you should on ties from the great tie makers. Not Armani, not Prada; but Hermes, Charvet, Bulgari. Wait until the end of the Ralph Lauren sale, when all the ties are reduced to £25, and pick on a Purple Label one reduced from £95. They just hang better.

- If you wear a pocket handkerchief, don’t scrimp there either. Wearing one is a signal that you think about your clothes and are willing to be noticed for it. Buy good quality white linen to start with. Then some dark colours – burgundy, forest green – and a pale blue, all in conservative patterns.

- Finally, match your socks to your trousers. Buy grey socks and blue socks. Not black. And make sure they are full-calf length.

Follow all of these rules and you will not extend your budget or your wardrobe dramatically. But you will be a hell of a lot better dressed.

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Why Jermyn Trumps The High Street

It has been said, among my friends, that I have become a rather unctuous high-street drum-beater. Even I myself fear that my initial ravings about how good the overlooked menswear departments of high street retailers actually are has turned into a sanctimonious and rather dull eulogy. Shaking my head at the ‘fools’ spending their week’s wages at the perplexingly popular Abercombie & Fitch, tut-tutting at the gross overspend at Bond Street boutiques and generally exhibiting a nauseating, self-satisfied air of aloofness. For this walk of pride always deserves a fall; as good value as the stores I profess to admire are, they are far from perfect and should I be in a position to purchase greater numbers of higher quality garments, I will surely take advantage.

And, testament to the imperfection of the stores which I have so heartily recommended, there are certain items sold in these establishments which are, to put it bluntly, not good enough. I could never again purchase a smart shirt from a ‘true’ high street shop. Zara and H&M are good at what they do – but they are really quite bad indeed at manufacturing proper shirts. Especially when you consider what can be obtained locally for the same price, or even less.

TM Lewin, a favourite shirt shop of mine, does not qualify as a high street shop in my mind, even though the name familiar once only to ‘shirties’ is now a household one. It has a long established history and considerable expertise in manufacturing shirts. It knows cloths, it knows collars, cuffs, plackets, buttons and yokes. The brand might be rather ubiquitous now, especially as it continues to trade on it’s grand, Jermyn Street origins, but the fact of the matter is TM Lewin shirts, for the money, are very good value. £30 doesn’t buy you a lot these days in clothing terms. Many high street manufacturers charge at least £35 for a shirt and Banana Republic has been known to charge a mind-boggling £75. Lewin’s shirts, invariably ‘on sale’, are currently priced at £25 for current season and £19 for end of range shirts. In my mind, if you are a gentleman who is the proud recipient of a new and exciting job and require advice on an inexpensive but reliable shirt manufacturer, I would direct you here first.

Gentlemen are certainly in need of a good selection of shirts. Other Jermyn street oldies, like Turnbull & Asser, Harvie & Hudson, New & Lingwood and Hilditch & Key do sell excellent shirts in their remarkably silent, antiquated berths on ‘The street of shirtmakers’ but though the quality is high, the price is equally so. For a shirt collection of five or more you will have to part with a significant sum. It’s no wonder the doorbell is the most audible sound in Turnbull’s when the economically minded man who requires shirts only for his City career can get 4 for £100 a few minutes down the road. A gentleman would have to be rather serious about shirts, or perhaps merely seriously wealthy, to purchase from these hallowed emporiums.

The sad fact of the matter is that most gentlemen are hardly serious about shirts at all. This is perhaps why the pile-‘em-high merchants on Jermyn are doing so well in comparison to their quieter, perfectionist neighbours. Both Hawes & Curtis and TM Lewin, and to an extent the slightly dearer Thomas Pink, have colonised ground beyond SW1 and though their shirts are produced at far greater volumes, the overall quality has only slipped a little in the past 10 years that I have been wearing them. While they are rather sneered at as being ‘commercial’, ‘common’ and ‘crass’ by their financially overshadowed companions on Jermyn Street, they are without a doubt among the best on offer elsewhere. The collars retain strength wash after wash, the fabric is of a very good quality for the price range and they last for years and years – models I have purchased from Marks & Spencer, Zara and Next have crumpled and faded within a year. I still wear a Lewin’s shirt bought in 1998.

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The Handkerchief Is An Anchor

Bright colours often need reining in. Or perhaps anchoring is the right metaphor.

Left on its own, a bright jacket (for example) can dominate an outfit and seem to float above it, rather than harmonising. It strikes the viewer as an individual item rather than part of an intelligently worked ensemble. Equally, if the jacket is dark and the rest of the outfit bright, something needs to link that jacket to the brightness elsewhere.

The most effective tool for this is the pocket handkerchief.

Pick out a colour from the shirt or tie and echo it in the handkerchief – suddenly there is a connection across the lapel and everything hangs together. In the top image, for example, this navy jacket could look a little out of place with the yellow, green and pink, not to mention the shorts. It could look like he’d put on his suit jacket on by mistake. But by echoing the pink panel of the shirt in the pink handkerchief, the jacket is anchored.

The second image demonstrates this the other way around. Here a bright yellow jacket threatens to lift right off the model and float unaided. The contrast would be particularly stark were I (or someone equally undaring) to wear this jacket – as I would certainly not pair it with such bright socks, shirt or tie. I would have plainer accompaniments and need something to anchor that jacket to them. The white of the collar would do, or a blue pattern if that were in the tie or trousers.

In this image, the handkerchief is linked to the tie by its similar tone – though to be fair that job is also performed by the horse emblazoned on the breast pocket.

Lastly, the white suit is given some kind of foundation by linking a blue handkerchief to the blues in the shirt and tie. Note, though, that the blues are slightly different in each of these items – it is harmonising, not matching.

Anchoring a bright item, like a jacket, is particularly important as the warm weather strikes (particularly in recent weeks in the UK). Suddenly you’re considering linen jackets, tan jackets, white trousers or even trousers in other brights. Go with it, but every time consider how to link that summery item back to everything else.

At a simple level, when I wear my bright green jacket I always add either a blue or white handkerchief, whichever best fits the rest of the outfit. Try it.

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British Bespoke – Part 2

I saw my first British bespoke suit being drawn and cut recently at Graham Browne, in advance of the first fitting.

First I saw the patterns being drawn. Picture 1 shows the pattern for the front part of the trousers, which has just been drawn out. The three length points are marked first – the bottom of the trouser, the knee, and the top of the inside leg. The width of each point is then marked off and joined together by ruler.

The three lines you can see in this photo are the inside leg, the hip and the waist, the lines between which are curved. The triangle in the centre of the picture is a front dart. Given my waist, two darts were needed (more or less can be used depending on one’s measurements) and the house style at Graham Browne is to have one in the front, here, and another in the back. Some tailors put two in the back but the guys here feel one dart in the front of the trouser adds a little needed room across the pocket – especially if it is a slant pocket. If there was no dart in the front, the curve to the waist (top right) would have to be more acute.

The back of the trousers is also 1¾ inches higher than the front. This varies quite a bit from tailor to tailor. The guys at Graham Browne say they have worked a lot on their trouser system in recent years, but wouldn’t give away any more than this.

The second picture shows the patterns being cut out – that’s the front and back of the jacket, right and left. The greatest skill is in drawing up and cutting these patterns correctly, rather than tracing them onto the cloth with chalk – even though this often gets greater attention.

In the next picture Russell is tracing the pattern of the sleeve onto the paper below, using a spiked wheel. Russell is fastidious about his sleeves – indeed just one mention of them launches an explanation of how rounded the shoulder must work here, and the fact that some other tailors fall down by leaving the sleeves up to the tailor, rather than the cutter.

And picture four, below, shows how that rounded shape is taken on – the larger piece is the outside of the sleeve and the front piece is the inside. The two shapes need to flow smoothly together, rather than chop squarishly from one shape to another.

Next the patterns are traced with chalk onto the cloth. I love the fact that the best way to rub out a mistake is just to hit the cloth with an open hand – the chalk dust flies off. If it were rubbed it would just work further into the material.

The penultimate photo shows the full suit chalked up on the cloth. Notice that there is only one half of each section here – one side of the front of the jacket, one side of the back and one sleeve. The cloth is doubled up and both parts cut together.

Finally, the two halves of the cloth are sewn together with a mark stitch to indicate where the outside edge of the jacket will be – the remainder of the cloth being the inlay inside the chest or sleeve. This is a loose stitch that is immediately ripped apart, but leaves knots of thread to indicate that outside edge. It seems like a tiresome process just to mark an edge, but such is the tradition of bespoke.

First fitting later in the week.

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