How A Three Rolls To Two

Fans of traditional clothing are fairly united in their dislike of ‘true’ three-button suits – where the jacket is designed to button all the way up and leaves an awkward angle in the cloth if it is not. This fastening design is a hangover from the sleek Italian style of the late fifties and early sixties, where the long silhouette was accentuated by a high fastening and three or four buttons. It inspired the Continental look in the US in the late fifties and the British Mods in the early sixties.

The more elegant alternative for a three-button jacket is to have a lapel that easily rolls over when only the centre button is fastened – so-called ‘three rolls to two’. That way the lapel line is longer and sleeker, but you retain the option of buttoning all the way up if it gets cold, windy or both.

I was chatting to my tailors at Graham Browne the other day and it seems there are two ways to achieve this roll. The first, more English way is to put a loose, sparse row of stitches down the back of the lapel that leads to the centre button. This creates some permanent structure to the roll and ensures that, while it remains soft, it always looks the same. The position of the canvas in the chest also helps contribute to this effect.

The alternative, more American option is to put no structure in the lapels. Without an edge to the canvas or a separate row of stitches, the lapel is happy to roll wherever it wants. It will roll to the centre button if that is the one that is fastened. Or it will roll, though not quite as naturally, to the top or bottom button.

The way to tell the difference is to hang up both jackets and leave them unfastened. The latter construction will roll open very easily, and perhaps even roll over all the way down if there is little canvas in the chest. The former will always roll to the same place – where the stitches were sewn.

Most English tailors prefer more structure to their jackets – with famous and notable exceptions. They feel a jacket without it is more likely to lose its shape over time.

My mid-blue chalkstripe suit I have just commissioned from Graham Browne will be three-rolls-to-two the English way. Controversially, the waistcoat will also roll to its second button. Russell at Graham Browne hates this. But I think it adds a nice, casual tone to the waistcoat – more like a cardigan. And you’ve got to have some individuality, right?

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A Short Talk With Andrea Perrone

I’ve been a fan of Brioni co-CEO Andrea Perrone’s personal style ever since issue 2 of The Rake. Perrone was the cover star, part of a feature on Brioni and wearing a checked sportscoat with a dark cardigan, white shirt unbuttoned at the neck. Ever since I’ve loved wearing a dark cardigan under an odd jacket. Something about the shadow it creates, the quiet sophistication that echoes the waistcoat of a three-piece suit.

The photo shoot was in black and white so I didn’t know the colour of the cardigan. But mine is a deep, bottle green. Dark enough so that the colour isn’t really apparent from a distance; different without being showy.

I met Perrone last week at the launch of Brioni’s first fragrance in the London store. (He was wearing a suit in a tight Prince-of-Wales check, grey with a red line through it.) The fragrance is inspired by one first produced in the 1950s, called Good Luck. Although there is no record of the scent itself, the discovery of an old bottle was apparently inspiration enough.

Perrone agreed with me that perfumes are hard things to write about. No matter how much you list the various ingredients, the top notes and the base notes, it’s hard for the reader to really get an impression of what it smells like.

And his view is that it is very much a question of personal taste, of associations and memory. I’ve always liked musky scents, probably because my father wears them. Most light and classic male scents I associate with the cheap Calvin Klein and Hugo Boss fragrances that my friends used to wear when I was a teenager. Somehow, they all seemed to smell the same.

As to craft and quality, you can talk about the proportion of ground elements in a scent, and how much they are diluted by ethanol. But that is pretty much given away by the name of the substance – eau de cologne, eau de toilette, eau de parfum. Each has a range of concentrations, with some overlap.

For Perrone, the only thing worth going into in detail is the ingredients – in this case bergamot from Calabria and lemon from Sicily amongst others, which are all naturally sourced and produced. And everyone was given an oversized book to explain what the elements were and where they came from.

But most important of all, there was a sampler of the scent. So that people could try it for several days afterwards, and decide if they liked it. That’s pretty much all there is to perfume.

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The Tailors That Will Survive

“I’ve had five shirts made by XX on Savile Row, and I’m not currently in possession of any of them. They are all being altered or the sleeves lengthened, some have been there weeks and some months. Every time I phone up the reaction is ‘oh yes, I really must get onto that’. It’s quite frustrating.”

This is a friend relating his experiences of bespoke shirtmakers. Another one, this time off Savile Row, has never phoned him. Not once have they picked up the phone to update him on the progress of an order, or even to tell him something is ready. “Last week I finally called them, and they said ‘oh yes, it’s been here for weeks, why don’t you come in and get it?’ The idea of efficiency is alien to them. Customer service means being polite – and they are, they’re both very nice gentlemen. But it would be nice to have my shirts.”

This was often the way with traditional craftsmen. But as the world has moved on, giving customers greater service and reliability, they have stayed stock still.

Tailoring, suits and bespoke have never been more fashionable. This season the men’s shows saw models coming down the runway in double-breasted suits, ties and pocket handkerchiefs. How long is it since that happened? Suddenly everyone is talking about waistcoats, or bow ties. We are at the apex of the trend.

Matters sartorial have been quietly growing in popularity for four or five years (something that has probably contributed to the success of this blog – it can’t be the quality of the writing). But from the apex the only way is down. Once the high street has caught on, and your friends are buying more suits, the trend is dying. In three years it will all be tracksuits and sportswear.

Some tailors have grabbed this opportunity with both hands. They have invested in their businesses, introduced modern management and become spokesmen for the industry. I would place Anderson & Sheppard and Norton & Sons in this category.

Others have reacted to the increase in business by taking longer to make things. They’ve always had two tailors; they still have two tailors. If orders double, they just take a year to make rather than six months. They haven’t hired any more staff. Perhaps more importantly, they haven’t hired any younger staff.

My friend is not alone in his frustration. I have heard similar stories about shirtmakers and some tailors – all of them old, all of them traditional. Those are the businesses that won’t be around when young men are wearing tracksuits again.

The tailors that will survive are the ones investing now.

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Reader Question: Buying Odd Jackets

David: I very much enjoy your blog and find it to be a great source of inspiration in my desire to master the art of permanent style. I was hoping you could help me in the matter of choosing odd jackets. I am starting a new job where most people wear a jacket but no one wears a necktie. I will probably wear grey flannel trousers, beige chinos and a light-coloured shirt. But I am not sure what odd jackets to wear. I don’t currently own any. What would you recommend to me if I have only one, three or five odd jackets to use for work?

The first thing to ensure about an odd jacket is that it goes well with the trousers. They must not clash in their pattern and they must be of a similar formality. As both your suggested pairs of trousers are plain, pattern is not much of an issue. And as they are both relatively informal, the jackets should reflect this in their cloth.

So my first suggestion to you would be a jacket in a pale grey, with a heavy texture in the cloth and in a relatively informal wool. So not worsted, but flannel, tweed, camel hair or something similarly rough. The heavy texture could be a herringbone or a hound’s-tooth. (Like the one pictured – from J.Crew)

The reason I suggest this for your first jacket is that the pattern is not too bold or eye-catching – there is enough visual interest to distinguish it from the trousers, but it is not a loud tweed. It is also classic and simple without being uniform – a blazer would offer less personality in your one item.

Your second jacket should be a blazer, though. Navy blue, preferably in something heavier than standard worsted wool, and fitting immaculately. Too many Americans wear a blazer and chinos out of laziness. Neither is likely to fit well and the jacket will rarely be buttoned. To differentiate yourself, get a blazer that is slim-cut, perhaps with just one button. And don’t go for brass buttons – something different, either plain blue or a different metal; perhaps even a cream colour like the Italians.

Third for me would be a tweed. The colour is a question of personal taste, as is the size of the check, but make sure it is slim (again) and smart enough to look at home both in the country and the office. I have a Donegal one-button tweed from Kilgour, in mid-grey, that I would put in this category.

Fourth, something for the summer – a tan linen or cotton gabardine. Make sure the linen is heavy, and if you think tan would be too casual, switch to a navy or a grey.

The fifth jacket can be something more adventurous: a classic black stroller if you want to add formality, something in an unusual colour like mid-green if you want to add flair.

When building the collection, just bear in mind that you want a spread of weights for different seasons and a spread of formalities for different occasions.

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Book Review: The Last Shall Be First

This famous book is well-named: its sub-title is ‘The colourful story of John Lobb, the bootmakers of St James’s’. That colour comes from tales of the young Lobb, social history of the development of bootmaking and pocket biographies of the shop’s most famous customers.

But fortunately there is also colour about the product – the boots themselves. Just skip the bits on the Lobb family and the lists of customers.

For example, I didn’t know that traditionally the best brown shoes were always made out of Russia calf, the best black ones out of waxed calf. I wasn’t aware that the clicker in men’s shoes was the senior or “aristocratic” role – he was the foreman that handed out the work to the other craftsmen, which makes sense I suppose, as his was the first stage. And I didn’t know that in the middle of the nineteenth century, bootmakers were the most numerous of any trade in London (apart from “general labourers”).

It is also interesting to read about the habits of Lobb customers. The average man bought 2-5 pairs a year, but there were few such men and they were all very rich. One, Frank Harris (“king of Pornographers” in late Victorian England), bought a pair of Russian leather laced boots, some calf toecaps, calf boot toecaps and a pair of patent “no caps” in 1899. Lord Alfred Douglas (‘Bosie’ in relation to Oscar Wilde) bought a “pair of Russia”, two pairs of calf button boots, “Russia caps” and patent Oxford no caps in 1902. While both men were at the height of their notoriety at this point, they must nonetheless have ended up with a lot of Lobb boots.

Those boots took one (fast) craftsman about 12 hours to make. And in the late nineteenth century, a man had to make six every week just to feed his family. So the gap between craftsman and customer was rather larger than it is today, even though the price has inflated from £2-something to £2000-something.

And then there’s my favourite story from the book. During the First World War it became very hard to get the hog’s bristles that shoemakers used to guide the waxed thread through the holes punched by the awl. Over a pint in the pub, six bootmakers settled on a plan and set out to Regent’s Park with apples, pears and nuts. They strolled into London Zoo, waited until no keeper was about and then converged on the hog enclosures. They used the fruit to tempt the animals forward, then grabbed two handfuls of hair each and ran. That was enough for six months of bootmaking.

I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in traditional shoemaking. Just read it selectively. It is now out of print I believe, but it can be bought second-hand on Amazon from $30.

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