A friend donated what was sold on ebay as a vintage Savile Row suit to my dissection project. At first glance it had most of the hallmarks of a SR suit but a few details were bothering me. I’ll get into those in due course. One of my first reactions was also that the finishing was quite a bit neater than I’m used to seeing from SR (except the buttonholes which were meh), but oneRead More
Year: 2009
I just came off a cruise of the Mediterranean. One thing that struck me was the sophistication of Roman art, architecture, science and technology- they had lavishly decorated homes with running water, sewage, self-cleaning latrines, indoor heating systems…. then wandering the medieval village of old Rhodes it seemed as though the dates had been reversed. The simple, almost crude, architecture and sanitation of a thousand years later seemed as though it should have come first,Read More
Yet another look inside someone else’s garment, but this time a real treat; instead of looking inside one garment we get a look at a whole bunch. At the recent YSL exhibit the garments were, thankfully, not enclosed behind glass cases; I attracted more than my fair share of strange glances by lying flat on my back, trying to peer up the hems of dresses to see how things were finished inside and contorting myselfRead More
Pattern Drafting 101 There are a number of people who have expressed interest in learning how to draft suit patterns and are looking for a good text. While there are a number of (mostly out of print) texts on cutting (or drafting, I use these terms interchangeably) they all assume that the reader has spent the usual 8 years apprenticeship and is familiar with the rudiments. Of course, the best way to learn is toRead More
There are only a few factory-produced, hand-made suits available. Oxxford is one of them. Located in Chicago, Illinois, this factory produces one of the most labor-intensive suits available under their own label, Oxxford, and they now produce most, if not all, of Thom Browne’s suits. I recently put my hands on a not-recent Oxxford jacket. Many garments can be dated, at least to within half a decade, by looking at the shape of the collarRead More
There is an old guy who goes around town on his bicycle, stopping at all the garment factories, who uses his bike to sharpen all of our shears. He is in his eighties so I fear that my shears will outlast his services. Sator comes to the rescue with this tutorial on hand-sharpening. It’ll come in use in the kitchen, too!
Chatolufsen posted this interesting video showing Smalto’s process- a few interesting tidbits in there. Here’s another one from Kiton.
Perhaps there will be a rebirth of interest in the trade after all! I’d like to announce the launch of two new sites dedicated to the discussion of the craft of tailoring- Jeunes Tailleurs and The Cutter and Tailor The former being geared toward students of the craft and the latter more a meeting place for working cutters and tailors to talk shop. I’d also like to give a shout out for an upcoming bookRead More
Having worn the drape coat a bit I have noticed one thing about the comfort- it is markedly more comfortable in the chest, but that has nothing to do with the drape allowance (actually, the drape in the chest bugs me a little when I move my arm forward). Drape and soft tailoring have often been confused and I am inclined to think that the softness of the construction has much more to do withRead More
I went to visit a friend of mine today. She started in the business as a machine operator (seamstress) at Samuelsohn; today she owns the company which makes their, and the majority of North American manufacturers’, canvas fronts. She has special double-needle jumpstitch machines with custom-built forms. This machine doesn’t sew like most, whose presser foot and feed dogs feed the fabric- the operator feeds it through at their own pace. They can control howRead More