Made by Hand, Machine, or 3D?
A personal note. Shortly after I finished design school I was working at a small design house in Montreal when someone from one of the local factories told me that the general manager of the place they worked wanted to meet me. It had come to his attention that there was a young tailor working right around the corner and they needed more tailors. I had known of Samuelsohn for a very long time soRead More
It’s flannel weather again (thank God!). Here’s a suit the dog (her name is Ariel The Boxer) decided to help out on- she supervised the making of the buttonholes…
The suit that I most recently dissected came with a pair of “pents” (as the Italians refer to them) made by another maker, this one even more well-known than the coat maker. While there was initially some debate about their provenance, Vox tells me that the maker emailed him to confirm that he did, in fact make them (some will recall that Vox obtained the suit second-hand from the original owner). So even though IRead More
I recently cut myself a suit out of a length of escorial wool, never having worked with the cloth before. From the Escorial Group’s website- Escorial is a rare and luxurious wool from a small sheep originating from the Spanish Royal flocks of El Escorial, today only to be found in small numbers in Australia and New Zealand. The Escorial difference is in the heart of the fibre, performing as a naturally coiled spring. ThisRead More
A story, translated (and slightly condensed) from the website of the tailor who made the suit we most recently dissected. If i recall correctly, about ten or fifteen years ago I was visited by a client who was not particularly elegant but who was wearing a suit from a very famous and expensive brand. Despite the expensive suit, he seemed to me to be a mannequin in grey chalk stripes. The client, who was givenRead More
I received an email from a reader and I thought it sufficiently interesting to pass on in its full, unadulterated format, while I collect my thoughts for the conclusion to the series of posts on that coat. Thanks go out to Seth for sending this! (Links inserted were mine) Since I have profited, as an obsessive hobbyist who attempts significant alterations, from your knowledge and instruction, I thought I would take the opportunity to offerRead More
If you missed the previous post about the mystery disaster suit, go back and start there. This week we look a bit at the cut and the inside of the coat. First impression? This is very reminiscent of old Anderson and Sheppard cutting. Either the original owner had a very tiny waist, or, more likely, this was cut for a normal person but a liberal amount of drape was cut in the chest and blades,Read More
I struggle to understand this garment. I truly do. Voxsartoria sent me a suit that he had acquired from the original owner. The coat was made in Naples by a fairly well-known and sought-after tailor, and the trousers were made by an even more well-known trouser maker, also in Naples. It is fairly common practice to farm out work like this. First, a look at some of the external, cosmetic things. There is so muchRead More
Wikipedia defines Sprezzatura as follows: an Italian word originating from Baldassare Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier, where it is defined by the author as “a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it”. I find it somewhat amusing that the writer should use a foreign (French) word, nonchalance, to help define another foreign word, butRead More
