I’ve almost finished packing my boxes and will be moving in the next few days so things will be quiet for a bit. In the meantime, a guest posting from Stu Bloom from Rave FabriCare on garment maintenance. If you ever had questions about maintenance, garment shine, or those nasty double-creases down your trousers, this may interest you. I’ll be back once I’ve unpacked in the U.S. Hi Jeffery: There are 26,000 dry cleaners inRead More
Well, it’s done. I hope it fits. See the origin story here… https://robertjeffery.us/tuttofattoamano/a-different-kind-of-sport-coat/
Usually the dissections performed for this blog are of a destructive but educational nature. This time, I am called to tear something apart only to make something new again. This project has been in the pipes for quite some time now, but my imminent departure has mean that it must be completed in the next few days. But let’s back up a bit. I got a call from a retailer who was looking for aRead More
Most tailors have a tenuous relationship, at best, with dry cleaners, because of the things many do, in the name of expediency. I won’t get into the details because my blood pressure is plenty high these days, but I want to share what was, until now, a hidden treasure trove of information about garment maintenance. Hidden to me, anyway. I had heard of Rave FabriCare and about some of the extraordinary lengths to which theyRead More
I had a visitor at the office today. Someone else who enjoys buying expensive clothes and taking them apart; she may be familiar to some readers. Claire Shaeffer is the author of a number of books on couture sewing techniques, and whose book “Behind The Seams- Chanel” I reviewed in this post. There were a number of interesting details in her book that I wanted to have a closer look at so when she toldRead More
I must be out of my mind. I’ve seen a few Tom Ford suits around which made me curious. We’ve seen them on celebrities, whom I assume had been fitted by people who knew what they were doing. But then I started seeing them on “regular” people and the shape had me intrigued. I noticed a shape and a cleanliness to the chest that I’m not used to seeing in RTW. IN fact, a degreeRead More
Bear with me while I rant a little bit. Nothing makes me crazier than those stupid little wishbone hangers that some stores use to hang their garments. I really, really hate them. The way that you store your garment has such an impact on it, the same way a shoe tree is so important to the life of a good shoe. Two of the most delicate parts of a coat are the top of theRead More
The granddaughter of a tailor was selling vintage bolts of cloth and buttons on the internet recently and I noticed she had some thread. Regular readers are familiar with the difficulty I sometimes have in getting silk buttonhole twist, particularly good stuff, so I told her I would take everything she had. And she had a fair amount. Some of it is from Belding Corticelli, who used to make a really excellent silk buttonhole twist.Read More
It got really chilly this week. I leave the house around 7 am and it’s particularly nippy at that hour (especially on a Vespa) so I decided to break out some flannel- something I had made this summer and was just waiting for the right weather for it. The cloth is from Minnis, number 0300. EDIT Thanks for all your wonderful comments. JC- I’ll post trouser shots next time I wear it, which might notRead More
Readers may remember my last soft coat which was the first prototype for a model which became very popular. So when it was recently suggested that I might want to attend a certain event in Atlanta in the next few weeks, I decided it was as good an excuse as any to make another soft coat- they are particularly fond of soft, rounded shoulders in the deep south and I don’t have much clothing forRead More
