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
I found this when going through some old stuff. An 18 pound iron of the type that used to sit in coals to get hot. One of the first jobs an apprentice would have would be carrying this thing back and forth, and swapping out the press cloth which would keep the dirty iron from soiling the garment. Thank god for electric irons.
This drape experiment has got me thinking. I feel very Meh about this coat but the general population seems to like it. Why? I like pagoda shoulders. I like a good rope on a sleeve. I like a polished-marble clean chest. I like pocket jets that match the coat. Why? Because they are the most difficult things to execute properly. Where I see virtue, normal people see, well, I don’t know what they see, butRead More
Coat’s done. Meh. For all the fuss they make over the comfort of drape, I expected the clouds to part, rays of sunshine to burst forth and choirs of angels to sing when I put this on. It’s soft, it’s light, it’s comfortable, but is it really all that much more comfortable than the starch and armor that I normally wear? No. In part, because of the sleeve. People have this funny notion about sleevesRead More
I have since found some things out about A&S and drape. I didn’t think that the full canvas would have been cut on the bias- Sator showed me a oage from Whife in which he indicates that it was, in fact, done on occasion, but I get the impression he did not favor it. Edwin DeBoise, of Steed (who is former A&S cutter) pointed out in a LL post that A&S only cut the chestRead More
I’m getting ahead of myself (again). The windowpane coat is finished but I’m going to wear it and abuse it for a while before making any further observations on it. On to my next experiment. A whole lot of fuss is made over the drape cut, some claiming it to be the ultimate in bespoke silhouettes and others deriding it as just bad cutting. Many people aren’t very clear about just what drape is, especiallyRead More
