Hand made buttonholes, of course.
A few months ago I was contacted by Dirnelli who had seen something he thought might be of interest to me. A handmade shirt. And before I go much further let me preface by telling recent readers that one of the original intents of this blog was to explore the merits, myths and mystique of handmade clothing, with a particular focus on suits, sport coats and trousers. There is a lot of romance surrounding theRead More
I just took over an office from someone who left Hickey Freeman. It was the office occupied by former designers and executives of the company and hadn’t been cleaned out in, well, ages. It’s in the corner of a suite of offices which have remained largely unchanged since they were built in 1912. I figured I might find some little treasures hidden in boxes, forgotten. I never thought I would find something that is soRead More
Very proud to be a part of the making of the United States Olympic Team uniforms.
Something new I’m working on, with completely un-padded shoulders. This is not your father’s Hickey Freeman.
CAD software can be pretty complex. I’ve been using the same software for about 20 years now, from a company called Gerber Technologies. I do all my pattern design, grading, alterations, and made-to-measure on this platform. Or rather, I did. When I joined Hickey Freeman they were in the process of doing a very significant upgrade of their own CAD software, from a company called Lectra (it’s actually former investronica software, but they were boughtRead More
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
