Vicuna Cloth- the World’s Costliest Fabric

From a 1937 booklet entitled “The Story of Vicuna, The World’s Finest Fabric” by Sylvan Stroock, president of S. Stroock & Company- “…Based on the present price of the cloth, men’s vicuna topcoats such as are made by The Hickey Freeman Co., (who make the world’s finest ready-made clothing) would sell at retail for $400.00 and overcoats made of Stroock heavy weight vicuna cloth would sell at $1,000.00” In today’s dollars, that overcoat would sellRead More

“Robert Jeffery”

Wow.  It’s been 12 years since I started this blog. The focus has shifted over time, and I seem to have been writing less and less, mostly since life happened and I got busy (and married) and moved all over the place.  I feel the time is right to devote more time to blogging again, especially since I now have help. The first major thing to talk about is the migration from Blogspot/Blogger and Flickr,Read More

My Brain Hurts

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