By Manish Puri.
Spring is well and truly here in London.
I’ve just returned from a stroll through my local green which was fizzing with people enjoying cold beers and iced coffees. Through the window I can see my neighbour scraping last year’s chargrilled residue from his barbeque, and from the way he’s mopping his brow I suspect he’s cursing himself for not doing this before putting it into hibernation.
The theme for Match of the Day pierces the air as an ice cream van rounds the corner. The Pavlovian lure of the bells is strong, and before the chime has ended a small queue of eager children has formed to buy ice creams as big as their heads.
So, naturally I’m here to tell you about my bespoke winter overcoat.
It’s a special one for me in a number of ways - not least because it’s my first ever bespoke overcoat commission, made by the lovely team at Whitcomb & Shaftesbury.
I’ll save a more detailed review of the coat for a future article.
Today, given this was my first such commission, I thought it might be helpful to talk readers through my process in deciding what to go for, as well as the process with Whitcomb.
So why Whitcomb & Shaftesbury? Well, a few reasons actually.
First, I’ve always admired the coat wardrobe of my fellow PS columnist Aleks Cvetkovic, and one of his best - an Ulster coat in rich chocolatey Donegal tweed (above) - was made by Whitcomb & Shaftesbury. When it comes to making serious clothing decisions, nothing beats seeing a garment first hand, or getting some trusted advice.
Secondly, Simon has long praised Whitcomb & Shaftesbury for their consistent delivery of “quality and value”, and having received and worn my coat over the last few months it’s been a joy to read about his visit to the Chennai workshop and the tailors who work so hard to maintain those levels (below).
Finally, I’d had the good fortune to meet Suresh (co-founder - below with Simon) and Sian (head cutter) socially, and found them to be lovely, easygoing people. Of course, this doesn’t qualify you as a master tailor (I’m sure many a nice suit has been cut by utter bastards), but I think life’s too short (and the bespoke process too long) to work with people whose company you don’t enjoy.
The choice of colour was something I grappled with for some time, a conundrum verging on the philosophical: to be (a little unusual), or not to be (a little unusual).
Were a sartorial apocalypse to ravage all our wardrobes tomorrow - a simultaneously terrifying and liberating prospect - I’d unhesitatingly advise myself and readers to get a navy DB overcoat in heavy wool to stay warm and comforted in the bleak aftermath. Something like Simon’s B&Tailor coat (below) will do very nicely indeed, thank you very much.
The problem is I currently have a navy DB overcoat, two actually - one sharp and one a more relaxed belted model. And I like them both…a lot.
So, do I opt to upgrade something from good to great? Or do I cast my gaze wider, at the sort of coat that one covets and bookmarks on Instagram, but when push-comes-to-shove (or card-comes-to-tap) is always jilted in favour of a more versatile and conservative model?
I don’t really think there’s a correct answer to these questions; a lot will depend on one’s outlook - not just on clothes, but on spending money in general. However, I do think one useful way to think about it is as an interplay between risk and reward.
The commission of a bespoke navy overcoat would be substantially less risky, but the reward perhaps isn’t quite as rich given the number of similar, quality RTW/MTM/vintage options available. In contrast, while a more unusual colour carries more risk, if you get it right the reward is potentially greater - amplified by the relative paucity of similar options on the market.
Clearly I chose the more unusual option, a pale taupe cashmere, and I’ll talk about the colour and cloth more in the review article.
By now I’m fairly well practised at commissioning MTM/bespoke suits and jackets - to the extent that I wrote a couple of articles last year on some of the lessons I’ve learned.
I thought that experience would be adequate preparation for commissioning an overcoat. I was wrong.
This is partly just a numbers game. Even a relative tailoring novice will have tried a few different sports coats and suits over the years, but they’re unlikely to have an equivalent volume of experience with coats. How can you truly know if you prefer patch pockets (above) or postbox pockets (below), when your only winter coat has side entry pockets?
This isn’t purely a rhetorical question. I genuinely struggled with the choice of pockets over a couple of fittings - flip-flopping between the options. It was here that Suresh and Sian’s experience came to the fore, patiently shepherding me toward a decision.
Their advice, only proffered when I’d been through more flip-flops than an Australian backpacker, was to consider the pleasing form of the postbox against the function of patch pockets - which tend to be a little easier to get your hands and other winter accessories in and out of.
With that in mind, I tried on a display coat with patch pockets, instinctively thrust my hands into them, and immediately realised I should opt for the more functional choice.
In a similar vein, while the fundamentals of fit and balance are largely the same as a jacket, there are just a lot more elements to consider with a coat - and those elements combined can have a dramatic impact on the style, fit and even the nature of the coat itself.
Take the lapels of a coat. The questions posed by the tailor - on width, length, belly, gorge - will be familiar to anyone that has experience commissioning clothes, but the scale (and hence the potential margin for error) is that much bigger.
Or how about the buttoning point? Across an entire range of DB jackets, you might lower and raise the buttoning point by a couple of inches at the most. Whereas on different DB coats you could conceivably move the buttoning point from the bottom of your breastbone down to your hips. Or lose the buttons altogether!
Don’t let my cheesy grin fool you, shorn of buttons and hip pockets, it was very tricky to gauge what felt like a natural buttoning point at the first fitting (above) - and Suresh noted that the straight edge of the coat wouldn’t seem as long when those elements were later added.
However, the collective view was that it could stand to be lowered. And, sensing my uncertainty, Suresh also suggested an unscheduled interim fitting a few days later - a chance for me to see the new buttoning point before forging ahead.
It was an excellent idea, and the type of modest and unhurried evolution that is only really possible when making bespoke clothes using a local tailor. (And I think it helped get the balance just right - below).
Finally, solid advice for a normal person looking to commission a first-time bespoke coat would be to start now, allowing yourself at least four months before you’re likely to need it. However, if you’re not the sharpest of shears, why not commence the process in October, like I did?
Jokes aside, my tardiness did unwittingly help with some of the design decisions, as I’d attend fittings wearing coats and winter clothes, unwittingly giving Sian visual cues that she quietly used to hone the style - in particular, noting that I prefer my coats longer. It also gave us both the opportunity to see how the different iterations of the coat looked over the clothes that I’d ultimately wear it with.
It’s not a master plan I’d recommend to readers, but it clearly had its advantages. Besides, with care, a merciless crusade against any moth that crosses my hearth, and a calorie-controlled diet, this coat should last for many many years to come, so there’s no sense in fretting about losing half a season of wear because I missed the optimal commissioning date in the annual bespoke cycle.
Manish is @the_daily_mirror on Instagram.
Photos of me in Florence by @adnatt.
Other clothes shown:
- Taillour DB suit in Fox Brothers Heritage Flannel chalkstripe
- Bryceland's MTM shirt
- Speciale Tie
