Category: Cloth

  When selecting a cloth for an overcoat, what should you look for? This might seem like a pretty easy question: you want warmth. That’s what an overcoat is for. But how much warmth, and where it comes from, are n...

This is the second post we've done highlighting our favourite cloths from new seasonal bunches. The first, on Spring/Summer 2018, is here. Unfortunately the bunches come in late in the season, but there's still probably...

Luxury fibres like cashmere or vicuna can make lovely, indulgent cloths for sports jackets. Having mostly stuck to linen, tweed or related mixes in recent years, I recently commissioned a jacket in 100% cashmere (from Ed...

Samuel Gassmann Last week I was in Paris for two days, catching up with old friends and artisans, and seeing a few new ones. One of the most interesting things was an interview with Lyne Cohen Solal, the new head of the...

This is part of a long-running series of articles known as the  Guide to Suit Style, covering everything from the number of buttons on a suit to the difference between made-to-measure and bespoke.    It will continue...

Given the heat at the moment in London, it shouldn’t be surprising that linen is the most attractive thing in the pop-up up shop, which has been going wonderfully so far. Edward Sexton’s Hollywood-top trousers (abo...

This is the second in our series presenting all the cloth bunches currently available for bespoke, summarising what they contain and picking out our favourites. The summaries should help determine which bunches readers ...

Linen has long been a favourite for tailoring intended for hot weather. Its prime appeal is it’s cool to the touch (a lot more than wool, and a little more than cotton) because the fibre is a good conductor. Metal ...

Great as our Guide to Cloth series is, it deliberately doesn’t recommend specific cloths in specific bunches. This is largely because bunches change regularly (sometimes every six months) and if we did, the Guide woul...

In many ways, tweed should be the perfect material for a modern man. It is practical, hard wearing, and can be dressed up or down, from almost-formal to definitely-casual. On the formal side, a navy tweed jacket, grey w...

*Cloth now sold out. Fox are taking pre-orders for the next batch* At our pop-up shop back in April 2017, Fox Brothers brought up some vintage bolts to offer readers, including a rather beautiful ecru cavalry twill.   ...

A couple of years ago, a friend asked me for advice on dressing down his normal suit-and-tie wardrobe. Like many men, he wore suits (in worsted wool) to the office, and jeans or chinos at the weekend. The office was beco...

Caccioppoli, the Italian cloth merchant, was Jamie’s favourite place to photograph when we visited Naples over the summer. The aesthetic appeal is not immediately obvious. The Caccioppoli building is big, taking up mo...

  In some ways, summer trousers are more challenging than jackets in terms of cloth, and therefore more interesting. Trousers present the challenge of having something cool, but with enough body or crispness to hang...

It's hard not to feel that the future of the suit lies in more practical cloths than the fine worsteds of the past 30 years. We may move towards a situation where these cloths will be reserved for formal wear, while e...

When I was in Japan at the end of last year, I was keen to see not just menswear crafts, but traditional crafts in other areas as well. Previous articles on swordmaker Sasuke and kimono maker Motoji attest to some of th...

Pop-up shop update: Sartoria Formosa are in the shop today, Friday and Saturday. Gennaro Formosa is on site, together with Gianluca Migliarotti – director of the ‘O Mast’ film among other things   ...

Shop update: Sartoria Solito and Luca Avitabile shirts will be in the shop today and tomorrow for a trunk show.  They're pretty full already, but if you want to try and make an appointment, please contact l.a.shirtmake...

Someone asked me the other day when I'm going to run out of things to write about.  To be honest I have yet to have that problem - there's usually too much rather than too little. But as one writes more (1612 posts a...

The next in our series on Cloth is a guide to weaves and to designs. As with the A-Z this is meant as a reference tool, which we will link to as we publish more detailed pieces about trousers, jackets or overcoats. When ...

As the next post in our series The Guide to Cloth, we have put together a glossary of cloth-related terms, covering everything from different animal fibres and their properties, to the various stages of spinning and fini...

Choosing a suit cloth is, in some ways, harder than any other area of clothing. Because they all look so similar.  If we leave aside the more aesthetic – and subjective areas – of colour and pattern, we are ...

What makes a cloth suitable for a jacket, but not for a suit? This is a question I know many readers struggle with, particularly as offices become more casual. Without the safety of a dark suit and dark shoes, what shoul...

The amount of good soft-tailoring in London seems to increase by the month. And not just because people decide to start travelling: sometimes I just miss them. Nunzio Pirozzi has been travelling to the E Marinella stor...

Selecting cloth may be the hardest part of the bespoke (or made-to-measure) process. You pick the style of a suit every time you buy one off the rack, but you’re unlikely to have ever looked at a tiny square of cloth a...