A storm blew through town last night which took down some pretty big trees, and with them, the power. Mine finally came back on this morning but the office is still closed so I glanced over at "the pile"; various garments that have been collecting over the last few months waiting to be chopped up, photographed, and analyzed- maybe today I can dig in a bit and get some blogging done. I've been pretty busy so I'm a bit behind in it, but I realize that I think I'm also running out of interesting things to say; it's getting to the point where there's not so much that's new and interesting to show you- we've seen it all before. (Right at that point I got a message notification about a comment from a reader which read "NEW POSTS PLEASE!!!" Talk about timing)
Well, one things we haven't seen, and which people have asked for several times, is an image of one of the dissection victims on a form or a body, to get an idea of the cut or silhouette. Until now the dimensions of most of the garments were such that I wouldn't have been able to, even if I wanted, and I have to caution that it's not a good idea to put a garment which was cut for one specific body onto another because you don't get an accurate picture, but this one was cut for someone very close to my build, though quite a bit taller than I, judging by the sleeve length. So, for a change, we can have a look at the cut of a garment.
It's a proper 3-button garment with a decent amount of waist and a bit of flare to the skirt. The chest feels fairly firm, but this is not surprising as G&H have a history of military tailoring.
I had heard that G&H use blindstitch machines to pad their lapels so I expected to see that; instead, they were done by hand. There is a liberal sprinkling of fusible in various parts of the garments, but nothing we haven't seen already on other garments from Savile Row so I won't go over them again.
What was a bit surprising was that the chest was padded by zig-zag machine, in a similar fashion to the Saint Andrews garment I cut up, but with a smaller, tighter stitch, which is what gives the firmness to the chest. It would take too long to unpick the whole thing to show you what's inside, but I did just enough to know that the entire chest (the size of the felt) is one big piece of haircloth, with another smaller one in the shoulder. Again, no surprises there.
Another thing I found interesting was that the seam joining the side body to the front is shoved way back, making a very narrow side body. This probably makes the shaping of the waist easier- I will have to try it out. I don't know if you can make the seams out in the photo, but FWIW,
As for the rest, it's all stuff that we would expect to see, and have seen, on other Savile Row garments (newer readers are invited to peruse the archives), so I will blame my writer's block on the clothing.
I'm sure that's a first.
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