Huntsman, Ripped and smoothed, part two

Since my last post, a reader emailed me to tell me that the initials of the cutter would be found on the label, those initials being "TH". I assume this must mean Terry Haste, former MD of Huntsman, but was he there in 2000? I'll have to go back and read the book again. Or do some more homework. But in any case, we're not evaluating the cutting here, only the sewing. It's just fun to know a bit about the suit.

Another thing I have been thinking about; there was a mass exodus from Huntsman during that period so anything not quite up to par may be a result of them losing their best people. Or it may not. More to think about. Meanwhile, let's get ripping.

The finishing inside is quite neat; the felling is so neatly done that you have to look close to see it in spots. There is no pleat in the bottom of the lining and to tell the truth, I'm not sure one is really needed, looking at this suit. Hmm.



The neck is neatly done as well. The facing/collar seam has actually been opened and drawn on the whole way, rather than clipping and working the facing over the top collar around the neck which creates some bulk. Extra work, but I like it and will use it.



Two pockets on the left, one on the right, neither with any kind of closure.



While I was surfing Ebay listings I found the pockets odd, as they seemed to have been worked onto the lining, the way manufactured suits are done, and like this one-



I prefer to set the pockets onto a cloth facing which will carry the weight better. It also makes relining much easier- if the pocket has been cut through the lining and goes onto the facing, as in the picture, it's a bit of a beast to reline neatly since you have to work the new pocket exactly over the hole in the facing- margins of error no more than 1/32" or so. Not a job for your average alterations tailor. Well, I should have known better. I didn't notice that the lining was a bit crooked at the pocket- this would have given it away. The pocket is not actually worked through the lining (though the smaller one just below it is)- the pocket is worked through a cloth facing and the lining is felled to conceal the work. It is common for most Italian tailors to leave this facing exposed in a bit of a decorative manner, like in this shot from a Zegna Couture coat (notice also the hand-felled lining with a backstitch instead of a felling stitch- we also saw this on the Brioni dinner jacket I dissected)


but Huntsman has chosen to conceal it entirely; naturally, it has all been done by hand.







Now on to some of what gives the suit its shape.

The bridle has been taped with lining instead of the cotton tape which is more common, and the lapel has been sparingly pad stitched. Remember that a lot of the stitching poked through- it is probable that the padding was done by an apprentice. I personally feel that denser pad stitching on the lapel will give a richer roll, and the results that I get would seem to support that theory, but I haven't properly tested it yet so I can't state it as fact, only as received wisdom. Which can sometimes be false. The undercollar (not shown) has been padded by hand, something that I HAVE tested extensively and found that it is not necessary to do by hand- the machine does just as adequate a job, in my opinion.



The canvas front is a lovely, dense hair canvas which has not been singed. I need to find out where this canvas comes from. Huntsman has a reputation for being a firm coat so I expected to find more in the chest. Instead, there is only one piece of haircloth, on a partial bias, and a rather thick piece of chest felt.



The direction of the hairline is surprising since this won't support the upper shoulder as well and there is no additional shoulder support piece.

The "vees" or shoulder cuts are left open rather than being fixed. I'm not sure how I feel about this yet. Readers who survived my pagoda shoulders will remember that these vees are opened and fixed in place to provide the shape to the shoulder and without them being fixed in place they can shift around so the shoulder shape will not be constant. This could possibly be a good thing since there is perhaps more movement allowed, but I think this would be very dangerous in lighter cloth- the hollow created by the open vees would make a very visible dent in the shoulder which would be very obvious in light cloth- the only thing covering them is the piece of striped lining on the top and bottom. I need to think about this for a while.



There is a moderate amount of wadding in the shoulder and two small pieces of collar linen. This is certainly a lot less than either Oxxford or Brioni put in their shoulders, again a surprise, since I expected a firmer shoulder from Huntsman.



Here is the pad removed



In the sleeve head, FOUR layers of heavy felt. This is a lot, even for me who likes a good, healthy rope. The effect is not bad, but its a bit chunky and lumpy since it's put in straight rather than shaped, which is now the norm (sometimes tradition should give way to innovation).


The back of the scye (as well as the underarm) has been padded with cotton and chest felt. This was common in the days of body coats (Sator will love it) but I haven't seen much of it lately; I'm not sure if this is common practice for them or if this gentleman had very hunched shoulders which needed some help. Judging by the, um, proportions of the suit, I am guessing the latter.



EDIT
I went plowing along without mentioning that the shoulder seam was sewn by hand and that the sleeve has been sewn in by hand. More on that later.


So far so good, the only major surprises being how LITTLE stuff there was inside. I was expecting much more. As some of my other garments begin to arrive, we'll have a better basis of comparison, though. Need to find an A&S......... But before that, the trousers, which seem to have changed little in the last 100 years.

Brioni vs. Samuelsohn, Battle of the dinner jackets

So before we go back to the pagoda shoulder, a side-by-side comparison of two dinner jackets, one by Brioni and one by Samuelsohn. This will be done in several parts as I am too lazy to get it all done in one shot. Samuelsohn is on the low price end of the full-canvas makes and Brioni on the higher end (in this case, the Brioni is easily four times the price of the Samuelsohn, if not a little more). So what makes the difference?

Cosmetics- both are one-button, peak lapel DJs. The Sammmy is 100% wool with a center vent, the Brioni is 100% Silk with no vent.

Buttonholes
Brioni- made by hand
Samuelsohn- made by machine



Sleeve finishing
Brioni- hand-made immitation buttonholes
Samuelsohn- machine-made functioning buttonholes, hand-finished sleeve lining



Pockets
Brioni- hand-made, flat construction jetted pocket (nice, soft, flat, discreet) with hand-stitched mezza-luna tack
Samuelsohn- machine-made (ribbed) flap pocket



Breast Welt

I apologize if it's not clear.
Brioni- hand-made and finished pocket welt, pick stitching also done by hand
Samuelsohn- machine-made welt with tiny zig-zag stitching to fell the edge of the pocket, no pick stitching.


Let's pause for a moment.

There is some confusion about pick stitching and what it is or is for. Pick stitching is the tiny little stitches on the edge of some garments- it is placed there to hold the edge crisp and flat, to prevent edges from rolling, but is not structural. As such, a hand stitch is the same structurally as a machine stitch- they both do the same job. Machine pick stitching is not meant to bamboozle anyone- it performs the same function as hand stitching.

HOWEVER

Hand stitching is much smaller and looser and thus more discreet than machine stitching (I'll show both later) and once you're seen the two side-by-side it's easy to tell them apart. Some makers (mostly southern Italians) do their hand stitching with a slightly thicker thread and is just as ornamental as it is functional, but it is still easy to tell them apart by the slight irregularity of the stitches and the tiny prick of the hand stitch.

Hand stitching machines have pretty intense feeders which tend to damage delicate satin, which is why it is not so common to find it on dinner jackets and why there is none on this Samuelsohn garment. It is also much more evident on Satin than on regular cloth and some people find it ostentatious so is often omitted. It was a necessity on the Brioni, for reasons we will get to later.


Boutonniere

Brioni- there is a hand-made buttonhole done with the upside-down buttonhole stitch I was studying in a previous post (and now realize I may have posted the wrong photo) plus a boutonniere loop underneath.
Samuelsohn- no lapel buttonhole



Facing

Brioni- The facing on the Brioni is a luxurious pure silk which is not common to see any more because it is very delicate; damages are common and replacing a facing on a finished jacket is one of the most infuriating jobs. If you are wearing real silk lapels, do not hug anyone wearing jewelry, and keep your dancing partner at a distance for fear of snags. But it is VERY nice.....
Samuelsohn- This has the more common synthetic facing. Note that this type of satin is made specifically (and only) for tuxedo facings and is just as expensive as real silk in most cases. It is popular because it is more resistant to damage, not only during construction but during wear.
In this part we look at some of the details that we can see inside the jacket but without opening the lining up. Clues for the thrifters among us.


Hem finishing

Brioni- The hem has been closed by hand with a tight little stitch. There is also what appears to be a pick stitch running close to the hem- most likely holding wiggan or some sort of hem interfacing in place. It looks like this was done with the Columbia machine (Juki makes one too) which is a type of imitation hand stitch. More on this in a minute.

Samuelsohn- This hem was closed by a felling machine- the two parallel threads are what distinguishes the machine stitch from a hand stitch which may look similar. This type of stitch is usually a good indicator that the coat was not bagged and that the hem itself was felled rather than just tacked like in lesser garments.



Facing and lining seams

Brioni- there is a little pick stitch which was clearly done by hand along this seam. Some manufacturers put a Columbia stitch as decoration along this seam, but on garments such as this, it is possible that the stitch is not primarily decorative but functional- it may be used to fell the lining to the facing by hand. This can also be done with a more discreet stitch, but if the finisher is talented, it can be functional as well as decorative. The lining must be opened up to know for sure.

Samuelsohn-
The lining has been closed by machine and there is no decorative stitching along this edge



Neck Finishing

Brioni- several interesting things. The pick stitching continues around the neck, a further suggestion the lining has been felled by hand. Notice that the lining is lapped over the collar. Also notice the seam in the collar stand- this is a two piece collar, as in my previous post about collar drafting. Silk is very difficult to shape with the iron so they were wise to make this a two piece and avoid possible fit trouble. The shoulder seam of the lining has been felled by hand, which means the lining is held in place along the shoulder pad and won’t shift around.

Samuelsohn- The collar is lapped over the lining, and felled with a machine-made pick stitch; there is also a row of pick stitching just inside the roll line to hold things in place. The shoulder seam has been closed by machine which means it is loose and not tacked to the shoulder pad.

A look under the hood- mystery suit

A friend donated what was sold on ebay as a vintage Savile Row suit to my dissection project. At first glance it had most of the hallmarks of a SR suit but a few details were bothering me. I'll get into those in due course. One of my first reactions was also that the finishing was quite a bit neater than I'm used to seeing from SR (except the buttonholes which were meh), but one of the houses could have discovered someone fantastic..... In the process of taking the thing apart there was a surprise and a possible clue. Again, all in due course.


First off, there is no maker label, no customer label, only the cloth label- Scabal. There is also no indication of this garment ever having been worn; was this a RTW suit or a window sample? Was this made for Scabal to showcase their cloth? The interior was carefully engineered, suggesting a different approach to the lining than we usually use in bespoke (as in, a proper paper pattern appears to have been carefully made for the lining). I notice that the canvas used is quite stiff, which is not unusual for many SR houses. The pockets, both inside and out, have been very carefully made, and the inside pockets are particularly well done with tiny little jets. The envelope flap on the inside pocket, as well as several other key parts, have been stiffened with tailor's soap or starch, giving a very crisp, firm appearance. It is obvious that neatness and cleanliness area high priority for this maker.



To appreciate the neatness it is perhaps useful to compare the pocket to another one made using the same basic technique by a Hong Kong tailor (thanks for photo sent by Schneidergott). Note also the hand finishing of the armholes.

NOTE- I have put large size photos so you can see up close. If you have trouble with your monitor, click on it and it will take you to the Flickr site where they are hosted. Click on All SIZES, then LARGE to see the full res photo.



Placing the garment on an old tailor's dummy we see that the collar sits flush with the chest and tight to the neck. I put the garment on (it's rather tight fitting) and moved around a bunch and the collar stayed put. The collar, in my opinion, is rather binary- either it sits well or it doesn't- there is no middle ground, and in my opinion this collar sits well. All the more surprising to turn it up to find that the pad stitching has been done by machine. It is a self-cloth under collar which has the advantage of being finer and thus a bit flatter than felt or melton, but the linen canvas has not even been padded using the typical padding machine but with a plain machine. The rest of the collar construction has been done by hand so I don't think this was done to save time or money since the savings is really quite negligible- the line of stitching around the neck line is meant to hold the seam allowance in place, not to fell the collar to the coat- the felling has been done by hand. This speaks to the debate over hand padded versus machine padded collars; machine padded collars, done with the padding machine, are rolled to some degree but not as much as when done by hand and the proponents of hand padding insist that machine padding is inferior. Here we have a collar that has been padded by plain machine yet exhibits all the characteristics of a well-fitting collar. Hand padding would not make this fit any better- it can't get closer to the chest or neck, and there is absolutely no sign of it lifting away no matter how I move in it. Home sewers take note.






The interior is a typical buggy-lined finishing, done by hand, very neatly. The seam edges are piped with a tiny 2mm (less than 1/8") piping; the piping is sewn on right sides together at 2mm, then it is turned over the edge, pressed, stitched very precisely along the edge, then stitched again about 4mm away to fell the raw edge of the lining tape. Working in such small scale, the seaming has to be absolutely perfect for it not to look a mess, and they have done a very good job. Notice also, if you can, the hand finishing at the side seam, which we can compare to the finishing of SG's HK coat.



The vent underlay is round, and the piping around this edge is done just as perfectly as the straight edges; anyone who has gone around corners like this knows how difficult it can be to control, especially where bias areas tend to stretch and move. The work on this is impeccable.



Compare the seam finishing to another example posted on the web by a SR house

Contrasting piping is very decorative but I think it needs to absolutely perfect to not look sloppy. My personal preference would be the way this mystery suit was done (in terms of piping width and precision).



The buttonholes, as I mentioned, are disappointing considering the high level of finishing, but I have seen much worse.



The lapel has been padded by hand, with a layer of lining between the canvas and the cloth. Multiple layers padded together give added shape so not a terrible idea. The edge tape is applied by hand, and while there is no pick stitching in the traditional sense that it goes through all layers, the seam has been understitched by hand to prevent it rolling out to the wrong side. The facing is understitched by hand a second time, 1/4" away, below the breakpoint for extra reinforcement.


Like the collar, the canvas has been padded by machine. There are certain SR houses that do this so it is not necessarily an indicator of inferior workmanship. The machining is done in neat, precise rows which might have actually taken more time to do than it would have taken to do by hand; machining, though, gives a certain stiffness to the already firm canvas. Some prefer structure and cleanliness over softness


Curiously, the gorge has been sewn by machine and tacked on the upper side of the collar. This means that the top collar was not just stretched and worked over the undercollar, trimming away excess and then felled by hand in the usual manner by the tailor; a paper pattern had to be pre-engineered to fit over the undercollar. This tells me that the cutter had some pretty advanced skills, and on certain cloths it is much cleaner to sew the gorge by machine than by hand, so this is not surprising given the attention to cleanliness in the rest of the garment.



So far I am thinking that this is a very well-made RTW garment because of the level of engineering in the lining and collar- this shows some extra work on the cutter's part which is often reserved for when several garments will be made off the same pattern. Otherwise a lot of this work is left up to the tailor, which is clearly not the case. What tells me for sure that this is NOT a RTW garment is the fact that the inlays, thread tacking, and chalk marking which we see only on bespoke garments are still intact, like here at the shoulder and sleeve seams.



There is evidence of alterations to the side seams which would have been done during a baste fitting so there is no longer much doubt in my mind that this was a bespoke garment fitted to somebody. Then I notice the absolute giveaway, which don't really show up in photos; balance construction lines are still faintly visible in chalk. Not only was this garment bespoke, but there was no paper pattern- it was drafted directly onto the cloth. The horizontal lines at the breast, the shoulder blade, the side seam level and waist line are still visible, as well as lines used to calculate shoulder slope, neck width and front scye position.

Ordinarily I draft onto paper, cut from that, then transfer any adjustments during fittings back onto the paper. Some dispense with the paper altogether but then there is no record for the next time we cut for the same client (we do hope to have repeats after all). This cutter must have drafted onto the cloth, fitted, then ripped down to make a paper pattern from the ripped pieces. Regardless, not only the finishing is good but the drafting is good too.

Curious, I studied the construction lines and some of the measurements and it would correspond quite closely to something drafted for a 36" chest from a Modern Tailor, Outfitter and Clothier draft by Whife. Worth noting is that the coat and sleeve length are definitely for a short person (I'm guessing around 5' 6").


There is no wadding in the sleeve head to break down over time, instead a bias cut strip of cloth similar in weight and construction was sewn in as a sleeve head. This idea of sleeve heads and shoulder pads "breaking down over time" drives me a little nuts. I think a garment should hold up over time and look the same ten years from when it was delivered. Hearing tailors tell their clients "oh it will break down over time" sounds like a way of getting customers out of the shop to me. Or shoddy practices which don't hold up.


Gong back to the hem underlay, I noticed it was crisper than the seams, but since a good deal of starch had been used in other parts I was not surprised. I decided, however, to unpick the piping and found paper in the seam. I am reminded of the technique of using tissue paper to cut and sew difficult cloth like chiffon. You would lay the underlay piece on a piece of paper which would prevent it shifting as you go around the corners, place the lining tape and sew around the edges through all layers. The paper will help reinforce the edges when turning the piping and make the job that much cleaner. Then the excess is torn away, leaving only a small amount hidden under the piping.


The final little bit of curiousness is this- the newsprint used was from a Chinese newspaper. So either this suit was made in China or Hong Kong (this would have been made before the reunification) by a foreign-trained cutter and tailor, or some tailor shop was using immigrant labor (very possible as well).

Interesting......



In response to a question, I really don't know if it was common to use mainland workshops during the British period, but I will ask the question at WW Chan, who say that the work is "OK" and pretty typical of HK during the 80s. And here is the rest of the paper that I managed to get- it's not terribly clear but maybe you can see something?