IACDE in Santiago de Compostela

I just got back from my weekend in Spain and it was a real eye-opener. The men’s tailored clothing industry had better wake up fast and see that the rest of the industry is adapting to a different consumer, one that was being called “generation smartphone” and if we keep on just doing things “the way we have always done them” we will get our butts kicked.

Some of the highlights of the trip, other than Zara’s mind-blowing facilities (and Paco, I haven’t had a chance to read that article yet) were presentations by Lodovico Zandegu, the technical designer at Boglioli, and Kyle Vucko, CEO of Indochino. Lodovico discussed the special treatments that their clothing gets, which includes garment dyeing, washing, and other processes. A huge amount of testing goes into their product development so that was really interesting. Kyle’s very fresh approach to custom clothing was also exciting- they are approaching clothing from a completely new perspective and once they get some of their kinks worked out I think they will be a company to watch.



The thing I wanted to bring to readers, however, was a new initiative of the IACDE. The International Association of Clothing Designers and Executives has been around for just over 100 years and brings together the top professionals of the industry in a yearly world convention. This convention includes technical presentations and factory visits, and can be a valuable source of information as well as a great networking opportunity.

This year we voted to authorize funds to start an outreach/internship program. The Executive Committee (of which I am a member) has to work out the details, but essentially our aim will be to find young (or not so young) talent and support their participation in these conventions (pay for travel etc.) and to arrange possible workshops, masterclasses, and factory visits during the year. We also discussed internships with member companies. This will be a global initiative so we hope to support young talent from all parts of the world. Candidates will be required to submit a CV, a brief essay, and probably photos and/or sketches of their work, and a selection will be made from these submissions. Once we get all the details of the program and the requirements worked out, they will be posted to the IACDE website (and, of course, here) but I wanted to give readers a heads-up so interested candidates could start thinking about submissions.

You can also send me your email address to be included on a mailing list once we get it all sorted out.

IACDE World Convention

This year's world convention of the International Association of Clothing Designers and Executives will be in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, on the 4th and 5th of May. The theme of this convention is fast fashion, and we will be visiting the design center of one of the world's leaders in fast fashion, Zara/Inditex. Also on the program are presentations by-

Jesus Echevarria- Zara, Inditex corporate presentation
Lodovico Zandegu- Boglioli,Speed in luxury
Dr. Karl Hendrik Magnus- McKinsey & Company, Strategic Perspectives on the Future of Fast Fashion
Joachim Hensch- Hugo Boss, the Future of Fast Fashion – opening of the 2012 IACDE world convention
Dr. Andreas Seidl- Assyst GmbH, 3d-Modeling and Fast virtual Prototyping
Roland Schuler- ESPRIT, Strategic Product development as Precondition to Accelerate Fashion Flow
Kyle Vucko- Indochino Inc, Online custom clothing and e-retailing
Ed Gribbin- Alvanon Inc.,Technology leaps for the Future of Fast Fashion
Jean-Luc Auverdin, Frederic Piriou- Chargeurs Interlining, Interlining Solutions for Fast Fashion
Simone Visani, Ulrich Scherbel- Freudenberg Interlining, Fast Fashion – differentiation through innovation




The program and registration information can be found here. I sit on the executive committee of the IACDE so if anyone is interested in find out out more about it, feel free to contact me.

Asola lucida- some instructions

For Mike, who says he still doesn't get it.

I hope this helps.

(Sorry that the illustrations are rotated from the photos, but maybe this will actually help)


1.
Cut through the cloth, overcast, and lay a length of gimp. Do not wax the silk twist. Unlike regular buttonholes which start from the top, the twist must be anchored on the bottom of the hole (on the wrong side).

Feed the needle through the slit, then underneath the gimp.






2.
Wrapping around the gimp, insert the needle underneath the gimp, about 1/16" away from the slit edge.





3. Pull tight.





4. Repeat by feeding the needle up through the slit. When taking the next stitch, insert the needle exactly next to the previous stitch, and do not leave any space between the two. You may need to nudge the stitch with your thumb to pack them in tight.

Vent finishing

There were a number of questions about the vent finishing on the Ralph Lauren Purple Label garment, so here is a look at it again, with a comparison to an engineered method.

The traditional method of finishing the vents has the lining seam follow the shape of the side body, with a hockey-stick-shaped step at the top of the vent.



In this case, it has been (exquisitely) finished by hand, however it is possible to do this by machine. So this, in itself, is not a sure indication of the level of construction.

The engineered method pushes the side seam over so that it meets the top of the vent in one straight line, like this one.



When we flip the underlay up, we can see the most telling thing. The engineered vent's lining will continue in a straight line down the vent. This method can be done entirely by machine, no hand finishing is required.



The traditional method has an underlay of lining underneath the cloth underlay- notice how the lining extends closer to the edge of the folded vent.



This kind of application must be slashed, basted, and finished by hand so it's a pretty good sign. I like this method because the lining seam can be tacked to the cloth seam to prevent shifting- the engineered method can't be tacked because the lining seam is offset from the shell seam.

Joanne asked if I knew of any online instructions for vent finishing and unfortunately, I don't.

Ralph Lauren Purple Label

Every once in a while a nice surprise comes along.



I was contacted by Lance at Virtual Clothes Horse to see if I would be interested in a garment he had. A Ralph Lauren Purple Label sportcoat made by Raffaele Caruso, which, by itself, was intriguing. What was most interesting was that this one was recent, new, and had all its tags. Usually I have no idea of the age of a garment, and more often than not, it’s pretty old and not reflective of current workmanship. In this case, it’s safe to say that it’s pretty current. It was a MTM garment that was unclaimed by the customer and whose size was such that Lance felt he would have a hard time moving it so he ended up donating it to us. Thanks Lance!

Before we start cutting, a reality check.



Ouch.

The garment is made of cashmere and silk, a blend that is normally so flimsy and unstable that it’s a real headache to sew. But this is a fantastic 2x2 construction that is robust and shows no sign of the distortion in the grain or any of the seam slippage that is so typical of this blend. Certainly a contributing factor in the price.

Readers are, by now, aware of my buttonhole fetish and so will not be surprised to know that one of the things I most eagerly anticipated were what promised to be sensationally hand-made buttonholes. To my only partial dismay, there were none. Not one. Which actually makes a lot of sense. Not only are the sleeves basted in preparation for final adjustments before cutting the buttonholes, but the omission on the front and lapel leaves the possibility of making certain adjustments to the fit of the front which would have been impossible had the buttonholes been cut. Whether this was a special request by a very particular salesperson or client, or whether this is the usual practice for Purple Label MTM service is unclear, but at almost $5,000 one has every right to expect a properly-fitting garment so every precaution should be taken.

Inside the pocket we find this attractive pouch holding the buttons and, of course, a spool of silk buttonhole twist.



The twist is Seta Bozzolo Reale by Cucirini Tre Stelle which I mentioned in previous posts. It is distributed in the U.S. by Gilbreath Threads, who can be contacted at 800-247-2396 or by clicking here.



Ok, so I lied. There was one buttonhole.



The envelope flap on the inside pocket had a buttonhole embroidered by hand.

Along the facing edge we see some pick stitching. I often see ebay descriptions of garments referencing “tons of handwork”, usually describing this stitching, among other things.



I hate to break it to you, but this was not done by hand. Two types of machine exist to make this kind of imitation hand stitch. This stitch was done with a machine that makes a looping stitch on the wrong side,



Because the underside is unattractive, it’s usually used only on parts whose wrong side will be concealed, like the facing, and sometimes the trouser pockets and fly. Never on the coat edges.

Before anyone gets their knickers in a twist over “deceptive practices”, even the Kiton garments I examined had used this exact type of machine stitch.

The other type of machine is made by Conti Complett. The underside of this stitch, unlike the other type of machine, is neat and resembles the hand stitch it is meant to duplicate. The downside of this machine is that it is slow and very expensive.

The label was stitched on using a Complett machine; notice how very uniform the stitching is on the underside- only a machine will be this precise.



Now have a look at the underside of the flap- nothing at all like the label, so it is most likely that the edge stitching was actually done by hand. Very few RTW makers do this by hand anymore because the machine generally does a good job.



Of interest to some will be the old-school vent finishing which is rarely seen on ready-made garments-




However the bottoms have been finished by machine, a step some makers at this level still do by hand.



The front canvas is very generous, and rather than using haircloth in the chest, a very good quality wrapped hair has been substituted. This is similar to what we saw in the Saint Andrews garment and gives a softer feel to the chest.



Notice how the edges of the chest piece are taped to prevent the hair from poking through.

No surprises to find a semi-bias piece of haircloth in the shoulder



What is somewhat surprising is the size of the pad- this is the thickest pad I have seen in RTW for a long time. Mr. Lauren is known to appreciate a more imposing shoulder than some of his American colleagues.



The collar is seamed at center back- again, very old-school



In fact, the entire collar has been constructed and attached by hand, including the gorge. Very nice.

Portions of the edge tape have been felled by hand.



There was something about the edges of the coat that caught my attention but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Upon (much) closer inspection I found that the entire facing had been drawn on by hand. In other words, where most (including most bespoke tailors) would join the facing to the coat along the front edge by machine, this facing has been carefully basted in place, wrong side to wrong side, with the edges turned under and then slip-stitched by hand all along the edges, and they have done a magnificent job of it. The Brioni dinner jacket is the only other RTW garment I have seen which featured this technique, and only few bespoke pieces were done this way. I was intrigued so I made a few inquiries.

Paul Farrington, the technical designer at Hickey Freeman, visited the Caruso factory recently. Paul spent his early years at Chester Barrie, including a stint at D’Avenza. He told me that the system used at Caruso was brought first from Chester Barrie to Saint Andrews in the late sixties, and then to Caruso by a technician named Frank Vita. To augment the old-school tailoring is a decidedly new-school tech system which has bar-code driven PCs at every station so operators can reference specs, components, and sewing instructions. This kind of system allows for minute adjustments and customization the likes of which most of us in the trade can only dream. Paul did say that the regular production gets machine-sewn facings- only certain garments are done by hand, which makes sense since I am not aware of their house label selling for such astronomical prices.

This garment definitely ranks up there with some of the best of the recent ready-made garments I have examined- I’m going to have to try to get my hands on a trouser to see how those are made as they promise to be just as interesting as this coat.

Asola Lucida- a lightbulb goes on...

So I had another little moment of insight. Or maybe my thickheadedness deserted me briefly.

I was contemplating my lapel buttonholes last week, the by now infamous asola lucida ones, that is, and finding them just too chunky, especially when compared to some nicer ones like the Tom Ford. The thread I am using is just too heavy.

To wit

Mine



And theirs



Silk buttonhole twist is only available in two sizes these days, the finest being size 40, which is the one I use. But still, it is not nearly as fine as the thread used on the nicest lapel buttonholes. So I was wondering where I could find both buttonhole twist and a much finer thread but offered in the very same colors, something I have never seen before. Then I had my little idea.

Buttonhole twist is 3-ply- that is to say, it has three yarns (rather than the typical two) twisted together to form the thread. If I were to strip the twist down, I would have three very fine threads to use, solving my problem. Of course, such a fine thread would require three times as much work to cover the same space- I think it was Francesco Smalto who said that 140 stitches are required to execute the asola lucida. Using a thread this fine, I believe him. Compounding the difficulty, a thread which has been stripped can be difficult to work with. It's just the sort of punishment I seem to enjoy inflicting upon myself in order to make a pretty buttonhole, and another detail over which to obsess for a while. So I started ripping apart the buttonholes on a few of my jackets, pulling apart silk twist, and reworking them over again.

Obsessive Buttonhole Disorder. I wonder if they make a pill for that...

O'Mast

My copy came in the mail this week.

O'MAST from Kid Dandy on Vimeo.

One of the few pleasures that I have derived from working in tailored clothing factories, as opposed to working in a tailor shop, is that there are invariably a sizable group of old guys from the old world who like nothing better than to sit around, shooting the breeze and talking about what life was like back in the day. Back in the day meaning, of course, back in Italy. I could almost write a book. In fact, maybe someday I will.

O'Mast, a documentary by Gianluca Migliarotti, is an intimate portrait of some of the last remaining Neapolitan tailors and their clients. Perhaps lacking in a definite story or arc, it was exactly like sitting around on a coffee or lunch break with the guys. Only missing was coffee. While the stories had an immediate appeal for me because they were so familiar, one thing jumped out at me for the first time, if only because of the context of some of the recent political discourse.

(If you're interested, and if you are a regular reader of this blog I should think you will be interested, the DVD is only about $25 and cad be had at the Armoury's website. The Armoury is in Hong Kong but shipping was super fast.)

It's a story I have heard a thousand times if I have heard it once. At age 11 or 12, a young boy would be sent to the tailor shop to apprentice. Maybe after school. Maybe afternoons. Maybe he would drop out of school entirely. His pay, if he were lucky enough to get any, might be 100 to 150 lire a week. He would ride his bike from his village several miles to the nearest bus or train, where he would spend his weekly salary on train fare into the city. The lucky ones might have enough left at the end of the week to buy a cup of coffee, though not likely. At Christmas the master expected a gift or tribute of some sort to thank him for the time he spent training the young apprentice. The system produced some of the best tailors in the world, and helped drive the eventual cachet of the "Made in Italy" brand.

Perhaps I have become desensitized to the story, having heard it so many times. More likely I can relate in a sense since, like so many other pursuits, it is generally agreed that one must start early in life in order to gain a proper mastery; piano lessons, ballet lessons, gymnastics... those who become successful at these pursuits are more likely to have started lessons at age six than at age 20. Something to do with the 10,000 hour rule.

Those readers who are fortunate enough to be insulated from the Republican primary season here in the U.S. will have missed Newt Gingrich's recent assertion that poor children should be made to work as janitors in school. My initial reaction was, naturally, one of shock and indignation. He did, suggest, however, that they be paid some sort of wage, which is more than can be said for the tailor's apprentice. So what was a charming story about learning the craft of tailoring now has the taint of child labor. How do I reconcile the two?

I'm not sure that I can.

It's one thing to say that it was an economic necessity and a part of the harsh reality of post-war Europe that children had to be sent out at a young age to work, essentially, for free, with the only benefit being that they were learning a marketable skill. But the same logic could be applied to Newt's argument and I'm not sure that's a good thing. It also highlights the question of whether such a training regimen was really necessary in order to create the generation of craftsmen that is currently disappearing and is not likely to be replaced without such a draconian system of apprenticeship.

While I am certain that each of the tailors interviewed in the film would tell you that they were entirely thrilled to have had the chance to apprentice as they did, I am equally convinced that not one of them would send his own child out to repeat the process.

I don't really have a point here. I'm just thinking out loud. In print. Whatever.

More experimentation with drape...

Wow. It’s been a while. Let me start by wishing everyone a happy new year!
In the past six weeks I had been home all of five days, and non-consecutive ones at that so I’m way behind in all of my projects. The Ariston coat is long-finished but I need to photograph it and now I have a small pile of cloth to cut.


J&J Minnis was having a sale- the Crown Classics bunch was being offered at twenty pounds a meter plus VAT. So it’s time for another experiment.

Some time ago I experimented with drape, referencing a draft manipulation published by Whife in the Modern Tailor, Outfitter and Clothier. I had seen a number of published texts on the construction of a drape coat but had never handled the real thing so I kind of made things up as I went along, in terms of construction. The finished result was this.





Some of the details were goofy but the silhouette wasn’t bad.

Then I bought this vintage Anderson & Sheppard coat and learned a few things.



Most particularly, about how the drape in the chest is achieved by cutting the haircloth away from the armhole.



So this experiment is two-fold. First, the piece that I bought from Minnis is dark brown with a chalk stripe. I have never owned a brown suit and I’m not sure if I will like it or not. One way to find out, right?

Second, I will try this drape thing out again, but this time with an eye on the A&S coat. I like the shape and the flare to the skirt, though it’s perhaps verging on costume. The one thing I’m not really sure about is the chest. While I agree that the chest emphasis flatters me, as in the first attempt, I don’t think I can stomach a proper drape, with the haircloth cut away from the armhole, on a suit. I think I’m just too stuck in my ways for that. So I may keep the full haircloth in the chest. At which point it begins to resemble a Tom Ford cut.

Hmm.

We know that he was a customer of A&S before starting his own men’s line. So it’s very possible he went through the same thought process- extend the shoulder a bit and emphasize the chest to create the illusion of more waist suppression but build the chest up with a good amount of haircloth so that it’s clean and not sloppy. I’ve heard people moan about the fact that he was just copying this one or that one, but really, who isn’t inspired by somebody else? A&S was “inspired” by Scholte who was “inspired” by military uniforms…

One last question mark that remains in my head. Normally when underpressing the fronts, we keep the stripes closest to the armhole completely straight from the waist up to the top, working the chest forward toward center front. Since the objective of the traditional drape cut was to have a fold of cloth near the armscye, I figured that working the chest forward would negate that fullness near the scye and on the last coat I didn’t straighten them out. It seemed to work, but this time I think I’ll stick to the rules about stripes and see what happens.

So in all a lot of risks and a good chance I’ll end up not liking the suit. But at twenty pounds a meter at least it’s not an expensive risk, and worth the investment for whatever I might learn out of the process.

EDIT

My bad- I should have been more clear about what I mean by "drape". I'm not referring to the drape of the cloth or the patternmaking technique of draping, but to a style of coat that was created at the turn of the last century, was very popular in the thirties and virtually disappeared in the fifties. A primer, as well as the draft manipulation used for the last garment can be found here.

EDIT

In response to a question about underpressing the fronts, the stripes act as a guide for the correct pressing, and this is a critical step before basting the canvas. The stripes nearest the scye must run absolutely straight from the shoulder down to the waist line (this will cause a distortion in the stripes forward of the dart- this is normal). The stripes closest to center front must run straight from the waist down to the hem. This has the effect of crookening the shoulder point a tiny bit during pressing, but is separate from the issue of whether it is a straight-cut or crooked-cut coat. Hope this is a bit clearer now.

Been busy lately

There have been a lot of questions lately which I promise to get to at some point, but I'm on the road these days so it's a bit nuts.

So in the meantime, some buttonholes.

The Brees Blazer again

Remember this?



I made this jacket last year, just before leaving Canada. Ellen Degeneres saw it and liked it so Drew had one made for her (not by me- my contacts within that camp don't know where to find me these days) and will be presenting it to her on Monday's show. I saw a post on facebook which is how I found out about this coat-

Prepping the back

Roll

Ariston Napoli

Just because.

Ariston Napoli

Fans of the bold, colourful cloth typical of many Italian merchants (especially Isaia) will love Ariston Napoli. This latest piece- a blue and brown check- comes from them, and is surprisingly robust for an Italian cloth. They are represented in the U.S. by Kemp and Hewitt.

Silliness with scraps

Far from random, some careful planning is required, the sort that only another patternmaker can really appreciate.