Big-scale tweeds and the right cap

Irish tweed jacket with elbow pads

Esquire, September 1938: "The Irish homespun tweed jacket that seems to be so much a thing of patches is really the latest trick at the smart Eastern universities. The alleged patches are buckskin elbow pads and gun pad, an idea copied from the shooting jacket. The elbow pads are supposed to absorb a lot of desk-leaning punishment but the shoulder pad has to get by solely by its decorative merits. The slacks are also new - of natural colour covert cloth, narrow in cut and worn short so that they don't break at the cuff. Accessories include a tan pincheck shirt, Irish homespun tie, velour finish Tyrolean hat and blucher shoes.

The other suit is of Shetland in a broken herringbone pattern, worn with a soft flannel shirt, regimental striped tie, silk foulard handkerchief, the new small shape varsity tweed cap, brown wool cable-stitch hose with 'lightning' pattern and reverse calf ski front shoes with crepe soles and heels."

Plenty to admire here. I love the scale of the pattern on both jackets and the cap sounds ideal - too many eight-piece caps are over large and drown the face. The description of the trousers sounds bang up to date, and looks good for it. Then there's buckskin again.

Albam: Craft for the weekend

“This is the point that your girlfriend starts worrying,” says Albam co-founder James Shaw, bent over the stitching on the company’s new Ventile mac. “See this round the cuff? The stitching varies slightly where the maker took her foot off the sewing machine, changing the pressure momentarily. It’s not perfect – it’s handmade, personal.”

I don’t know much about casual clothing – I’ll leave trainers and denim to other geeks – but the craft at Albam has a lot in common with bespoke tailoring. It’s all about individuality, as with that stitching, and craft and value. Coats, T-shirts and knitwear are made the old-fashioned way because there is a belief that it is better – it lasts longer, it wears better and it works.

I rarely speculate what Permanent Style readers wear at the weekend (indeed part of me hopes they wear full tweed and neckerchiefs). But if it is chinos and sweatshirts, I would hope they are made by a brand with the same attitude to craft as their tailor. Like Albam.

James and Albam co-founder Alastair didn’t start making clothes in Britain out of any ethical stance and they refuse to be poster boys for that movement. They were just living in Nottingham and wanted to try and make a T-shirt; so they went to the local factories to see if they could do it.

The first one failed, the second was better, but by that time they they were already importing their own yarn out of frustration. The T-shirts are made in that factory today, each by a single woman moving the cloth around by hand on a pedal-operated machine that James describes as “a cross between a car and a one-man band”. The motivation is not philosophical: “It’s just a nice way of making a T-shirt.”

They started with very limited runs, having “spent most of our frighteningly small amount of money on business cards and stationery”. Factories were convinced to make six items, as uneconomic as it might be. And today shirts are usually only made in runs of 70 in each colour; there will be just 100 of the shawl-collar cardigans across five sizes.

What began as necessity is now a nice push for quick sales among loyal customers, anxious not to miss out on new lines. I realised that to my cost a couple of weeks ago, when I popped into the shop and fell in love with the Alpine jacket. Made of Ventile like the new mac (a pure-cotton fabric used by Arctic explorers, as synthetics can freeze and crack), it has taped seams and would have been perfect for cycling into work. But they only had two left, both in big sizes.

Fortunately, I did get some great chinos – and here’s another tailoring link. When James and Alastair were coming up with this cut they went to a trouser cutter, not a designer, without any preconceptions of what they should look like. The result is jeans and chinos that fit a lot more like suit trousers, with a higher and darted waist. We’re not talking wear-with-braces height, on your belly button, but just an inch higher than normal jeans – making them far more comfortable and yet still narrow and stylish through the leg.

“When trousers are designed for fit they are surprisingly comfortable,” says James. “At least, surprising for all those who have been wearing tight jeans on their hips.”

The other great design element is the coin pocket. You know that little pocket normally tucked inside the side pocket on trousers, which is too small and narrow to get anything in, and even if you did get anything in you couldn’t get it out? Well here it’s wider, shallower and an inch below the waistband. You will actually put change in there.

Albam is also good value for money, rather like bespoke. It’s easy to be cynical about pricing: without knowing a brand’s exact margins, ‘value’ can seem like so much marketing. But once you’ve talked through the elements that go into an Albam product, you’re convinced as you can be without getting out the accounts. It’s rather like a recent comment on my series about making George Cleverley shoes, which said: “By the time you’ve read all the posts you feel exhausted. You just want to give them the two grand and not hear from them again until the things are done.”

Production in England (and shirts finished in Portugal) is obviously more expensive. But materials are the big expense. The fabric most hiking jackets are made out of will cost you £1 or £2 a metre; that Ventile stuff is more like £20. And RiRi zips (see my post on their quality here) will set you back around another £10 each. Suddenly it’s surprising the chinos are only £89. But again, there is little pretense: “I’d like to make clothes that are like Marks & Spencer used to be. When you’d go in wanting a navy cardigan and find exactly what you wanted, well made and well cut, for a decent price,” says James.

Every season James and Alastair like to think they improve the clothes they do, gradually but methodically. The piece that first made them famous, a fisherman’s cagoule, has gone through several iterations – adding a better button, then a better thread, later a stronger draw cord, eventually corozo-nut buttons, finally better corozo buttons. They are happy to upgrade items when customers notice theirs have been superseded. “And our customers notice,” says James. Apparently some are just as obsessive about cotton macs I am about welting.

New lines drop into Albam all the time. The best place to keep up to date with them is the behind the scenes blog, but look out on Permanent Style for updates as well. Rumour has it they might even be making some of those Alpine jackets again. Here’s typing with crossed fingers.

Photography: Andy Barnham

Huntsman tweed suit: Part 1

This marks the beginning of a new series of posts tracking the making of a Huntsman tweed shooting suit. A three-piece with plus-twos in one of this year’s house tweeds (above, right, and second from the left on the sleeves).

The tweed is a revival of one first made in 1968. Every two years Huntsman commissions a range of new tweeds from the 450-year-old Islay Woolen Mill in the Inner Hebrides, which resurrect an old design from the firm’s archives. (It has been using that mill for the past 12 years, ever since it was recommended by a client from San Francisco who stumbled across it while in Scotland.)

The pattern for the collection is taken from the old design, as are the colours for one tweed, while the background colours for the rest are standard browns, lovat, biscuit etc. The precise colour combinations are chosen by Hunstman staff (and occasionally clients) when they receive a large blanket from the mill covering 50-odd swatches (this series will feature a post on the new blanket when it arrives later in the year).

The mill receives guidance from general manager Peter Smith and his team. In the current collection, for example, Peter suggested a lot of lilac in the green tweed you can see on the model above. Despite that, and the rather unusual shade of blue, this tweed was one of the first to sell out. Then again, to retain their uniqueness only 60 metres of the tweeds are ordered each time – since some customers order a shooting suit with both plus-twos and trousers, that 60 metres doesn’t go very far.

To publicise the tweeds this year, Huntsman made up the lovely patched jacket you can see below, featuring tweeds from the 1960s to the present. Although it was only a showpiece for the window, they ended up selling four of the jackets – though some customers requested a little less pink here, a bit more blue there. It takes the idea of commissioning cloth to a whole new level.


The 2011/12 tweeds will revive the pattern from 1977 - the yellow with large twill you can see on the far right, centre, on the jacket above. Above that is a brown tweed with red check from 2001, to its left is a pink from 2004, going left still is a sparse check from 2008 and next to that is the 1968/2010 check with horizontal brown stripe I am having made.

There is also an 1980s check there, the orange and cream on the far left, centre. And below that is a grey check from 1999. It’s interesting to see how patterns and colours change over time, from the simple to the variegated, and which ones are considered suitable for the present day. Fashions come full circle.

I’m pleased with my tweed – I think the browns and blues will make it easy to wear casually with jeans or cords. And the brown background is slightly more modern than the greens or biscuit.

Next: Design and measuring

Photography: Andy Barnham

More buckskin, grey flannel jacket

Father and sons foregather for Harvard

Esquire, June 1953: "There's a shoht cheeyah for Haahvuhd in both these costumes, although in basic detail they are both right for both sides of the embattled lines that draw up in New London to watch the Harvard-Yale classic. Anyway, papa's carnation is Harvard red, and there is a Cantabridgian cast to the colour scheme of son's accessories. Yale men may solve this dilemma by substituting a blue cornflower for the Harvard red carnation - and so on throughout.

The younger man's outfit consists of a gabardine suit, with waistcoat left home, a white oxford button-down collared shirt, hound's-tooth cotton tie, horizontal stripe lisle hose, white buckskin shoes with red rubber soles and heels and a sennit straw. The other outfit has a grey flannel jacket, white cricket cloth slacks, broadcloth tab collar shirt, guard's tie of the Royal Artillery, combination last sports shoes and a brown snap brim hat."

There we go with buckskin again, and coincidentally the tennis shoes we featured a while back were in nubuck (though lined in red, rather than soles of red). Elsewhere, I love the idea of wearing my grey flannel DB jacket with white slacks. Don't get that many days bright enough in rainy London though...

Graham Browne, W Bill cashmere blazer

I got my cashmere blazer from Graham Browne this week, commissioned a couple of months ago following the plan more more soft, unlined jackets (post here).

The cloth is from W Bill, cashmere and in a rather chunky, open weave that makes it even softer to wear. The buttons are wooden, from haberdashers MacCulloch & Wallis just off Bond Street. Three button, it features patch breast and hip pockets, each with their own welt. There is also a collar tab that fastens across the neck and a button under the lapel to button there. I also went for a half lining, to enhance that sweater-like design.

That photo in colour

Thanks to those that sent in the picture of this handsome gentleman in colour. I like the shade of buckskin that is revealed, but am a little worried about the tan suit with 'burgundy' polo shirt. White buttons too.