The collarless overshirt — a union of Lancastrian cord and cotton-drill — has more going on inside than out.
Built in 1895, the workshop has seen better days, but after three months of rehabilitation is ready for visitors.
Made by an outerwear specialist in North London, the raglan shirt has overshirt-like sturdiness.
Few get-ups get a rap so bad, but start with steadying Lancastrian linen, and a new school of linen-ism awaits.
To complement last week’s corduroy tour jacket come two new bottom-half-bedecking instances of wale-wear.
The tour jacket can be slung, rucksack-like, onto the back. Good for touring — or, more likely, being out and about.
The dry-waxed mac marries the weather-proof properties of British Millerain with a bespoke-made wool-cashmere.
The finest mohair mill in the country, doing what it does — on video.
Fifteen “high summer” garments made and sent over to Japan in six short weeks over Christmas and New Year.
Coming soon: a workshop on Boundary St. in London. As its name implies, part of it is for work and part of it is shop.
The newest makers write-up returns to West Yorkshire, and a place at the top table of domestic manufacturing.
Had a hard but character-building upbringing, the birdseye wool-cashmere cloth of the three-button blazer.
Offers little in terms of details, trims, or stitches, the Donegal minimal cardigan, but nor does it much need them.
Makes for deceptively steadying knitwear, the moss stitch — the all-new button-up crewneck cardigan, for instance.
The chalk-stripe woollen seam overshirt: the first fruits of partnership with a mohair mill in West Yorkshire.
The neat jacket might be a simple-looking garment, but below its surface are one or two autumn-aiding peculiarities.
The second serving of a behind-scenes look at West Yorkshire’s — if not the country’s — oldest and finest cashmere maker.
Flecked wool-cashmere and ten-wale cord on the outside, warm wool-melton inside, and winter-proof quilting between.
Some soft but steadying Yorkshire-spun lambswool and three fit-for-purpose stitches make up the Nottinghamshire-made three-stitch rollneck jumper.
Production: back on track. The first bunch of autumn-ready garments are off the line at a new London factory.
Take a penny collar, neaten it up, then add a tab to brings its points together — do that and you get a Kelly collar.
First of a two-parter. Words and pictures from a world-beating mill in West Yorkshire in the north of England.
Two sturdy cotton-panama overshirts, with large pocketing, at the light-jacket end of the overshirt continuum.
Cumbria-made cotton pinpoint shirts: expertly woven, satisfyingly crisp, and disciplined with a good wash.
A four-button jacket, made from crisp, comfortable cotton-drill, and intended to be worn in two different ways.
Horn buttons makers in the British Isles weren’t always so tricky to come by, but now, for one well-trod reason or another, this is only one.
Not the most prepossessing of places, the workroom, but a textbook example of the sort of place that the trade really would be lost without.
Shirts made from an organic linen, sourced from a mill between the Pennines and the Calder in West Yorkshire.
Short, three-buttoned and step-collared, the blazer — and a welcome return to lightweight Lancastrian corduroy.
The pockets of mills in south-east Gloucestershire are a prolific source of good wools — not least the charcoal wool-cashmere used for shirting this winter.
Grey and navy moss-stitch crewnecks for Book No. 1, knitted by a family-run mill in Nottingham in numbers that are comfortably counted on one hand.
Occupying wardrobe middle-ground, the turned-down collar overshirt is available for Autumn and Winter 2010 in slate grey and mustard cotton-twill.
The first work jacket of the season is nothing if not winter-proof, constructed as it is from the most stouthearted cotton-twill the north-west has to offer.
With summer steadily drawing to a close, and the crisp days of early autumn imminent, the first group of new season garments have arrived.
With five generations of experience, our supplier of horn buttons — one of the last few in England — knows a thing or two about making them.
Where would Preface be without a few good bloggers? Still in the stockroom, most likely.
“Always a pleasure, never a chore” goes our new printer’s byline.
Preface is a small set of garments for summer 2010. It has been put together with mills and co-operatives from Lancashire to Cumbria, and from the Midlands to London.
It is no slight pleasure to announce that S.E.H Kelly is now up and running and online.