Worn
The navy mac is made from weather-proof Ventile cotton — defining invention of the brainboxes of the Shirley Institute of Manchester in the 1930s — and has a detachable brushed-cotton liner. Useful, then, in rain and shine, and in weather from nought to thirty — and therefore just the ticket for a typical spring morning.
The jacket here is reversible. It is, in effect, two, relaxed and lightly structured, jackets stitched together, with mid-blue herringbone linen on one side, and lighter blue on the other. The dark side, seen here, has a button-through chest pocket and concealed side-seam pockets; the lighter side has both A4 and mid-size hip pockets.
The shirt here — made of Cumbrian cotton-oxford — has a Kelly collar: a collar with rounded points and a button-loop fastening. Fastening the collar brings the two collar points together — with the bottom section pulled together and the top bulging out. The effect you end up with isn’t dissimilar to when wearing a tie-pin.
The herringbone cotton cardigan is hand-loomed by a family-run knitwear maker in the south-west. Hand-looming means that garment is knitted, slowly and meticulously, on a human-sized contraption by a human-sized human — rather than with the industrial and mechanised knitting methods of the day.
The two-tone seam overshirt, as its name suggests, is made from two colours of cloth — a narrow herringbone linen from Ireland. Top half and sleeves are a weave of ecru and navy; the bottom half light-blue and navy. The seam, which runs across the chest of the overshirt, conceals a pocket, on the left-hand side as worn.
Previously
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- August — December 2012
- Heavyweight tuck-stitch jumpers, the wool-tweed peacoat made with the one-man-mill, and the debut of both the reversible jacket and the Ventile mac.
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- December 2011 — June 2012
- Early spring was met by the British Millerain dry-wax and cashmere mac, and kept busy with the linen suit, new tour jacket, and two-button neat jacket.
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- August — November 2011
- The last few months of 2011 had the release of the chalkstripe-wool seam overshirt, the hopsack tweed neat jacket, and the birdseye wool-cashmere blazer.
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- February — May 2011
- Spring and early summer saw linen semi-cutaway shirts, the horizontal cord blazer, panama stowaway overshirts, and the cycle-friendly brushed cotton tour jacket.
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- September 2010 — January 2011
- The work jacket made a first appearance in French navy cotton-twill and charcoal wool-cashmere. And, on the knitwear front, Shetland Isle moss-stitch jumpers.
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- May — August 2010
- Five mostly interchangeable garments were made over the middle months of the year: two semi-cutaway shirts, two cotton-drill trousers, and a corduroy overshirt.
