The tielocken is a coat style from the glory days of outerwear past. "The smartness essential in a topcoat," as one old advert suggests, "allied to such dependable powers of protection as enable the wearer to face the worst weather without discomfort or risk to health — those are the characteristics which define the tielocken."
The tielocken, then, sits between formal overcoat and full-blown, double-breasted, protective outerwear. It sure has the collar and lapel of the former — with a smart narrow notch, with, though it can't be seen here, some careful hand-stitching that keeps the join of collar and lapel flush and tidy at all times.
The tielocken has four pockets at the front: below the large flap pockets can be found in-seam pockets, stationed at just the right lateral and longitudinal coordinates for the instinctive plunging-in of hands. One additional pocket — the obligatory in-breast pocket — is on the inside of the coat.
What defines the tielocken is the absence of any buttons at the front. Instead, the wearer feeds a belt through a slider fixed on a tab, then another slider on the opposite side, and then pulls the belt as tight as desired. It is surprisingly intuitive, and as satisfying a way to fasten a coat as could be conceived.
The belt is fixed to the tielocken at either side. It thus cannot be removed. It's with you for life. No belt-loops. No way for the belt to slip around and be at an inopportune position for grabbing and fastening — let alone getting lost. It's not going anywhere.
The back of the coat can be pulled together with a double-slider system at the back, rather like the strap of a bag. You can thus wear the coat open and loose, or open and pulled together at the back in a smart and gentlemanly manner.
There's a large inverted pleat all the way up the back of the coat, too, to give shoulders more room to flex and legs more room to kick. This pleat is fixed halfway up — beneath where the belt runs — to stop it from "bagging out", as the phrase goes.
The puritanical no-button stance of the coat is regrettably marred by a single round, solid horn article that sits on the inside of the coat. This of course is the jigger button, which helps to fix in place the underside of the coat before the topside is swept across and fastened with brass.
The tielocken has plain cuffs. Purely decorative, these — but what isn't? — and anyway a good and proper punctuation point to the sleeves.
One of the most novel aspects of the coat is its construction. It is a hybrid of two types of sleeve: the smart lines of a traditional inset sleeve at the front, but, at the back, a raglan sleeve. This provides great freedom of movement in the upper body: much more than a coat of this ilk would ordinarily provide.
Some hand-sewing here. The chain-stitch below the button-hole helps hold in place a boutonnière (a flower, for instance). The criss-cross ("duck") stitch, meanwhile, holds together the lapel and the collar so that, over time, one doesn't flap around independently of the other. Helpful little hidden handiwork.
The coat has an in-breast pocket — an internal chest pocket, that is — of the tidy jetted variety on the left side as worn.
The back of the tielocken is half-lined with grey melton — a hard-wearing material, full of character and gnarled yarns — from a mill in the Heavy Woollen District of West Yorkshire. It is an excellent outer cloth in its own right, but is here happy to play backup to its rather more fancy colleague.
Bedford cord is a type of cloth that bears the grooved appearance and texture of corduroy, but is woven in an entirely different way. This is a woollen example of the genre, and is made with soft lambswool — not too thick or dense, and thus a smart drape, but milled heavily for a soft, warm hand-feel.
