Worn

Home — Worn

Garments are made as and when — as and when cloth is available, as and when designs are ready, as and when weather turns. Since this page shows garments being worn, it too is updated as and when, steadily through the year.

The peacoat here is made with heavy uniform melton, which is so-called because it is melton used for actual uniforms (actual very heavy uniforms, for the British Army) which were in vogue 120 years ago, and was woven all the way back then by the actual same mill as now, in the Heavy Woollen District of West Yorkshire.

There are two pockets on each side of the peacoat, which in tandem try to make life as pleasing as possible for the wearer. The patch pockets are the most obvious; less so the “warmer” pockets, built into the front body seam. These are partly submerged within the patch pockets, and thus can occupy a lower position on the body, making the resting of tired hands or the stuffing of cold ones among the most satisfying physical actions imaginable.

The scarf is made in the old-school hand-framed method with cashmere-cotton yarn. Both fibres are spun and blended together in Scotland by a mill with well over a century of experience of doing so.

Sporting a bathrobe in public was once the preserve of the rich, eccentric, or unreasonably confident, but was put within the grasp of everyone else in 2019 with the debut of the tielocken. It has no buttons, but rather a multi-buckled belt making for one of the most intuitive and satisfying fastening systems imaginable.

The field shirt struggles to do anything in an orthodox manner. It has, for instance, a seamless, whole-cut upper body, massive pockets which run right into the front placket, and removable horn buttons. A panoply of alternative solutions rendered here in 27oz melton from West Yorkshire.

There’s no such word as “balmacaan’t”. What there is, though, is balmacaan, which is a coat named after a loch-laden forested region of Scotland. This one is made with tweed from County Donegal in Ireland, which with buttons from the Midlands and manufacturing in London make for a truly isle-trotting walking coat.

The face here says it all. It speaks of the profound personal reverie of the geelong lambswool balaclava. While the face can be fully exposed — the front of the balaclava is hinged so it may be hooked below the chin — why such an eventuality would ever transpire given such heavenly lanolin-scented bliss is anybody’s guess.

The tielocken here is made with woollen corduroy, which is what happens when the two best imaginable galaxies collide (in Somerset). It has an inverted pleat running almost the entirety of its considerable length, which unusually is made simply with a succession of origami-like folds rather than any additional pieces of cloth.

This version of the SB3 is a gift for anyone predisposed to imparting textile know-how — as in, “This old thing? Well, it’s woven in Yorkshire with double-ply yarn, hence the raised texture in the weave, as well as high tensile-strength and abrasion-resistance. And since you didn’t ask, it’s 21mn merino, thus the really soft handle.”

The knit above is the gansey: a new, eight-ply, tuck-stitched bruiser of a pullover, with a neck that’s half rollneck and half not. And the jacket here is the cooks jacket, which is not only double-breasted but also reversible, with one side a tough worsted canvas and the other a cosy moleskin. Reversible buttons, even, too.

If you really take time to look into the origin of these things, you’ll learn that a Chesterfield is a long, tailored overcoat — its name and prominence attributed to George Stanhope, the sixth Earl of Chesterfield, whose sartorial endeavours in the early 19th-century made him the toast of menswear bloggers countrywide.

The Scots who prepare the yarn that goes into this crewneck don’t rinse and finish it with water from the local loch for the fun of it. Rather, those waters have proven themselves over the past couple of centuries to have just the right acidity and mineral content to bring out the best from the finest and fluffiest fibres in the world — in this instance, long-staple lambswool, shorn from sheep indistinguishable from walking clouds were it not for the four little legs on which they teeter. The yarn is then whisked to the opposite corner of the Isles for a hand-framed, fully-fashioned, and hand-linked knitting master-class.

Melton doesn’t get more marbled than here on the field shirt. Look at it — a tangled, gnarled surface of soft grey yarn, milled to just the right degree so it is compact and firm, without losing its flow and drape. Hard-wearing, too, hailing as it does from a mill that has supplied the military with such stuff for 200 years.

This trench is made with natte tweed — “natte”, at least in textile dictionaries from the turn of the century, being French for hopsack. The yarn with which it is woven hails from the backs, sides, and tummies of heritage-breed sheep, most or perhaps all of whom are lucky enough to call the moors of North Yorkshire their home.

The three metres of cloth that go into the peacoat are woven with worsted-spun yarn, and so have a striking lustre about them. No plain old melton, this, then. It is heavily milled, after weaving, too, so those fine strands of yarn are coaxed together to make an already dense proposition denser and denser and, yes, even denser still.

Sure, it seems a little overblown to describe things pulled over the head as engineered, but for the two knitted articles here, no other descriptor quite fits. From the precise front-back balance in the body (easier said than done when the front is a third heavier to encourage layering) to those fully fashioned shoulders (the v-neck has a saddle shoulder; the cardigan a half-raglan) to the three rows of elastic at the edge of the cuffs for just the right level of snap at the wrist — it’s a lot of work, all told, and while engineered sure sounds high-falutin, let never the dexterous, delicate, and dozen-stage work of a hand-framed knitting maestro go underblown.