August — October 2018

The cloth from which the SB and shorts are made really puts the local into locally made two-ply tropical worsted. It is made with wool from Cheviot sheep across North Yorkshire, and is woven and finished in textile facilities dotted along the border of Yorkshires North and West. In fact, it all comes together, from flock to ex-factory, within a radius around the Dales and Moors, of about twenty miles.
The lightest cloth at the workshop is also, by quite some margin, the toughest. It is a ripstop of aramid fibres, which makes it (a) the first synthetic cloth ever used, and (b) of weapons-grade strength. It is, at the same time, soft, fade-resistant, and abrasion-proof. Overqualified, all told, for the parka and flight jacket you see here.

The work jacket is made with sail-cloth from Scotland — from a mill sat besides the once-bustling shipping lanes of the River Tay. It is a tough, weatherproof cotton, with the texture of duck-canvas, and is put to use here on the so-many-pockets-you-lose-count work jacket, and has gained a large collar since last time.

Knitwear for the warmer months of the year is by necessity lighter in weight than its more common and arguably more necessary winter counterpart. That’s not to say, though, that it need be any less interesting. The v-neck here is knitted in super-soft cotton, with a textured tuck-stitch front, a more light and flat back and sleeve — easier to slide a jacket over the top — and with inverted seams here and there, to ramp up the texture still further.

Here's the v-neck again — this time in a warm Caramac-like colour. It is worn with a shirt made with parachute cotton, which actually is cloth for parachutes, made with the most fine Egyptian cotton yarn, which is also mercerised like sewing thread to make it incredibly strong. And a trench, too — this one made with Ventile Canvas.

Endless, it seems, are the uses to which the weatherproof ripstop from West Yorkshire may be put. First the parka and flight jacket in blue, seen earlier, and now the car coat in a sand-colour variant of the cloth. It is worn here with a particularly light and slinky polo shirt, made in super-soft cotton, and fully fashioned and hand-linked for a shapely and comfortable fit.

The donkey jacket utilises not one but two cottons from Scotland. The lighter one — though lighter is very relative here, since both are abnormally substantial — is a weatherproof plain-weave and adorns the top of the jacket; the heavier one, a sail-cloth nothing if not hard-wearing, is used for the bulk of the jacket body and sleeve.

The field coat is a fairly traditional take on technical outerwear, with pockets not only bellowed, enveloped and floating, but also the secret channel for the belt. It is all wrapped up in cotton which is brushed, sanded, tumbled, and then impregnated (unfortunately the term) with stay-wax to make it extremely good in wind and rain.

The linen here is, in truth, far too fine for shirts. It is, rather, woven in Northern Ireland with yarn of the very longest staple, then sanforised and mercerised, with the hope that it'll one day be used for fine tailored jackets. The coat, meanwhile, is a balmacaan: a real bruser, made in heavy stay-wax cotton from Scotland.

Worn erstwhile

    • March — September 2021
      The debuts of the duster, the smock, the DB, and the knitted t-shirt make a mockery of the notion that less (clothing) is more in the warmer weeks of the year.
    • October 2020 — February 2021
      Many old-stagers from autumns and winters past — the duffle coat, the balmacaan, the peacoat, and the donkey jacket — made returns in refined form.
    • April — September 2020
      From the poolside (the popover) to the coast (the boatneck) via the railroad (the engineer) — the only way to travel (literally) during a pandemic lockdown.
    • September 2019 — March 2020
      The tielocken and peacoat found their feet in new heavy woollens from the south and north respectively, while the balaclava, gansey and cooks jacket made their debut.
    • March — August 2019
      The return of cotton airweave from east Lancashire, and a cloth from North Yorkshire that really puts the local into locally made two-ply tropical worsted.
    • November 2018 — February 2019
      The tielocken and parka joined the trench in the big-coats-with-belts aisle, while the bal returned in tweed from a mill whose loom was built by the local coffin-maker.
    • August — October 2018
      Weatherproof ripstop and tropical worsted, the debut of the field coat, and a cavalcade of cotton knits were the talk of the workshop in the warmer parts of 2018.
    • October 2017 — July 2018
      Heavyweight outerwear galore — with the old guard of trench coat, peacoat, duffle coat, and balmacaan, joined by the topcoat, donkey jacket, and flight jacket.
    • July — September 2017
      New textures for what are quaintly called the warmer months of the year — like a two-ply birdseye, replicating cloth of the 1920s, and a Flyweight flavour of Ventile.
    • September 2016 — June 2017
      Angora, peccary leather, melton, cotton and linen with some wool mixed in, even some blanketing — a melting of materials for an unusually warm end to the year.
    • April — August 2016
      Texture, let it be known, is a quality tricky to come by in the warmer months, here in the British Isles. But look — hopsacks, tuck-stitches, and herringbones galore.
    • September 2015 — March 2016
      The heavy Donegal tweed balmacaan made its debut, as did the heavy duffle coat and, indeed, the heavy fur-felt hat. Lots of heavy things, then, for the colder months.
    • March — August 2015
      New linens came to the forefront: linen from the south coast of Ireland; linen hand-woven in the Outer Hebrides; linen knitted into crewnecks and cardigans.
    • September 2014 — February 2015
      Cloth development came thick and fast: yarn-dyed Ventile at the start of the period, and tweed made with organic and heritage fleece in the Inner Hebrides at the close.
    • January — August 2014
      Along came the SB1 jacket in hand-woven indigo cotton, the link-stitch crewneck and cardigan, the porkpie Ventile cotton hat, and a brace of cottons from Lancashire.
    • September — December 2013
      The cotton-twill trench coat rounded the year off, but before that came the peacoat and SB3 in Donegal's finest, as well as lambswool knitwear both heavy and light.
    • January — August 2013
      The first half of the year began with the three-button Tetris tweed blazer and concluded with an assortment of corduroy and cotton numbers — plus some shorts.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • August — November 2011
      The last few months of 2011 witnessed the release of the chalkstripe-wool seam overshirt, the hopsack tweed neat jacket, and the birdseye wool-cashmere blazer.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.