Tailoring for Women

If you look for a definition of ‘uniform’ you will find that it stresses similarity and consistency.  Indeed one of the purposes of a ‘uniform’ is to lend a feeling of cohesion to groups that want or need to be identified as a unit; the police, football teams and their supporters, symphony orchestras are all examples of this.  One of the major challenges with uniforms however, is that the people who wear them are not uniform.  I recently worked with a designer on a project that brought these differences into stark relief and the impact this can have if a project is not sensitively managed.

There seem to be three matters involved that have to be in alignment; the requirements and expectations of the wearers and their employers, the need to create economies in scale, and the design that will determine the final result.  Of these, it is the handling of the level of the wearer’s expectation that seems to play a vital role.

The needs of an employer are normally driven by their brand’s positioning and how this should be perceived.  This implies something that carries the branded colours and possibly other elements of the brand’s identity such as the logo.  For the wearer it is more to do with fit and personal comfort.  This is where things start to get complicated, because to completely satisfy individual needs the bespoke element has to come into play.  Usually with the mass production of a line of garments the tolerances have to be much greater to allow for the differences in body shape, the result is a corresponding economy in scale for their production.  As soon as the bespoke element starts to creep in the situation becomes much more complex with the cost model quite different from that originally proposed.  It is the age old formula of ‘cost v time v quality’ at play.

Add to this design elements which may not have fully considered the needs of the work force and  difficulties can emerge.  For example taking into account whether or not one’s staff spend most of their days sitting or standing can have considerable impact on the way in which the design should be worked through; close fitting flat-fronted trousers can look extremely chic for people whose work entails a lot of standing, but for those who spent most of their work life seated they can be a nightmare.

So I would suggest that designers, in support of the clients who commission them, should consider a little more the sensibilities of those who will be wearing the finished article, these people will after all become the biggest advocates of the branding exercise if their needs are accommodated.

Photo: thanks to US Military from http://www.army.mil/asu/resources.html

We have written about the credit crunch in other posts, however this particular project we undertook recently with Malcolm Plews of the tailoring house Welsh and Jefferies was an opportunity for clothes to ‘bite back’. And it involved a fashion student; Katie Robinson.

From time to time we try to make space to work with up and coming students in the clothing industry. Their ideas can be really refreshing and it gives us the opportunity to keeping in touch with current trends.

Katie’s particular specialisation is textile design and this collection, ‘Boom and Bust’, is inspired by the traumas of the City over the last few months.

The print designs were created on a range of different fabrics and used a number of iconic motifs such as the gold chip on a credit card, and embossed coinage.

After the fabric came the construction; I worked on the women’s business suit, Malcolm the men’s, and the one and only Delroy Mitchell produced the shirts.  I wonder if it is the first time a graduation show has had such a back stage representation from Savile Row?

Here is the collection, beautifully captured by the photographer Vicoria Brocklebank.

If all goes well, the collection will be selected for an independent London show at the East Winter Garden in Canary Warf on the 12th of June.

Good luck Katie!

I think it was the blues singer Corey Harris who said,  “in order to know where you’re going, you have to know where you’ve been”.  Last week I spent some time re-visiting an old friend with a view to making a new one.

This knee length dress in wool crepe was commissioned last year.  It came from the first client via our TfW blog who wanted a simple elegant piece to make an impact during a special viewing at Christies; the international auctioneers of fine art.

As an inspiration she suggested looking at the French designer André Courrèges,  famous for producing immaculately tailored sporting clothes in the mid 60′s.  He became known as the socialites’ couturier, and his clients included the Begum Aga Khan, Princess Lee Radziwill, and the Duchess of Windsor.  His signature silhouette for a dress was an “A” shape that bypassed and concealed the waist.

This rich red dress is made from double wool crepe selected at Joel & Sons. The fabric has a deep texture that can be indented by topstitching, a technique similar to quilting that was favoured by Courrèges.

Wool crepe has a characteristic crinkled granular appearance produced both by the special type of yarn used, and the distinctive way in which it is woven.  It also dyes well in any range of deep jewel or soft pastel colours, with the texture of the fabric enhancing its hue.

This cloth has many attractive properties for a tailor or couturier.  From a design and construction perspective the relaxed weave allows a slight “give” in all directions, making it possible to shape and mold the cloth into sculptural lines that follow the contours of the body.  Newly developed stretch linings are compatable with an outer crepe layer to accommodate any movement.

For the wearer it creates a garment that is comforatable all year round.  It will also be durable, perfect for travel, easy to care for, and equally suitable for boardroom, day or evening wear.

There is a re-emerging trend for dresses as they seem to offer the ideal solution as an alternative to the more conventional skirt and jacket combination.  They are easy to accesorize and to wear with other separates.

Returning to our crimson friend above, in a short while it will return to the closet with a new companion to share the rail.

“Show me where you work; show me how you do it”.

I am thrilled by the way my clients want to collaborate in the design of their garments.  Their curiosity seems to be twofold: a desire to learn more about the practical details; cloth, techniques, tools.  Secondly, an intrigue with the more artistic side of things such as proportion, colour balance, placement of detail etc.

I have been thinking about some of the parallels with architecture.

A building is made from both rigid and flexible elements.  The final structure has to be strong enough to maintain its form, but possess a degree of flexibility as the climate, inside and out, affects the physics of the materials from which it is made.  So, the constituent components all influence each other.

Garments crafted in the art of bespoke are created in a similar way – with a unique layering of materials and methods of combining them.  The art lies in achieving a finished product that is soft on the body but at the same time accentuates the natural attributes of the materials used.

Some materials making up the inner architecture of a bespoke suit are:

• chest canvas – short, coarse fibres in the weave provide foundation and allow flexibility
• laptair – long, rigid fibres supporting the weft of a fabric help preserve its width.
• domette – soft, supple cloth secured over the coarser fibres of the laptair preventing their intrusion past the inner linings.
• silesia – a strong, densely woven fabric that adds a stable foundation in the fixing of other materials
• pocketings – robust enough to hold an array of objects yet retain its shape, and be comfortable on the skin

These materials are layered and secured with a matrix of different types of stitches, each backing the other up.

• basting cotton – soft thread for loose stitching such as padding and basting which can be easily removed
• poly-cotton blend – used for machining and some hand sewing
• silk – because of its lustre and strength it is used for the final topstitching and buttonholes
• polyester – strongest, the thickest grades are used for backstitching

“The sewing machine is used for almost all seams and darts, but 75% of all stitches in a bespoke made suit are still done by hand, to ensure the most accurate shaping of the fabric.  Today’s tailors continue to practice their art almost exactly as it was practiced a century ago.  Not because slower is necessarily better, but because these methods produce body and form, detail and durability which newer faster methods of tailoring are simply unable to equal.”
(Classic Tailoring Techniques.  Roberto Cabrera/Patricia Flaherty Meyers.)

With modern, mass produced clothing, many of these details are eliminated.  One example is the way in which many layers are secured by one line of machine stitching.  If this line breaks, then it all breaks.

We spend our lives wrapped up in our clothes – we might as well know something about them!

What an unexpected, and intriguing pleasure it was to meet with Grayson Perry the other night at the opening of the exhibition of works by the artist Kishio Suga.  Suga-san is one of the leading artists of the Mono-ha School (The School of Things); a movement that swept the Japanese art worldfrom the end of the 1960s through the 1970s.  The exhibition was held at the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation in Regents Park and was timed to complement  the Frieze Art Fair.

Grayson is an admirer of  Suga-san’s work and after the initail presentation we had time to chat.  I have long wanted to talk to Grayson, not only about his work as an artist, but more irresistibly, about his passion for cross-dressing and the role he plays in the design and making of his striking garments.  Luckily there was a photographer close by and we were able to capture the moment before he was whisked away.

We talked in particular about the Art of Savile Row and I mentioned its eponymous BBC TV programme when he was featured commissioning a suit from Richard James.   I remember a fascinating bit of perceptions at play between the customer and his tailor which had to be worked through. A kind of ‘Victor/Victoria moment’ came to mind!.

The designer/maker issue came up and how rare it is for there to be a shared understanding of the actual making side. I told him a story about working with a certain feisty French designer who handed me a set of cartoons – over exaggerated, with proportinally distorted figures in ‘anti-gravity’ poses.  To prove a point, our team of makers decided to build one of his Safari jackets to scale and the result was something of a hibrid, somewhere between  Dan Leno and the corps de ballet.

Very pleasant indeed to have such an exchange over a glass of wine…By the way…he has sensational legs………..!

Photos: thanks to www.peopleplayuk.org.uk and www.commonwealthballet.org