The State of Things

Expect things to be a little different around ASW early in December. A number of distinguished guest authors will be taking my place for about a week, which will have the benefit of raising the quality of the prose for a few days. At the same time the store will indeed be open (you will know when the advertising appears on the site), with the caveat that we have had a setback with the design so the presentation will be less than the standard to which I aspire. The products are of course unaffected.

With luck, ASW itself should be back to normal by December 10.

A Selection of Squares

Well-dressed men wear cotton and linen pocket squares with worsted suits and silk versions with odd jackets and tweed or flannel suits. The sheen of the silk is best against textured jackets. Both the pattern and the ground color of the square should differ from the day's necktie.

A cream printed silk with blue and yellow flowers coordinates ever so discretely with a light blue shirt.


A combination of colored squares on a steel blue ground complements a navy necktie.


And large gold paisleys are comfortable on a navy ground against gray flannel as well as brown tweed jackets.

Each square has hand-rolled edges and is 16 1/2" (42 cm) on a side so it remains visible in a pocket. $90 for one, including shipping in the continental United States, from A Suitable Wardrobe.

Book Review: The Fall of Huntsman

Richard Anderson, author of Bespoke: Savile Row Ripped and Smooth, tells the tale of his career on Savile Row, from his years at an apprentice at Huntsman through his time as a cutter and eventually on to the founding of the house that bears his name.

Known for its clean, military influenced one button cut, for most of the post-War period Huntsman was the most expensive tailor on the Row. It justified its position by being the only firm to keep all production in house instead of using outworkers. Rather than the common practice where a coat was made by a single tailor from start until it was ready for trimming, Huntsman had experts dedicated to each individual stage of the make. The result, as anyone who has been the recipient of two jackets with significantly different looking internal construction can appreciate, was a more consistent product.

The book can be divided into three sections in chronological order. The tale of Anderson's years learning the trade is rich with observations about customers (the names have been changed due to Britain's strict libel laws) and the trade itself. The story of Anderson's own firm is of course the reason the book exists. In between we learn the story of how new owners put Huntsman on the road to its eventual bankruptcy. The book might easily have been titled The Fall of the House Of Huntsman.

Richard Anderson, the firm rather than the author, is one of the more interesting houses on or near the Row, and the tale of how it came to be is worthwhile for any man who bespeaks his clothing or hopes to one day.

A Lesson Learned

The best of all worlds - for the customer rather than the tailor - is that the customer should live within walking distance of his tailor. Those of us who don't get the short end when it comes to fittings.

Over the course of more than a century and hundreds of thousands if not millions of suits, jackets and overcoats, the world class tailoring houses settled on three fittings as the ideal interaction between customer and tailor. There is the basted ftting of the jacket pieces held together by basting thread, where major changes to the pattern can be accommodated. That is followed by the forward fitting, where the coat is usually (this step varies from house to house) substantially complete but missing details such as buttons. It is at the forward fitting where misunderstandings between tailor and customer are easiest to identify before they can no longer be changed without a great deal of delay. And then there is the final fitting, where the customer can usually expect to walk out of the shop with his new clothing.

It is when tailors travel to their customers, as they do for most of the things they make these days, that this sequence begins to break down. If the tailor visits twice a year, three fittings would mean as much as a two year wait between order and delivery and that is clearly not a viable option. So the usual process is to do away with the final fitting, and to offer a basted fitting for the first garment only, if at all. That means that a repeat customer can choose his cloth in November, have a fitting in March, and receive his completed clothes in time to wear them once or twice before his tailor returns and can discuss any required adjustments. Most of the time there are none.

In an effort to hold costs to the absolute minimum, Hong Kong's W. W. Chan goes so far as to dispense with fittings altogether unless the customer requests them. A fitting adds three months to the delivery cycle but I consider the step a necessity, particularly for the first two jackets when one's pattern is still in flux.

Chan's usual practice is to provide a basted fitting (that's Patick Chu of the Hong Kong shop removing padding from the shoulders of a basted jacket in the photo), and this is the best practice for new customers. Its downfall is that mis-interpretations of the order will often not be identifiable at this stage, or at least they were not for my first suit, an otherwise very satisfactory summer suit that was delivered with a different button arrangement than I ordered. But I found that the firm will provide a forward fitting instead, as it routinely does in Hong Kong, and I am adopting this practice going forward.

Lesson learned.

Tweed Shopping

The visit of tailors W. W. Chan to San Francisco this week meant another opportunity to go tweed shopping. Merchant W. Bill has a lovely book of hairy Donegal in a 14 ounce/420 gram weight that is about as good as a man can find. Of course, it does have an extra mark-up or two built in compared to the prices in Ireland.


Donegal comes as a plain weave, a twill or a herringbone and typically has slubs of color randomly woven into the pattern. The tan, in the photo at the top, makes a fine odd jacket that is a perfect foil for leather buttons, and the black and white (it resolves to gray from a distance) an excellent casual city suit. In navy blue (not shown), it makes up as an interesting odd jacket that works like a blazer.


W. Bill is also the principal source for tattersall plaids, the stuff that originated as horse blankets at London's Tattersall horse auction in the nineteenth century. It is also 14/15 ounce (420/450 gram) cloth for winter wear, and its best use is probably for odd vests. The blue on white check would work nicely under a blazer if only the climate here made vest-wearing practical more than one or two days a year.

Chan's departure brings the autumn's visiting season to a close, leaving us an interregnum until January when the London tailors will have their items ready for fitting.

A Carefree Scarf and Status Update

Scarves may be tied any number of ways, and perhaps the most carefree is the simple loop worn low around the neck. This one is not about the scarf's body heat retention. It is purely a look at me look, and sometimes that is the wearer's intention.

In the photo I am feeling somewhat carefree for a Sunday spent hard at work. The small storage and fulfillment space in the background is now operational and I am happy to report that the ASW web store should be up by December 1.

When open, the store will offer products from, in no particular order, Drake's London, Cravate Royale, Simonnot-Godard, E&G Cappelli, and Vanners along with a great Astrakhan hat. Gaziano & Girling shoes, Innis Meain knitwear, Albert Thurston braces and a few exotic hide belts will follow shortly thereafter, and there will be a couple more lines in the Spring. More than half of the items will be ASW designs that are exclusive to the store.

I have no plans to offer shirts or tailored clothing since, as regular readers know, I believe those should be made for the individual. But, to the best of my ability, everything that will be on offer will be worthy of your time.

In Memoriam

The photo shows the late President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, on the day of his assassination, November 22, 1963.

Kennedy was wearing one of his typical two button suits. Like the also deceased Duke of Windsor, JFK's single breasted jackets had buttons 2" above and 2" below the waist rather than the more common button on the waistline. This style looks best when both buttons are closed while standing, as compared to a conventional two button suit where the bottom button can literally not be closed without distorting the line of the jacket.

Some have speculated that Kennedy wore this design to conceal the brace he required because of his back problems but I have more than one photo of a pre-War JFK wearing the same style before he was injured. More likely it was simply his personal choice.

Photo: LIFE