Reader Questions

From Sam

"Since my lifestyle does not require me to wear a suit on a daily basis, I find odd jackets to be more useful and versatile than suits. I prefer a 1-button jacket a-la Huntsman style and will most likely commission a notch lapel jacket with patch pockets and side vents from my tailor. What would you say is the quintessential fall jacketing?"

Since it's for Fall, the jacket should probably be tweed (like the one on the Prince of an actor in the photo) unless you've already got an abundance of tweed jackets.

Gray Harris tweed (or a black and white houndstooth) is useful if you're going to wear the coat principally while earning a living. If it's for the country, or for a campus, consider a Breanish or a Donegal in tan or orange (like the ones from Andrew Elliot Ltd).


From Raymond

"I thought that perhaps you could help me navigate a situation. I ordered a few made to measure shirts from a well known artisan and the sleeves are simply too short. Everything else is great. Is this a do over? Or are shirtmakers able to simply make new sleeves? Should I insist on new shirts?"

First order? Since you didn't mention it, I presume there was not a sample shirt made before the rest of the order to get the fit right. In that case, if you did nothing to cause the sleeves to be too short, the maker should fix them at its expense. Reputable shirtmakers will do so, and hopefully you are dealing with one of them.

If they do agree to fix the problem, how they fix it will be up to them. They should be able to replace the sleeves without you being able to tell any difference.

Odd Jackets

I don't believe that a classic wardrobe requires many odd jackets. They are very useful when you need something to throw on above a pair of cords, but a flannel, tweed or linen suit looks as good or better at other times.

That doesn't mean odd jackets are not perfectly acceptable for lunch at the club, Sunday worship and any business trip where you'll arrive too late for a meeting. It just means that they are a discretionary purchase once you have a few of them. I think four or five of them cover the basics, with two or three pairs of trousers that you can wear with each jacket.

For spring and summer, you should have a navy blazer of 10 oz. fresco. A tan linen or fresco jacket makes a good change of pace. Complementary trousers could include tan and cream linen, light gray and tan fresco, and tan and khaki cotton drill.

For fall and winter you’ll want to start with a blazer of blue flannel or serge, and one or two tweed jackets. Medium and dark gray flannel trousers go with almost any jacketing. Tan cavalry twill is also a classic with the navy jacket and corduroy looks great with tweed.

A great feature of odd jackets is that they give you quite a bit of room to exercise your creativity in the details while remaining appropriately dressed. A belted safari jacket, or safariana, can be a different look in warm weather. Patch and bellows pockets on a tweed coat, developed to hold shotgun shells, are a good place to put your Blackberry.

That flexibility is probably enough reason to have more than four or five of them.

A Tweed Coat Story

Many of my favorite articles of clothing have histories attached to them. This is the story of a tweed topcoat that took about two years from thought to realization.

The best source I've found for ideas on classic men's clothing are drawings of what men were wearing in the 1930's. Most of those are found in back issues of the late and lamented Apparel Arts magazine.

The drawing to the left of a topcoat for country wear struck a cord with me. I needed a light coat to wear over a jacket in the Northern California countryside and this design seemed just right. Unfortunately, I didn't see a cloth that I liked in the swatches that were available to me at the time. So, like many other of my clothing ideas, it went in a drawer and stayed there for a while.

Months later, I stumbled upon Magee in Dublin. The parent company of Magee is the largest weaver of Donegal tweed and Magee Shops in Ireland and the UK offer lengths of it that have been hand woven by artisans using traditional manual looms. Magee showed me swatches of a blue 15 ounce cloth that was a blend of mohair and wool, with nubs of maroon and other colors, and I ordered a length. It was out of stock but arrived eventually. When it did I sent it to my tailor.

When the coat finally arrived it was Spring, and the coat sat in my closet for most of a year before I got a chance to wear it. But when the weather finally turned cold it was perfect. It looks comfortable with tweed caps and over tweed suits. The cloth repels moderate amounts of rain, and the weight is just about right for the Northern California winter. Best of all, I get more wear from it than I do from a covert coat made from 18 ounce wool because, unlike the covert, the sun can come out and the temperature rise without my starting to perspire.