Last week I was in Brussels visiting the headquarters of cloth merchant Scabal. They moved buildings two years ago and now have an attractive, open-plan space on top of their warehouse.

That warehouse stores a lot of cloth. Most of the people are responsible for cutting it up and sending it to bespoke and MTM clients around the world.

But there is also a large group dedicated to making swatch books (or bunches) – the samples of cloth that customers can pick from.  

  
It’s quite a labour-intensive process. Cloth must be cut up into little rectangles on a press. Thick glue is used to bind these swatches to a piece of wood.

And one person puts a little sticker on each one, to identify it. She does them all one at a time – with a pair of tweezers.

“Why do we make our cloth books here?” Scabal executive chairman Gregor Thissen asks rhetorically, just as the same question occurs to me. “Why don’t we just outsource it and make them overseas?”

The answer is control, and to an extent service. Although swatch books might seem an odd thing to employ people to make in the middle of Brussels, it allows Scabal to do small runs, to personalise bunches, and to apply more levels of quality control. 
  

  
This has parallels with the theme that runs through most of my visit: the role of the cloth merchant. 

As a consumer, it is easy to identify with a mill. It weaves raw material; it has a long history; it is the place where the cloth comes from. (Not always, given the farmers/spinners/finishers also usually involved, but you see why it’s a nice story.)

The role of a merchant, like Scabal, is a harder one to empathise with. Don’t they just store the cloth and send it out to clients? Isn’t it just logistics and customer service? 
  

  
Part of it is about service. The fact Scabal re-checks every piece that comes in (even from its own mill, Bower Roebuck), for example, or the fact that it invests a lot in stock, so that it can guarantee a piece will never run out. 

But there’s also design. Scabal designs 600-700 new cloths every season, across the various weights and categories, with a total book of 5000.

Walk into Scabal on Savile Row – or in Brussels or Paris – and you can find anything from the super-number worsteds it is known for to heavy Irish linens, all designed by the same team under Michael Day, and all of which the salesman should be able to pick from and recommend alongside each other. 

If that’s your aim, it’s easier to see why you make your own swatch books. Plus Scabal invented them, back in 1938, which is a nice reason to carry on doing it.

(Back then their pioneering line was called ‘Superlana’. The company wouldn’t be known as Société Commerciale Anglo Belgo Allemande Luxembourgeoise – or Scabal for short – for another eight years. Oh, and in 1971 they commissioned Salvador Dali to design what men would be wearing in the 21st century. He predicted we’d all be dressing like peasants; he wasn’t far wrong.)

Last week the sale was finalised of the W Bill and Smith’s cloth brands to LBD Harrison‘s. The company, run by Mark Dunsford, has been built on acquisitions, starting with Pedersen & Becker over 20 years ago and more recently Porter & Harding, Harrison’s of Edinburgh and in 2010, H Lesser. So what does this increasing concentration of the industry mean for bespoke customers? 

Permanent Style: How long has this sale been in the works?

Mark Dunsford: Well given our acquisitions over the past few years, I think everyone knew we would be interested if another merchant was on the table. We all know each other and get along very well. So when David Graham, the owner, decided to retire he asked us if we wanted to talk about it. That was around 18 months ago.

Why did he want to sell? 

The company had been in the family for a while, but he’s 67 now and had enough of travelling around Europe I think. He also knew we had a fairly good track record with looking after these small British brands, so he would rather sell to us than to a larger company. He had bought W Bill himself in around 1990, ahead of us. 

What’s the state of the business?

It’s in decent shape, it makes money. That’s very different to the brands we bought previously, which were in pretty poor shape for various reasons.  

What exactly are you buying?

The brand and the stock, essentially. There is no manufacturing, unlike Italian mills, so it’s just the value inherent in the designs and the bunches, and their popularity with various tailors. We are unlikely to take on any extra staff either. In this market, it’s always been very hard to increase market share with more or better bunches. Everyone has their bunches in the tailors, and everyone’s share of the pie is pretty consistent. Acquisition is the only way to grow. 

Will this mean less choice for bespoke customers?

Well a lot of the British merchants share manufacturing, so the designs are often very similar. If you look at the basic Lesser and Smith’s bunches, they are almost the same. It’s not a like Dormeuil or a Scabal, where they are designing primarily for RTW garments to be made in the Far East. There is much less original design work in the cloths produced for bespoke tailors, particularly in the UK. We stick to what we’re good at. 

But there are still bunches and cloths that would be missed. I’ve always been a fan of Moonbeam, for example, and I noticed recently that Harrison’s and Loro Piana are the only two to offer a cashmere overcoating over 20oz. 

Absolutely, and we plan to retain all those existing bunches. 

Is there a risk that the choice overall will decrease, however, with just one design team putting together the bunches for all these brands?

Possibly. The key is maintaining the navy and grey worsteds that are the bedrock of the business, though. That’s what keeps the industry alive. When you look at the Lesser bunches before it was sold, even the basic bunches were pretty depleted. We need to make sure that the popular cloths are consistently available, in the same quality and all still made in UK. 

Do you have any plans to create new designs for the brands you have acquired?

W Bill will be a big focus over the next 18 months. There is a lot there that needs improving and modernising. A lot of the patterns are repeated; a lot are too heavy for a contemporary audience. We don’t want to lose that, but we want to mix it up with some things that are a lot more lightweight – softer jacketings that are so popular today, competing with the likes of Caccioppoli. 

There will always be a customer that wants heavier or old-style cloths, though, as shown by the popularity of online cloth clubs. Do you plan to cater to them?

That’s something we want to retain with the Porter & Harding brand. That heavy, Scottish tweed will remain in those bunches, while we do more original, funky stuff elsewhere. It’s early days yet – we don’t have a firm plan. But that’s the direction we want to go in. 

Do you have any plans to do more direct sales of cloth to bespoke customers?

I’m not against it – we do a little bit with customers that are off the beaten track, in Hong Kong for example. They phone up with the specific cloth number and we can ship it out. But it’s a bit messy and inefficient. It takes a lot of time.

Could you sell more online?

Possibly, but it’s very expensive to set up and hard to reproduce the exact colour or texture of the cloth. The feel of the fabric is so important that it would kill me a little bit to do it. I know John Foster’s and Hunt & Winterbotham sell online, but actually we just employed the guy at Hunt & Winterbotham who set it up and they made very few sales.

There’s a risk you lose your focus as well, I think. Stick to developing great bunches and being a good merchant – that’s what we do well. I suppose I’m a little old-fashioned like that, but there we are.

Who do you see as your main competition now?

Holland & Sherry I suppose – I haven’t had a call from them yet about the sale but I’m sure I will – and Dormeuil, Scabal. But the thing with those big companies is they make most of their money selling to the garment industry. The UK is not a big market for them. Holland & Sherry concentrates on America, Dormeuil in the Far East, Scabal in South America and other places.

I’m sure they see the UK as important (probably Holland & Sherry more than the others), but they’re not real competition for us with the West End and City boys. The offering is also different, along with the price. They tend to be more expensive and much lighter in weight. 

Have you seen any fallout from the Loro Piana sale yet?

No, I think that will largely affect the Italian market rather than the UK. Cashmere sales in Italy is probably the only area we would cross over.

Do you think you have preserved the future of these British brands with the buyout?

Possibly, yes. The thing about being a cloth merchant is it’s a long game. Once you have bunches out there, you need to repeat them and keep them supported. The moment you want to try and get out, you have a dilemma. If you start chopping up the bunches and not supporting some of the cloths, the tailors stop using them and you end up with a load of stock you can’t sell.

David was patching up the W Bill and Smith’s bunches a little to keep them going, but he sold at the right time. If he had waited, he might have ended up with a situation like Lesser’s – they couldn’t sell cloth, so didn’t have any money to buy new stock, and it all circled downwards in a vicious circle.  It’s good to have bought the company from David while it was still making money.     

 
Last week I discovered The Button Queen, on Marylebone Lane in London. It’s hard to believe I’ve never been in before; I don’t think I will ever select buttons for tailoring from anywhere else.

The Button Queen has been around since the 1950s. It used to be on Carnaby Street until the 60s, when the swingers pushed them out. They have been on the current premises since 1987 – and before that on the other side of the road. The shop’s life has been a peripatetic one, constantly being moved on by new trends or developments. Then again, it feels surprising today that any shop in cental London can turn a profit selling buttons.
 

 

There are precious and rare buttons for collectors. Most of the trade is dress makers and designers, looking for original patterns and materials. But in the middle there is a rich collection of buttons suitable for tailoring.

The problem with most button retailers is that they don’t have the sizes required for a jacket’s front and cuffs, let alone blazer buttons, overcoat buttons and so on. Much as I love Duttons for Buttons in York, there were only ever a handful of ranges that had the appropriate sizes.

  

The Button Queen folders that will be of most interest to readers are labelled ‘horn buttons’, ‘shell buttons’ and ‘blazer buttons’. Possibly ‘wooden buttons’ as well. Horn has all the colours we expect from tailors, a few extra shades, and some beautiful carved and domed models. These are largely hand-cut Nepalese horn, which ranges from the very rustic (tweed jacket, perhaps) to the beautifully fine and intricate.

The shell folder has the mother-of-pearl you’d expect (again, with a few extra shades) plus my favourites: mussel shell. The blazer-button folder, although contaning a broad range of coats of arms, otherwise aren’t that interesting.
  

 

Far more noteworthy are the vintage and rare metallic buttons. For I had come into The Button Queen seeking something antique for my Gieves & Hawkes bespoke pea coat. Martin, the manager, was initially sceptical. Pea coat buttons are pretty large and normally pretty dull. But when I explained that there was a lot of flexibility about the size, he dug out a few old boxes.

I recommend looking at the livery buttons. These were usually worn in two curving lines down the front edges of household staff uniforms, and not designed to do up. They feature the family’s coat of arms or crest, and are slightly bigger than jacket buttons, slightly smaller an overcoat’s. Nice for a blazer, perhaps.

For the pea coat we found some slightly larger, domed versions. Made from brass, they are nicely tarnished and (according the backs) made in Birmingham in 1927.

I’ll include some photos of those in the final pea-coat post. In the meantime, have a look at the models here, and get down to see Martin next time you have a piece of tailoring in need of some personalisation.
 
 

 
In my review of Spanish tailor Reillo’s cotton suit last week, there proved to be only room to analyse the fit and make.

Yet a reader rightly pointed out that green cotton-gabardine is hardly an everyday cloth option. I’ll explain the style aspects of the outfit now – but essentially, it was chosen for the versatility of green and casual nature of cotton.

Regular readers will be familiar with my views on green. After the menswear foundations of navy and grey, it is the most useful colour for everything from ties to knitwear.

Cream is barely a colour; brown can suffer from similarity to other, leather elements in the ensemble. Green, in all its tones, should be a man’s third choice – yet it rarely is.
 

 
A green suit goes wonderfully with different shades of brown shoe or belt; it works with both blue and white shirts; and the harmonious colours for silk accessories are manifold – pale blue, burnt orange, navy, yellow, even purple in some cases.

In the outfit shown here, the grey wool tie is pretty conservative, but the deep orange of the handkerchief is a real pleasure. The colours are largely spring and autumn ones – indeed, we chose this background for the photo to demonstrate that harmony, with fallen leaves and bright blue skies.

Of course, not all greens are the same. It’s hard to go wrong with navy or grey, but certain greens are far too strong and saturated to work sartorially.

I’d generally recommend going for a dark green, which means strength of colour is less of a problem, and the suit overall will be more wearable. I have one other green suit – a deep, dark flannel, made by Brian Smith at the Fox Brothers mill.

But if you go for a lighter colour like mine (Caccioppoli 340307), make sure it’s not too strong in tone – a little faded, a little greyed. Cotton (gabardine) is a help here too, because it will fade quicker than any other material, particularly around wear points like the front edge and cuffs.

Elsewhere: brown, hatched grain slip-ons from Gaziano & Girling; white spread-collar shirt from Luca Avitabile; and reversible knitted-wool tie from Hermes.

The latter is a recent acquisition and fantastically useful, with a slightly different shade of grey on each side. I confess I like the fact that the knit is different to 99% of patterns out there as well. (Though avoid the silk ‘4 temps’ line – the colour contrast is too great.)

Photography: Jack Lawson

  
Last week I was in Brussels visiting the headquarters of cloth merchant Scabal. They moved buildings two years ago and now have an attractive, open-plan space on top of their warehouse.

That warehouse stores a lot of cloth. Most of the people are responsible for cutting it up and sending it to bespoke and MTM clients around the world.

But there is also a large group dedicated to making swatch books (or bunches) – the samples of cloth that customers can pick from.  

  
It’s quite a labour-intensive process. Cloth must be cut up into little rectangles on a press. Thick glue is used to bind these swatches to a piece of wood.

And one person puts a little sticker on each one, to identify it. She does them all one at a time – with a pair of tweezers.

“Why do we make our cloth books here?” Scabal executive chairman Gregor Thissen asks rhetorically, just as the same question occurs to me. “Why don’t we just outsource it and make them overseas?”

The answer is control, and to an extent service. Although swatch books might seem an odd thing to employ people to make in the middle of Brussels, it allows Scabal to do small runs, to personalise bunches, and to apply more levels of quality control. 
  

  
This has parallels with the theme that runs through most of my visit: the role of the cloth merchant. 

As a consumer, it is easy to identify with a mill. It weaves raw material; it has a long history; it is the place where the cloth comes from. (Not always, given the farmers/spinners/finishers also usually involved, but you see why it’s a nice story.)

The role of a merchant, like Scabal, is a harder one to empathise with. Don’t they just store the cloth and send it out to clients? Isn’t it just logistics and customer service? 
  

  
Part of it is about service. The fact Scabal re-checks every piece that comes in (even from its own mill, Bower Roebuck), for example, or the fact that it invests a lot in stock, so that it can guarantee a piece will never run out. 

But there’s also design. Scabal designs 600-700 new cloths every season, across the various weights and categories, with a total book of 5000.

Walk into Scabal on Savile Row – or in Brussels or Paris – and you can find anything from the super-number worsteds it is known for to heavy Irish linens, all designed by the same team under Michael Day, and all of which the salesman should be able to pick from and recommend alongside each other. 

If that’s your aim, it’s easier to see why you make your own swatch books. Plus Scabal invented them, back in 1938, which is a nice reason to carry on doing it.

(Back then their pioneering line was called ‘Superlana’. The company wouldn’t be known as Société Commerciale Anglo Belgo Allemande Luxembourgeoise – or Scabal for short – for another eight years. Oh, and in 1971 they commissioned Salvador Dali to design what men would be wearing in the 21st century. He predicted we’d all be dressing like peasants; he wasn’t far wrong.)

This week we are launching another big project for Permanent Style: The Guide to Cloth.

This has been a long time in the works, but we wanted to do it right.

There is a lot of piecemeal information out there about cloths, yarns and weaves, but (for me) nothing considered and comprehensive.

The aim is to gradually build an in-depth, practical guide with information at every level of detail. We will start with basics – how to examine cloth, what defines a jacketing – and steadily drill down further and further, until (perhaps) we’re differentiating between different breeds of merino.

~

We also aim to be responsive, so while the first few pieces are planned (and will be published regularly every fortnight), we are open to all ideas and thoughts on what would usefully add to this central resource.

As ever, it is your input, comments and questions that make Permanent Style what it is.

I believe the guide will be useful to both customers of bespoke, who regularly have to imagine what a small square of wool will look like draped around their body, and those buying ready-to-wear, who have to make equally crucial decisions about the style, weave or weight of cloth when buying a suit.

~

The Guide is being sponsored by Scabal. This has been extremely useful in terms of access to people and expertise, but has also enabled us to fund the development of a micro-site to host the Guide.

The micro-site will live within www.PermanentStyle.com, but will be a dedicated area where the whole Guide can be browsed independently. It will be launched once we have the first few articles under our belt.

It’s important to note, however, that the content of the Guide will be entirely independent and objective. Each article is based on input from several experts, at tailors, mills, merchants and even academics.

Scabal’s involvement is similar to the display advertising we carry elsewhere on the site. On the right-hand side of each article, they will suggest and recommend cloths from their range that are related to the content. I believe this will be genuinely useful, but more importantly, it retains the clear distinction between editorial and advertising that we always seek on Permanent Style.

~

The first article will be published on Wednesday, and the next in two weeks’ time. I do hope you find them useful – I can’t wait to start rolling out the whole breadth and depth of the coverage over the coming months.

Thanks as ever

Simon

Selecting cloth may be the hardest part of the bespoke (or made-to-measure) process. You pick the style of a suit every time you buy one off the rack, but you’re unlikely to have ever looked at a tiny square of cloth and tried to imagine what it would look like on you, head-to-toe.

What is it for?

A lot of the work should be done before you even visit a tailor. The right cloth is largely driven by questions of when and where you will wear the finished piece, so make sure you have considered questions in advance such as:

• How formal does it have to be?
  • Will the suit or jacket be worn just for the office? For a special event? Or for a mix? What is appropriate in those settings in terms of material, colour and pattern?
• How heavy should it be?
  • Will you wear it all year round, or just for particular times of the year? When you do, will you ever really be outside for long, or just in air conditioning?
• What else will it be worn with?
  • Consider whether you are likely to wear the finished piece with a shirt and tie, or sweater and jeans. Or even both.

Once you have these ideas straight in your head, the challenge is communicating your desires to the tailor or salesperson, so they can guide you through the cloth options.

One easy way to aid communication is to wear something similar or bring in a picture of what you want. This may seem silly, but visual demonstration is a lot easier than verbal.

The tailor may instantly realise that you want a tweed with a harder, smooth finish, like a Saxony; rather than a heavy, woolly Harris tweed. But chances are you would have struggled to put that into words.

How cloth is made

Speaking of language, it’s worth being aware that there are four main stages in the making of cloth that affect how it looks and wears. The tailor may use points of each to explain the options.

We will go into more detail on all four in separate chapters of this guide, but for the moment they can be summarised as:

• Design. The obvious aspect – the colour and the pattern. There are shades and casts of everything, so it’s worth comparing colours and seeking advice on them
• Material. Whether the fibre is wool, linen, cotton or cashmere, but also how fine it is (the ‘Super’ numbers)
• Weaving. How that raw material is woven into cloth. This will be most obvious in the pattern (twill, herringbone etc) but also affects performance
• Finishing. Probably the most underrated area, this can turn woven cloth into something very smooth and silky, or rough and rustic

What are its properties?

Often, these four stages are the ones a tailor or salesperson will focus on. But arguably the important thing is the effects these have on the cloth.

And when you’re comparing a whole range of different navy jacketings, for example, it is these effects you need to consider.

Some of the most obvious are:

• Hardness. The suit you wear to work (a worsted wool) has a harder finish than the soft, woollen cashmere you might wear as a jacket. This hard finish makes the cloth sleeker and smoother.
• Crispness or dryness. Cloth that is crisper is sharp, creating a longer-lasting crease in a trouser. The surface also tends to feel drier. Linen often feels drier than a worsted wool used for suiting.
• Nap. The hairiness – the length of the visible fibres on the cloth. In practice closely related to the hardness/softness.
• Weight. An easy one to focus on. Most cloths will state their weight in grams and/or ounces. Remember that heavier cloths will tend to drape and wear better.
• Breathability. A cloth with a more open weave will tend to allow more air through, so it wears cooler.
• Wrinkle-resistance. A high-twist cloth tends to feel stiffer and won’t wrinkle as easily. Often recommended for travel.

If you go into a tailor with merely the idea that you want a sharp suit, you will likely first be asked some of the questions at top – as to when and where you will use it. So consider them in advance.

Then you may be presented with different options, with the explanation that one is softer, lighter or more breathable than another. It’s worth understanding the ‘effects’ listed above to anticipate these.

What do I do with it?

Once you have those options in front of you, what do you do? Is it like tasting a wine in a restaurant – are you expected just to nod and smile?

Try to do more than that. Here are some recommendations, gathered from my own experience and the tips of Savile Row’s top salesmen and tailors.

1. Narrow down your choices fairly quickly, if you can. Try to get to a point where you have 4-5 options laid out alongside each other. Perhaps different shades, or slightly different patterns.

2. Feel each suggested cloth between your fingers. Get a sense of how smooth, soft or crisp it is. Although you don’t wear cloth against your skin, you do feel it with your hands, and feel how it moves with your body.

3. Make sure you consider which side of the cloth is intended to go on the outside. They are not always the same. Usually the reverse side will have the label on it showing the code and weight.

4. Consider the different colours carefully. Take them to a window or outside to get a sense of them in natural light.

5. Compare them to each other. Often you don’t realise the colour of a navy until you compare it to black. Perhaps also put them against different colours of shirt – white or blue – to see how they change.

6. If there is a pattern, try to visualise it repeating outwards. This is often one of the hardest things to do, particularly with large designs. In general, subtle patterns like herringbones and Prince-of-Wales checks will become more subtle when worn head to toe. They just become texture. But big, bold patterns and colours can become stronger.

7. Some tailors will have bolts of fabric available that you can get down and drape across yourself. This is worth doing. Even if you don’t want that particular one, it can be useful to get an idea of how a shade, or a pattern, will look full-length.

8. Don’t feel you have to make a decision right away. Often the tailor can give you a small section of the cloth, to compare to things at home, or request one from the cloth merchant. This should always be big enough to see the full repeat of a pattern. There are often enough things to consider on a first trip to the tailor, without having to be final on cloth as well.

The cut of your suit is the most important thing to how it looks and feels. But I find I wear suits far more when I love the cloth; it’s more important than we’d like to admit. Spend time over it.

As with everywhere else on Permanent Style, we would encourage comments on these posts. It creates, over time, a body of knowledge and experience that I know readers return to time and again.

Let us know your experiences and your advice.

What makes a cloth suitable for a jacket, but not for a suit?

This is a question I know many readers struggle with, particularly as offices become more casual. Without the safety of a dark suit and dark shoes, what should a man wear? Why doesn’t the jacket from that suit just work with other trousers?

It’s about the set

The key is the density of the cloth. A fine worsted wool used for suiting is quite dense, with more yarn per centimetre. This is controlled by the ‘set’ of the loom when the cloth is woven.

A denser cloth is better ‘constructed’, as those in the cloth industry put it. It has more body, and thus can hang and drape better, as well as retaining a crease in a pair of trousers.

Jacketings (cloths used for jackets) tend to be looser in the weave and therefore more malleable. If you pick up a nice navy cashmere jacketing, it will feel spongy and pliable.

A navy suiting, by contrast, will feel like it has a definite shape and direction. It knows where it wants to go, and once you’ve stopped messing around with it, it will return there.     

Below: A close up of my particularly loosely woven Permanent Style tweed jacket
 

  
Not the softness

A jacketing is often thought of as soft, but it doesn’t have to be. A navy cashmere and a hairy Shetland are very different in feel, but they both have this loose, pliable feel in common.

Summer jackets are similar. They are often some loosely constructed mixture of linen, silk, and wool. (Indeed, the very fact that they are mixes makes them a little irregular in appearance, and therefore more casual.)

But even if summer jacket is in plain linen, it will usually be a lighter weight if intended for a jacketing and heavier if for a whole suit – with that weight partly down to how densely it has been woven.

The fiber matters too

Now, this doesn’t mean the weaver can make anything into a suiting, as long as the set is right. For something to work as a suiting, it also has to be a relatively long fiber, so it can be spun into a fine yarn.

The vast majority of cashmere fibers are just too short, as are Shetland and Harris wools. It is possible to make suitings out of cashmere, but the fibers have to be particularly long and carefully selected.

You can have densely woven tweeds that are made into shooting suits, for example. But they have to be much heavier and will never have the fineness of a worsted suiting. A tweed like Saxony, meanwhile, uses a finer yarn than Shetland and is still heavier than most suitings.

Below: My cashmere oatmeal-coloured jacket from Elia Caliendo 
  

  
The role of finishing

You could be forgiven for thinking that finishing was a more important factor than density. After all, it is finishing that makes something smooth or rough, sleek or fluffy.

Most jackets do tend to have less of a finish than suits. They are not so ‘clean cut’, with the fibers being left a little longer. But you can also get jackets with a clean, shiny finish. It’s not my taste, but these can be seen as more formal jackets, and they are set apart from suits both by the ‘set’ and by their colour or pattern.

Hopsack and blazers

One obvious exception to this is some forms of navy blazer. They are often made from a more densely woven cloth, more similar to a suiting.

This is a question of formality, and is largely a hangover from days when a separate jacket and trousers was still very formal – before the lounge suit began to dominate all smart and professional menswear.

Today, a navy blazer is usually a little less dense. Hopsack, for example, is a style of weave that is often used for a slightly less densely constructed jacket, and makes a more versatile, modern blazer. It also tends to have a less shiny finish.

Below: My hopsack jacket from Elia Caliendo
  

  
Colour and pattern

Finally, the colour and pattern of a jacketing usually sets it apart from a suit – although this is far more a question of culture and taste.

Strong colours and bold patterns tend to be used in jackets just because having them in a whole suit would be overwhelming. It wouldn’t be smart enough, and therefore undermine most of what people want out of a suit.

If you’re wearing a separate jacket and trousers, it works best where the two are clearly distinguished from each other.

This can be done in lots of ways (texture, density, material, colour, pattern) but colour and pattern are the easiest. And patterned jackets generally work better than patterned trousers.

Below: My muted-green jacket from Solito, with dark purple overcheck
  

  
Which colours to pick

As to what styles of jacket and trouser you should combine together, this is perhaps harder and certainly more subjective than what cloth should be used as a jacketing.

But some general guidelines are possible. Here are my five quick tips, with some links to further reading:

1 Navy is the most versatile colour for a jacket, followed by grey and pale browns (sand/oatmeal). It very rarely works as an odd trouser.

http://www.permanentstyle.co.uk/2016/04/your-next-sports-jacket-oatmeal-cashmere-from-elia-caliendo.html

2 Green and brown are great jacket colours, but tend to be more rustic and casual. Get them in muted colours if possible.

http://www.permanentstyle.co.uk/2016/04/escorial-jacket-the-modernity-of-muted-colours.html

3 Jeans only work with the most casual of jackets. Think texture, casual colour and a loose set!

http://www.permanentstyle.co.uk/2015/10/wearing-a-jacket-and-jeans.html

4 Greys are the most versatile colour of odd trouser. Mid-grey, light and charcoal probably, in that order

http://www.permanentstyle.co.uk/2014/03/trouser-colours-to-wear-with-odd-jackets.html

5 Contrast is key. And white or cream are very useful in a trouser if you can get away with them.

http://www.permanentstyle.co.uk/2009/10/reader-question-wearing-odd-jackets.html

Choosing a suit cloth is, in some ways, harder than any other area of clothing. Because they all look so similar. 

If we leave aside the more aesthetic – and subjective areas – of colour and pattern, we are left with dozens of similar-looking suitings differentiated only by technical points of composition and construction.

Some of these points, however, are pretty important; others less so. In this post we will attempt to explain the difference, and therefore highlight which ones you should care about.

Below: Finished worsted suit from Camps de Luca, Paris
  

  
Worsted 

Let’s kick off with some definitions. Most suits are made from worsted wool. (We’ll cover flannels and woollen suitings in a separate post.) ‘Worsted’ refers to the yarn the cloth is woven from – longer fibres are used, and spun into a finer yarn.

This finer, sleeker, and more uniform yarn usually produces finer, sleeker cloth – which is why suits look so much sleeker than other woollen products.

But it can also be woven into fairly thick, heavy cloth, and finished to look woollier and fuzzier. It depends on what look and feel the weaver is going for.

One of the central aspects of suiting is the fineness of this wool fibre. It is measured in microns, and is often referred to by a ‘super’ numbers, eg Super 120s or Super 150s.

This is an important area, but also a potentially misleading one. We will deal with it in more detail in a separate post (on ‘superfines’).

Below: A fitting at Chittleborough & Morgan in a particularly thick and heavy worsted suit
  

  
Weight

A second key attribute of worsted cloth is its weight. This will be clearly marked and is measured in either ounces or grams.

Generally, a heavier cloth hangs better and lasts longer, but lightweight cloths are often seen as more luxurious and cooler in warmer climates.

Whether they are more luxurious is of course subjective, and changes over time. Coolness is more objective, and it’s fair to say that men can generally wear heavier cloths than they think.

Weight is driven by two things: the thickness of the yarn and the ‘construction’ of the cloth it is woven into.

Construction itself is a broad term and includes:

• how closely the yarn is set together on the loom;
• the pattern of the weaving;
• and how many warp and weft yarns are woven around each other.
    

  
Above: the twill of my Whitcomb & Shaftesbury navy suit

So for example, a twill will always be heavier than a plain weave in the same yarn, just because a twill is denser and therefore heavier.

The construction can also be important in how well the cloth hangs and retains its shape. A denser weave, like a twill, usually performs better in this respect, and is therefore a good option for suits or trousers. Sports-jacket materials tend to be softer and looser.

Most weaves are more about the pattern of the cloth than its weight and feel. But those can make a functional difference include gabardine (a twill denser in the warp), barathea (a dense, complicated weave) and satin (which creates the shiny look we associate with the term).

There will be another, later post in this series illustrating these weaves – largely in order to understand the aesthetic differences between them.

Below: A herringbone weave on my Caraceni jacket (a woollen though, rather than a worsted)
  

  
Two by what? 

Another construction area that can cause confusion is phrases such as ‘2-and-2’ or ‘2-by-2’.

Generally a 2-and-2 weave means that the cloth is woven evenly, face and back, with two threads moving up and down on both sides.

The alternative is a 2-and-1 twill, with two threads on the face for every one on the back.

But there is also a ‘2-by-1′, which has a two-ply yarn in the warp (running along the cloth) and a single-ply yarn in the weft (running across it).

The weave is even in this case, but the variation is in the yarn itself. This construction is lightweight, but can also be rather fragile.

The vast majority of cloths are 2-and-2, although you do get heavier and more traditional cloths in a 3-and-3. Either way, this is towards the more technical and end of cloth attributes.
  

  
Below: A merino-wool waistcoat from my Cifonelli navy suit

Composition

More important is any variation in the fibre that goes into the yarn.

Some worsteds, for example, include a small amount of cashmere in them, in order to feel softer (often trying to replicate the feel of superfines).

There may be, say, 10% cashmere fibre spun in with 90% wool. At these proportions, the cloth is a little softer but still hangs and performs well. If the amount of cashmere were to be increased, however, it would start to make the cloth spongier and baggy – which is why 100% cashmere is rarely used for suits or trousers.

Most other worsted yarns are made with merino wool, though even here there are variations. Escorial, for example, is a merino that comes from a single flock in Tasmania and is particularly fine and springy.

(Other suiting fibres such as mohair, also often mixed with wool, will be dealt with in a separate post.)
  

  
Above: A brown worsted flannel trouser from PA Crowe. 

Finishing

Somewhere down the bottom of the list in terms of importance, is finishing.

The finishing of cloth – brushing, milling and so on – can vary a lot with woollens and other cloths. But it is fairly consistent with worsteds: they all tend to have a very clean, close finish to give them their sleek, smart appearance.

The exception is worsted flannels, which are milled to try and replicate the feeling of flannel, just in a lighter weight. And there are ‘crushed’ or semi-milled worsteds, though these are relatively rare.
  

  
Above: Fitting for high-twist brown suit with Dalcuore  

Overall, colour and pattern are always going to be the most important things in the selection of a suiting.

But it’s worth understanding fineness and its effects, composition of different fibres, and the various things that go into determining weight.

Top image: Jamie Ferguson. All other images, Luke Carby