The last few days have been an absolute nightmare in and around London. Until yesterday evening, the snow that had fallen last week remained frozen and it was almost impossible to get from A to B without slipping and sliding. The heart pounding moments when you think your feet have gone only for you to rescue your balance by flailing your hands like a madman were getting too frequent.

So what can you wear to help ease the stress? When I’m wearing leather soled shoes, I slide at the best of times. In fact, I have one pair where the left shoe slips a little at the end of every step. I haven’t dared wear them during this latest icy blast.

The overshoes that I mentioned earlier in the month certainly helped a little. The chunky rubber pattern on the sole gripped to the pavement much more effectively that the shoe. However, the overshoes are not a perfect fit to all the shoes on my rack. As a result, my shoe was moving inside the overshoe a little. The slippage was reduced, but not completely gone.

A friend mentioned getting some rubber soled shoes. I must admit that I had images of school shoes to begin with, but a quick search online revealed some quite elegant shoes with rubber shoes. But I couldn’t do it. The ridge where the welt should be looked ugly and most of the time the soles were coloured. Blues, yellows and bright greens. Why would I want to bring attention to the fact I was wearing rubber soles?

Perhaps I am being snobbish. But I would rather pay more for overshoes that fitted properly. Until then, perhaps some Spiky Plus might do the trick (a recommendation from a climber friend.)

Most likely though, I will revert to type. Since Sunday I have been wearing my tried and trusted adidas Superstars. And there hasn’t been a flailing arm in sight since.

The bad news is that Lodger is now sold out of issue 6 of The Rake, featuring Diego Della Valle on the cover. The good news is that we have just received around 20 copies of issue 7 of The Rake, featuring Tom Ford on the cover.

Happy Christmas,
Lodger

There are so many facts, figures and geeky points about the construction of Turnbull & Asser shirts that I could be writing about them for days. And you’d be reading for hours. I’ll try to keep the description of my visit brief and chronological.

When a new customer’s measurements arrive at the Gloucester factory they are entered into CAD (computer-aided design) system. David Gale’s team at Bury Street in London sends in old-fashioned paper patterns. New York sends measurements by email. There isn’t much advantage to either, but those from America certainly get to Gloucester quicker (particularly given Britain’s striking postal service).

The paper pattern is pressed to a large plastic work table, which has copper wires running beneath the surface. A member of the CAD team then runs a “very expensive mouse” over the surface, clicking on every turn or corner in the edge of the pattern, completing the circuit each time and so sending a picture to the printer. This prints off a paper pattern that can be taken to cutters on the factory floor below.

Turnbull & Asser customers used to have their shirts cut from the same cardboard pattern each time. This was fine for the first two or three orders. But by the fourth and fifth time, with the cardboard taking a little nick here and a little slice there, it got ragged. This way the cutters get a fresh pattern each time.

On to the cutting. This is mostly done with a small hand saw. The paper is slightly glued on one side, so it can be laid on the cloth and ironed on. This again is more reliable than cardboard, and the cutter can run the saw around the edge in big, long sweeps. The edges are then often finished off by hand with a pair of shears – particularly on an edge where pencil marks have been used.

[Why would there be pencil marks, I here you ask? Because one of my sleeves was half an inch shorter than the other – otherwise they were identical. So it was simpler to cut one sleeve pattern and measure off the half inch and mark it on the cloth by pencil. End of digression.]

A big band knife is used for some parts of the cutting, usually for those where there is more than one identical piece of cotton to be cut. So my cuffs and sleeve gauntlets, for example, were cut on the band knife.

[Quick additional fact: there are two band knives, one for bespoke and one for ready-to-wear. You pull the cloth through the first and push through the second. That’s because it’s easier to cut bulk when you push – and up to 50 layers of cloth are cut at a time for the ready-to-wear in the band knife. Last digression, I promise.]

Next, the sewing. This is all done by hand-worked sewing machine. Some parts, such as the buttonholes, used to be sewn by hand. But T&A says the machine produces a stronger seam – and it’s still a far cry from mass production machinery. Having trained women (they nearly all are, women that is) working a sewing machine means clean lines and the ability to slow down and do difficult points with the pedal. The rounded end of the tie gap, for example.

The care and attention involved in sewing the shirt is encapsulated by the side seam. Here both front and back are folded over and the concave pushed against the convex, creating a clean French seam. That seam is then folded down and sewn onto the cloth itself. So there are four layers of cotton and three lines of sewing, all within 3/16 of an inch. It’s no wonder the women will swear by its durability.

The French seam around each part of the body does mean that there is no single seam running between the front and the tail of the shirt. So to reinforce this point, Turnbull & Asser adds a signature white octagon of cotton to create a gusset. All ready-to-wear shirts have white gussets; bespoke shirts have self-gussets.

Finally, the buttons. While again sewn by machine, these benefit from a nifty reinforcement technique. Elasticated cotton is wound around the stalk and then fused to the thread with heat. This stands the button away from the placket and binds it together, adding greater durability.

[One last, definitely final digression: a strip of cotton canvas is fused to the back of the placket, meaning it stays crisp. The collar and collar band, on the other hand, have a floating strip of the same canvas inside.]

That’s it. A quick press, paper wrapping and the shirt is bagged up and ready to go. All Turnbull & Asser shirts go through this process, whether bespoke or ready-to-wear. That makes the construction of off-the-rack shirts a country mile better than most others. Gloucester produces around 500 of each type of shirt a month at the moment – how many factories could claim that ratio?

It should be emphasised though that Turnbull & Asser’s bespoke shirts are truly bespoke. You can change anything. One regular client has his right sleeve a little looser because he does a lot of hand-shaking. Another has different numbers of buttons on his pyjamas depending on whether they are going to his English house or the holiday home. I changed my buttons from white to black halfway round the factory. Nobody batted an eyelid.

Thank you very much to Bette, Kath and all the others in Gloucester for taking the time to walk me through this. And for putting up with my questions.

Photography: Andy Barnham

While workwear has its detractors, there’s no denying its growing influence on the world of menswear. You only need to look at the sharp increase in the amount of buffalo plaid, boots and flannel in any high street store to see the influence the movement has had. Whilst the movement has several stalwarts (many of whom we’ve featured already) one of the premier names behind the revival is buyer turned designer, Daiki Suzuki.

Suzuki got his start as a sales person in Japan before eventually moving into buying. After working in this sector for two decades (he got his start back in the 1970s) he decided to branch out and start his own label, Engineered Garments. The label is a Japanese take on Americana, making products like corduroy trousers, casual blazers and even capes, using archive clothing as a launching pad and updating the fit. The latter point is the defining difference between E.G and a reproduction company like The Real McCoys.

His work at Engineered Garments caught the attention of Woolrich, who soon hired him to rework their Woolrich Woolen Mills line. As Daiki Suzuki noted in a Refinery29 interview, the two brands weren’t exactly world apart as he used to use Woolrich fabrics on his Engineered Garments pieces.

A stickler for authenticity, All of Engineered Garments pieces are made in the USA. “Both WWM and EG are made in the NYC Garment Center and various other specialty factories all across the US. We sometimes use our neighbour in north Canada, depending on what we’re looking to make”.

As for the fabrics, he says that “it’s always in the form of traditional American fabrics or fabrics utilized by American manufacturers in the past”. Suzuki notes that “Domestically there are always Woolrich Woolens, uniform fabrics, dead stock fabrics from the 1980s and various other things that cross our path.”

When it comes to the topic of prestige not being enough to sell clothing anymore Suzuki states that “There is value and cost in raw materials, manufacturing methods (including responsible production), intellectual property and development that is laborious, costly and time consuming”. He goes to say “Then there is all the people you support when purchasing a product, from the designer to the manufacture to the retailer and plenty of other people in between. [To sum up] in general good things cost more.”