13/03/2016
It’s been a while now since I last got down to some serious sewing. I did the tweed jacket upcycle in the Autumn, but that was only a little hand-stitching. Since then I bought a new sewing machine, and to be honest it’s been sitting there, silent, taunting me, willing me to just get down to it. So, with a…
18/12/2015
The Vintage Showroom is a small vintage clothes dealer just by Seven Dials in London. The owners are Doug Gunn and Roy Luckett, and given the number of small vintage clothes shops around the world, or even London, the story could just as well have ended there. Except, Doug and Roy are finders and collectors extraordinaire, so the shop is…
17/12/2015
The smartphone has to be the curse of modern times. One dip in to your pocket and you know if anyone has phoned you, texted you, mentioned you, poked you, prodded you or in any other way attempted to annoy you. Also if anything has happened in the world, your car is unlocked or whether the book you reserved at the…
13/12/2015
Shackleton Company – providing heroic menswear for today’s man Ernest Shackleton. Now that is a name indeed. You can sort of imagine a child with a name like that going one of two ways, either an antarctic explorer of heroic nature, or a Wallace (as in “… & Gromit“). In this case though we know Shackleton turned out the heroic…
14/11/2015
There are a few British company names that strike me as being incredibly evocative. Barbour is one, Gloverall is another. The story behind Gloverall is so quintessentially quirky and British that I shake my head in wonder every time I think of it. Way back after WW2 the company was called Gloves & Overalls Ltd. in 1951 though bought a…
07/11/2015
Lookbooks are a strange thing. Brands spend time and money producing what amounts to a sort of picture book surrounding their collection, setting the look and mood of how they would like their product to be seen. Not the plain product photos you’ll see in the webshop, with all the details and such shown, but staged photoshoots, with props, weather and lifelike…
06/11/2015
Anyone who has followed me for a while will know that I am very much into things that are a little off the beaten track. The stuff that most have forgotten, or stuff that has yet to attract the attention of the braying masses, or even just odd things. Hence why I love poking around vintage markets and jumble sales. You…
11/10/2015
Last week I posted part three of my Harris Tweed jacket upcycling project. If you’re only just coming to find it, you’ll want to read back to the original idea outlined here, and part one here and part two here. I’ll wait patiently until you’re up to speed on what is going on here at the Laboratory of Total Tweedism. At the end of…
27/09/2015
Last week I posted the question: What can I do with an old vintage Harris Tweed jacket.After a surprising amount of input on which of the three projects I should select to put an old Harris Tweed jacket though, I have decided that the first project will be to go slouchy on this one. Or try to “unconstruct” it, in…
08/07/2015
When it comes to parkas, there are three companies that immediately come to mind (to me, others will argue at length why they have a different list), and all three have certain similarities. Engineered Garments, Battenwear and Monitaly. All have a Japanese designer, produce their goods in the USA, and have at least one parka design that is incrementally changed…