Not a great photo, I know. It is difficult to photograph the austerity of a dinner suit well. I am the perpetrator of everything in that picture save the hat, watch, glasses, shoes, socks, floor and wall. The whole project still is not finished, but when it is done, it will have acquired a waistcoat, rather than the hastily made cummerbund just about visible in the picture. The coat still needs its sleeves re-setting, and I still need to make a shirt with french cuffs, rather than the linked single cuffs of the full dress shirt in the picture**.
So with the arrival of the Easter holidays, I finally have a little time to post again. Another post on trousers will follow in due course, illustrating the different ways of fastening them. This will have to wait until I have finished a full-fall-front pair that is currently work in progress.
I have also started another big project - a single breasted frock coat. This isn't based on any historical example, just a few sketches I made a while ago. I love single breasted frock coats, they are quite casual, really - think that photo of Brunel with the chains, or perhaps something like this picture below.
That one is self-stripe cashmere with powerloom dupion facings and three buttons. The new one will be lightweight worsted cloth with either satin or dupion facings and two buttons.
Although historically inspired, my work is not trying to be authentic, and I like to play with and update styles.
Don't worry, I haven't gone mad and concluded that what I really want is an unfinished horsehair waistcoat, this is merely a basted mockup of the body of my new frock coat, to ensure the fit is right and the collar looks right*** before I take shears to good cloth. Thankfully, everything went just right - one can just about make out the cut on lapels in the above picture, and note how neatly the two panels of the forepart line up at what will be the waist seam. No trimming was involved here, everything just lined up perfectly. This is usually very important in frock coats, as the waist seam and vent must align, although not so in this case, as this one is to be cut with a whole back.
Frock coats generally don't have as much structure as many would imagine - canvas in the forepart and perhaps some very slight wadding on the shoulders. The above horsehair mockup will be used to flatline the cloth, mostly to improve the body of the material - while a Victorian example would not have horsehair on the back, the cloth would be three times the weight as the stuff I intend to use. The structure for the body will be completed by the addition of a little more canvas to the forepart.
The next job will be to take that mockup apart and use the horsehair as a pattern to cut the cloth before beginning making-up in earnest. More updates will follow as work progresses.
*Not that I don't enjoy geology, but it does rather take over sometimes.
**Does it count as a full dress shirt if it is silk twill? I neither know nor care.
***You will soon realise from my work I love shawl collars. These were rare for morning wear but once quite common in the evening, featuring on smoking jackets, dinner jackets and occasionally dress coats and morning coats. As well as being fairly easy to cut, they are - in my opinion - extremely elegant.
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