Rugged Old Salt

House Styles

The subject of ‘House Cuts’ in tailoring, and the ability of the Hong Kong makers to replicate regional or house styles from Italy is something I have heard more and more about recently.

Working with our local tailors, W.W.Chan of Kowloon, we have developed what could be said to be our house style - a double breasted 6x2 coat with wide, bellied lapels, lapped seam, soft shoulders and roped sleeveheads, near horizintal lapel notch points and a generous overlap. While it is definitely a distinctive style, it is one that has been created with the strengths of the maker in mind.

W.W.Chan has long been best at creating garments with an English flavour - strong shoulders, longer, fuller skirts and very clean, precise finishing. Their work providing traditional garments, such as morning coats, dinner suits, double breasted waistcoats and double breasted suits has always been exceptional, but when asked to copy the looks of other tailors the lines and balance has been compromised. As with any artisan, they have developed signatures that they do well, and when you make aesthetic choices in your work, being asked to see with a different set of eyes or a different aesthetic appreciation is a recipe for mediocrity.

When developing the cut that we are enjoying as our house style currently, we wanted to maintain the traditional British pedigree of Chan’s cut, but refine it and define it, with the lapped seams and roped shoulders, besom pockets without flaps and generous, but still British, lapels.

Developing a house style for The Armoury is obviously a tricky thing - while my colleagues are all of similar build, I am vastly different. Our influences are both dynamic and varied, and we are ever changing in our preferences. So while there is no definitive model that best sums up our look, this DB is certainly a mainstay of our team.