Cutting room since 1946
Six figures, one draft.
A coat starts as arithmetic. Six measurements are taken, half the chest becomes the scale, and every point on the pattern is a fraction of that scale. What you are looking at is your own draft, struck as you read.
Single-breasted lounge coat, side vents
Half the chest is 48.0. That is the scale.
Chest
96 cm
Waist
84 cm
Seat
100 cm
Back length
44 cm
Sleeve
62 cm
Shoulder
12 cm
Six figures on a docket, in the order a cutter takes them. Everything else on the board is worked out from the first one.
Where every point on the paper comes from
A proportionate system does not measure a body forty times. It measures it six, strikes a scale, and takes the rest out of arithmetic. The armhole is the exception. The scye is drawn by hand against a curve, and it is the line a cutter is judged on.
| Point | Struck as | On this draft |
|---|---|---|
| Scale | chest / 2 | 48.0 cm |
| Depth of scye | scale / 3 + 4 | 20.0 cm |
| Across back | scale / 3 + 2 | 18.0 cm |
| Front of scye | scale / 2 + 3 | 27.0 cm |
| Back neck | scale / 12 + 2 | 6.0 cm |
| Chest line | scale + 5 | 53.0 cm |
| Scye girth | drawn, then measured | 37.7 cm |
The sleeve is struck from that last figure and nothing else: a crown 15.0 cm high, a top sleeve 23.4 cm across the bicep and an underside 18.4 cm. A sleeve drawn from anything but its own armhole will hang wrong at the back and no amount of pressing will save it.
1.6 metres of 150 cm cloth.
Laid on the cloth, cut in pairs
Foreparts go down opposed, head to hem, because two of them the same way up will not fit the width. What is left in the seams afterwards is not thrift. It is inlay, and it is why a coat cut here can be let out in ten years instead of replaced.
- Cloth
- 13 oz Yorkshire worsted, charcoal
- Weight
- 440 g/m
- Buttons
- Two, dark horn, four on the cuff
- Pieces down
- 9
| Row | Pieces | Width taken | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | 5 | 135 of 150 cm | 79 cm |
| 02 | 4 | 125 of 150 cm | 63 cm |
1.42 m nested, 62 percent of it panel. Ordered at 1.59 m with the 12 percent allowance on top.
Balance
Balance is whether a coat hangs level on a body that is not level. No system on paper can settle it. It is found on a person, in a basted fitting, with the front and back marked in white cotton and the whole thing taken apart again afterwards.
Chest 96, waist 84: 6.0 cm to take out of the half body.
Side seam
2.4 cm
40 percent
Back seam
1.5 cm
25 percent
Front dart
2.1 cm
35 percent
Put it all in one seam and the coat pulls. Spread it too thin and there is no waist at all. The proportions above are the house habit, and they are the reason a coat from here looks like a coat from here.
Thirty commissions a year.
Off this board
Two-piece lounge suit
13 oz worsted, charcoal. Three fittings, eleven weeks.
Single breasted dinner jacket
Barathea, grosgrain facings, cut for a cellist.
Covert coat
Four rows of stitching at the hem, as it has always been.
Hacking jacket
Tweed from a bunch discontinued in 1978, found in the loft.
And the rest of it
Alteration
Anything cut here, altered here, for as long as the cloth holds.
Remaking
A coat taken apart and put back on a body that has changed shape.
Pattern keeping
Your draft stays on the rack under your name, dated at each fitting.
Come and be measured.
The first appointment is an hour and costs nothing. You will be measured, shown cloth, and told plainly what the work takes and what it comes to before anything is cut.
14 Sackville Court, first floor London W1S 3DQ
Fittings Tuesday to Friday. The board is on the table if you would like to see it.