You’ve all had a look.

So I suppose I should talk about my new suit.

Although I’m wearing it, it’s unfinished.  But I needed it for two occasions –one being a woman, the other being a wedding– so I had my tailor, Don Fabien Lee, rush it.

And he was good enough to do so.

The jacket is heading back into the shop next week.  As things currently stand, the sleeves are just a little bit too long.  This would usually be corrected in the final fitting.  That is, of course, the part I had to rush.

So the sleeves are my fault, not Don’s.

And you wouldn’t think it’s such a big deal.  In the larger scheme of things, it probably isn’t.  Aside from whatever mass murder is currently going on in the world, I certainly have suits –nice suits– that have bigger problems than a quarter inch too much on the sleeve.  But when you’re wearing bespoke any imperfection, no matter how slight, just sticks in your mind like a jagged piece of glass.

If I sometimes look uncomfortable in this suit — that is the reason.   The sleeves make me feel like you probably do when your fly is down.  If you were sober, that is.

So let’s get down to brass tacks.

The cloth is from Holland and Sherry.   It’s a Super 150 Worsted.  Now, you’re probably wondering what all that means.  It means that, even by Saville Row standards, this is the good shit.  As far as quality of fabric goes, my tailor and I are not fucking around.  To feel this suit is to feel a part of you quietly die.

That’s how good the cloth is. You sigh when you touch it.

The design is part of Holland and Sherry’s Dragonfly line.  It’s a remarkably intricate check comprised of black, white, blue, gray and a yellowish brown.  Sadly, my camera and the person operating it (me) is not quite talented enough to properly capture it.

But this should give you an idea.

And this is a testament to Don’s skill — he has perfectly matched the checks on the arm to the checks on the body of the jacket.  (When I wear it.)   And when the suit is complete, I’ll show you what he has done with the legs.  It’s a virtuoso performance by the best tailor in Toronto. I shudder to think of the math involved.

He also, once again, got right to the heart of what I wanted.

You see, I have a theory on suits and it’s one that I was determined to test.  As Beau Brummel taught us, fit is everything.  Beyond that, I believe a suit can be outrageous in proportion to its fit.  The better the fit, the louder a suit can be.  Because of the last suit Don made me, I knew that the fit would be perfect.

So I decided to get a bit loud in cloth choice.

And when viewed as a sample this is an incredibly noisy fabric.  Combined with the shirt choice, it’s a Boredoms album.  I wanted to see how far and hard I could push.  I decided to go with angled pockets and strange little quirks wherever I thought I could get away with it.  For example, this is a double breasted jacket with three buttons.  I’m not sure what it’s called but this is a picture of what I mean.

This allows me to subtly alter the shape of the lapels depending on how I button the jacket.

And even the sleeves are flared.

All of this was an act of extreme sartorial daring.  The idea was to create something neither conservative nor outlandish but both; to exist within the rules while pushing them to their breaking point.  But no further.  The suit was to create a perfect tension between the traditional and the utterly outlandish and to make it work.  Any fool can put on a bright pink suit and look crazy.  But it takes a lot of work to take crazy and make it look sane while taking sane and making it look crazy.

That was our goal.   I believe we succeeded.

Don, of course, must get the bulk of the credit.  Without his technical knowledge, my abstract reasoning is of little use.  He’s able to translate what I want into cloth.  We both walked a rope stretched over an abyss.  With a less experienced, intelligent and talented tailor, I would have fallen.

Now I just need to get the sleeves fixed.