When I visited T&G Caracani in Rome last year, a particular bolt of vintage cloth caught my eye. It was a brown-and-black houndstooth tweed, mid-weight but densely woven (as a lot of that vintage tweed tends to be).
Unfortunately only 1.5m of it remained, so it was useless for anything but a waistcoat – but the pattern and colour stayed with me. Eventually, having occasionally put looks together and thought ‘what would be great would be a black-and-brown houndstooth’ I talked to Fox Brothers about reweaving something similar.
I chose Fox because their tweed was the most similar to that vintage piece I was aware of. It too is denser than some of the more open Harris tweeds, though not as tight as the shooting-suit variety. It also helped that I’d already had two jackets made in the Fox Tweed, so it was a known quantity.
Fox were keen on the proposal, but also thought it would be nice to do something bigger – maybe come up with three or four creations, plus existing cloths to go with them. There must be other cloths I’d thought about, but couldn’t find elsewhere?
So Lucas and I went down to the mill in Somerset in order to plunder the Fox archive, and discuss ideas with the wonderful design team.
We came up with two further ideas:
The perfect navy chalk-stripe flannel
This one was kind of funny. Looking through all the Fox bunches, I couldn’t find the navy chalk stripe I’d want to make into a suit (I’ll cover later exactly how I wear it). There was a narrow chalk stripe on a good, dark navy background – and a wide chalk stripe on a lighter, rather bluer ground.
I wanted the wider stripe on the darker ground. It seemed like the perfect combination to me. Fox were sure they had it somewhere, but it turned out, after a bit of searching, that they didn’t. So we decided that would make a good second collaboration cloth.
My dark olive flannel
I’ve always liked a green-flannel suit. I actually had one made by Brian Smith at Fox Brothers years ago (quick PS research – it was 2015) made in a vintage piece I found on the shelves. I loved it, particularly with a specific burnt-orange challis tie from Church’s.
But like a few things made in that era, it didn’t survive my changing physique so I ended up making a sequel with Ollie Cross when he was at Benson & Clegg. (Who’s now set up on his own by the way, under the sobriquet ‘Ollie’s’). The cloth that time was from Caccioppoli, because Fox didn’t have a dark olive.
The suit was and is great, but really I would have preferred Fox because I like the set and finish of their flannel (pretty much all my other flannels are Fox). So it made sense that our third cloth would be that – a classic Fox flannel in a lovely muddy green (above).
The plan is that we will have these fabrics made up into jackets or suits over the next few months, to demonstrate how they look and feel. This will also give me more space to go into why I like them.
The tweed has already been made by Bryceland’s using their made-to-measure system with WW Chan. That’s what is shown above and below in this article, but I will also review it separately as I think their MTM option is worth covering in detail.
The chalk stripe will be made up into a double-breasted suit by Ciardi and also covered separately (focusing on the style of a navy chalk stripe more than anything else). The green flannel, meanwhile, will be made up by The Anthology for Manish, and reviewed by him.
All three cloths are available to buy through Fox, on a dedicated page of their site. You have to buy through them, not us, on this one.
In the name of making it a bigger collaboration, you will also find on that page a list of my favourite other Fox cloths – most of which have been featured on PS in the past. So it includes my favourite grey flannels, the charbrown I wear a lot, my other Fox tweeds, and two overcoatings (one covered in the past, another one hopefully in the future).
Readers often ask for flannels and overcoat materials in particular that I’d recommend. As far as Fox is concerned, there is now one dedicated place to point them to.
Another useful piece of logistics is that swatches of all three materials will be available at The Valet in London for readers to go and see, if they want. This made sense given The Valet are now distributing all the other collaboration cloths we do.
As soon as they’re back from their summer hols, Lafayette Saltiel in Paris will also have swatches available in Paris, as will several tailors.
And you can always order a sample directly if you want, as you can with any of the fabrics Fox sell online.
Any questions, please let me know. In terms of the colours, by the way, the images above are both from Fox in their studio and us on the street. I’d say both are a pretty good reflection of the colour, but seen inside and out.
Here are the technical details on the cloths:
- Houndstooth Tweed:
- Code A3344/11
- BCC9 quality
- 480/510g, 16/17oz
- 100% British wool
- £230 a metre
- Chalk stripe flannel:
- Code A1797/54
- CBT5 quality
- 370/400g, 13/14oz
- 100% superfine merino wool
- £230 a metre
- Olive flannel:
- Code A3174/1111
- CBT5 quality
- 370/400g, 13/14oz
- 100% superfine merino wool
- £230 a metre
