Here’s the low-down on hand-made.
There are five major operations in making a jacket that, done by hand, result in a superior product. That is to say that these operations have never been improved upon by the invention of machinery, the way the sewing of straight seams has been improved, for example. All of these operations are responsible for the superior fit, comfort and durability of the “hand-tailored” jacket.. All of them are centered in the top of the garment, around the shoulders and collar; and all of them are important in achieving better fit and greater comfort for the same reason: flexibility. A hand stitch is a continuous passage of thread through the cloth; the thread does not “lock” to a bobbin thread as it does in a machine stitch. The thread moves, expands and contracts with motion, remaining supple, creating seams which are at the same time tight, fluid and elastic, such as are needed around the collar and the armhole to give the wearer the most precise fit and ease of motion while retaining the ability to return to their original shape and dimensions.
Now you can be sure that the sewing machine manufacturers around the world, Messers Pfaff, Strobel, Juki, Reese and Singer, all of them, have devised “simulated hand” stitching machines of one sort or another. We already mentioned the Liba machine, devised to replicated the slip-stitch that holds a necktie together. One surprising feature of many factories is the good-old AMF edge-stitch machine, which makes a kind of bush-league replica of a hand-stitched lapel edge.
All of this is testimony to the ingenuity and deceptive bent of machinery and clothing manufacturers, willing to collude in these silly deceptions. The bitter irony is, however, that despite their ingenuity and effort, anyone who would recognize the hand work in a garment will also be able to tell fake from real.
So what’s the point exactly?
Note to Consumers: Without tearing the jacket apart, there are only two places where you can see hand-sewing that means anything: under the collar and around the armhole. Interestingly, the way you can tell that these areas are hand sewn is by the irregularity of the stitches.
The five critical hand operations?
- Attaching the sleeve heads, lining and pads to the armhole
- Attaching the collar to the top of the back
- Attaching the felt under collar to the collar edge
- Sewing the lining around the shoulder seam
- Sewing the lining around the armhole
Now any truly hand-tailored garment is certain to have other areas of handwork inside, such as the tacking of the vents, sewing on the buttons, fashioning the buttonholes, stitching the lapel- and pocket-edges, attaching the lining at the sleeve cuffs and at the jacket-bottom hems; even the trouser waistband, when sewn to the outer shell by hand, creates a more comfortable and resilient fit and feel. The five critical jacket operations listed above are most important to the wearer is because those areas are where the comfort and stress resistance are most necessary, and where the hand-sewer can follow the elliptical, – rather than straight – curving sections of the cut cloth. The hand stitches follow and reinforce the contours of the collar and the armhole opening, giving strength and flexibility, smoothness and suppleness to those intricate seams.
Do I hear snoring? Are you sleeping? Wake up! I’m trying to help you spend your money wisely. Don’t hold it against me. There are two additional things I will try to say as economically as possible; then you can shut the light.
First, although hand tailoring is expensive in this world of diminishing skill, (there being so few people who are capable of doing it anymore that they can insist on very high wages,) there is still no way that anybody can justify the numbers some of these crooks (the manufacturers or “designers”) put on the price tags. A tailor, living today in, let’s say, New York City, can make a suit completely by himself and completely by hand, (not that you’d want him to, since long, straight seams are done better by machine,) in about ten hours. Let’s say the guy earns $150 an hour (10X the real number,) you’ve got $1500 in labor, right? And let’s say, to be completely over the top, that you made it out of Super 200’s with 24K gold filament stripes that cost $500 a yard.. That’s $2000 for the goods. Total? $3500. I have seen suits made in factories out of regular wool with prices higher. Caveat emptor, is all I can say.
Second is this. You can’t tell the benefits of hand tailoring until you wear the jacket for a while. You certainly can’t tell in the store. A totally machine-made coat may fit and look just as good, but after a while the comfort and durability, the garment’s ability to retain its shape, move with you and conform to your ever-changing dimensions, will be obvious. This I also promise.
