By Michael Nguyen, National Post
Michael Nguyen, the owner of Bay Street menswear purveyor Garrison Bespoke, shares his diaries from this year’s London menswear collections and the Pitti Uomo trade show in Florence:
Designer Michael Nguyen.
Monday June 17
London. I check into Dean Street Townhouse. A lot of artsy Soho House members from around the world stay here during fashion week, and it’s always a good mix.
Holland and Sherry, a fabric merchant we often use, have invited me to the Savile Row and St. James presentations at the Marylebone Cricket Club, a deeply British establishment founded in 1787. To appease the old-guard tailors, I wear a wide-striped sport coat I made with a vintage 1960s English wool/linen/silk blend cloth. It took me three months to make AND I know it will start up some conversations. The energy oozes classic summer English style, but I’m the only guy in here wearing stripes. Every other tailor is in black or navy!
10 models who are all wearing beautiful suits by Savile Row tailors.
Chatting with Marie Scott from The Tailor & Cutter, the bible for our industry, we laugh because we’re in a room with 10 models who are all wearing beautiful suits by Savile Row tailors, but most of us can’t tell whose work is whose. This can be a pitfall of bespoke; you can end up with a good quality suit that has no distinct style.
I meet a 13-year-old trouser apprentice from tailor shop Huntsman, and it’s clear that even at his age he has the spark for this craft. He asks about my preferences in pants fabrics, which dovetails into a lengthy chat with several tailors about how North American men wear their pants too long. One guy even pulls out a picture of Tom Ford as a culprit. Everyone should take a lesson from the English on pant length — just above the shoe is the sweet spot.
After the cricket-themed show at Hackett (the Brooks Brothers of the U.K.), the Timothy Everest event is rocking a musty old Victorian house. He has a collaboration with Morgan automobiles and Horiyoshi III, a traditional Japanese Irezumi tattoo artist who’s famous for making “suits” that are actually full body tattoos. The team is doing live tattoos.
Swatches from Holland and Sherry
I meet one of my top clients, a private equity guy named Hafiz Lalan, at The Soho and we head out to several bars. Hafiz tells me that he still gets numerous compliments on his Garrison gear in London and he laughs that he gets told repeatedly at work that his suits are too aggressive. We made him a brown tweed one before he left for London and when he wore it to the office his boss told him to never wear it again! Bedtime 3 a.m.
Read the full article by Michael Nguyen from National Post.
