Steed's Christmas Season Special

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Steed is happy to announce a Christmas Season Special.

We are offering a free Made to Measure Shirt with every two or three-piece semi-bespoke suit or any order of a sports jacket and trousers during December.

If ordering two suits, you will receive three shirts.

If ordering a Bespoke two or three-piece suit or sports jacket and trousers, you will receive two Made To Measure Shirts.

If ordering two Bespoke suits you will recieve five shirts. Same applies if ordering a two sports jackets and trousers.

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With a wide selection of fabrics to choose from you should be able to find something suitable to your tastes.

For further details or if you wish to make an appointment, please don’t hesitate to call or email.

Best regards,

Matthew DeBoise

Steed Bespoke Tailors

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For a few miles more!

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I'm happy to announce an extra trip to Chicago, USA this December.

Partly because I do love Chicago & also that I'm a few miles short on my Platinium status with American Airlines & the easiest way to aquire them is, a round trip from Manchester (UK), so I thought "what the heck."

Chicago

Friday, 4th December & Saturday, 5th December 2009

The Drake Hotel

140 East Walton Pl

312 787 2200

There is a chance that I could accomodate customers late afternoon/early evening on Thursday, 3rd December and Sunday morning if need be.

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I look forward to meeting customers, old & new alike and as always I will be offering both my Semi-Bespoke & Bespoke service.

I carry a wide selection of cloths but if anyone has any particular requests for a certain bunch, please don't hesitate to ask.

If you’d like to make an appointment, I would appreciate it if you could contact me prior to the trip, so that I can organize my day to accommodate everyone.

Best regards,

Edwin DeBoise

011 44 20 7287 7227

Steed Bespoke Tailors

edwin@steed.co.uk

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Restyling & Refashioning at the V&A

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Andrea Nixon (Steed Bespoke Tailors)... who was this years Rising Star Winner in The 2009 Golden Shears tailoring competition, has been selected along with the other winners to exibit their garments at the world famous Victoria & Albert Musuem (V&A), in London.

They're setting up a tailoring studio, where they will be exibiting their work. Also they will be offering advice to anyone that is interested in tailoring and how to restyle and recycle their wardrobe.

This is part of the "Restyling and Refashioning" event day, taking place on Saturday, 14th November 2009. It is being held in the Sackler Centre, of the V&A, between 10:30am and 4:00pm, and is free to the genaral public, some activities are ticket.

This reinforces what we were discussing in our previous post, with today's society of "Make do and Mend".

There are various events taking place throughout the day, including guest speakers advising people on updating their wardrobes. One of the attractions is a major Clothes Swap/Swishing event. This is a new craze which is becoming very popular. The basic idea, is that people take clean, good quality clothes and accessories, which they no longer want, and swap them with people for garments that they do want. There is no money involved and people should go away with new clothes that they really want!

On the day Andrea will be exhibiting her jacket and skirt that came third place in the Golden Shears competition, and received the Rising Star Award, March 2009. The competition is organised by The Merchant Taylors Company.

Andrea's entry for the contest was completly bespoke, especially since she designed, dyed the yarns and hand wove the cloth for the garments herself. The cloth is made from lambs wool and cotton, so it has a nice soft drape and feel to it, which goes hand in hand with the Steed House Style. The colour of the cloth is rich teal green, which helps give a luxury look to the outfit. The entries were marked on design, cutting, tailoring and style. The judges for the competition included David Furnish, Caryn Franklin, Patrick Grant, Marek Reichman and James Sherwood.

In the tailoring studio, Andrea will be able to explain to visitors how she made the pieces from beginning to end. She has step by step photographs showing the process, to make it easier for people to see the development of the making procedure. This will be interesting for people to see as some very complex techniques are involved. As the jacket will also be there on display people will be able to examine the time consuming details that adorn the jacket, such as beading around collar, lapels, and belt, along with the hand dyed silk lining.

Make Do And Mend

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With the recession taking its toll, people are saving their pennies on the fashion front and turning to S.I.Y. (Sew it Yourself), for a whole new wardrobe. S.I.Y. being the modern day term for "make do and mend".

Sales of sewing machines are up and an attitude of make do and mend seems to be sweeping the nation. Tesco Direct recently revealed sales of sewing machines have increased by 198% compared to this time last year and the number of people appling for Sewing classes at local colleges and night schools has also seen a sharp increase.

All this sudden interest in the trade can only have a good affect on the rest of us, in terms of people deciding, they might want to come into the trade or just take a keen interest and learn more by visiting the forums that we have mentioned in previous posts. We have seen evidence of this interest, by the increase in the number of CV's that we have recieved of late, asking about potential apprenticeships.

Although this is the case, we have had our best year to date, since Steed started back in January 1995, to the effect of the amount of regular emails and phone calls that we recieve, enquiring about our services at the top end of the market.

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The Norfolk Jacket

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Recently, there has been a bit of interest in Norfolk Jackets and we have also had a few enquiries, after seeing the one we made for a customer in Boston 2 or 3 years ago.

We found this picture (right) that we took in our Carlisle shop, when we typed in Norfolk jackets in google and it came up first on Google Images. The image has also surfaced on other Internet forums and blogs.

Not actually sure how it got on there but nevertheless it has received wide interest and nice comments as seen on the blog Wasp 101.

There are a number of variations of the jacket and a brief description of the Norfolk is below, as found on Wikipedia.

"A Norfolk jacket is a loose, belted, single-breasted jacket with box pleats on the back (and sometimes front), now with a belt or half-belt. The style was long popular for boys' jackets and suits, and is still used in some (primarily military and police) uniforms. It was originally designed as a shooting coat that did not bind when the elbow was raised to fire."

It was named either for the Duke of Norfolk or for the county of Norfolk and was made fashionable after the 1860s in the sporting circle of the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII whose country residence was Sandringham House in Norfolk.
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