The opportunity to tailor a traditional Scottish Argyle jacket for a wedding is a very special and exciting prospect for Button Stance. How to do something traditional, but also contemporary at the same time?
Head to the formal and kilt hire shops looking for a Scottish jacket to match your kilt and you’ll see the same options over and over again: greys and blacks; if you’re lucky maybe an occasional brown, blue or green, whether it's a made-to-measure outlet or an off-the-peg shop. And the green is only ever that one shade of Lovat green; beautiful, but if the green in your kilt is different, it's not much use. Typically there will also be two plastic or imitation horn buttons and a drab lining, most likely polyester. And of course, for off-the-peg clothing, the fit will always be on the roomy side because the stocky guys with biceps need to get in them too.
One of the advantages of commissioning a bespoke garment means that as well as the fit being exact you can have any colours and details you like, even if you chose a classic style. Our brief was a traditional 2-button Argyle Jacket with a notch lapel, scalloped pocket flaps, braided shoulder epaulettes, gauntlet cuffs with piping and a waistcoat to go with it. As you'll see from the kilt and tie in the photographs below, the tartan was very colourful giving us an apparently wide-open choice of colours at the start.
The Cloth - Harris Tweed
The client decided on the cloth fairly quickly; since Highland wear, so Scottish cloth. There are many fabrics manufactured in Scotland but few are more iconic than Harris Tweed. Tweeds are made in a number of places across Scotland, but those sold under the name of Harris Tweed tend to be heavier in weight and more coarse to the touch. Their provenance ensures that even these two features are accepted with grace by tailors and customers.
The client’s tartan allowed us to spread a variety of samples across the table, any of which would coordinate with his kilt. Perhaps too many; some looked good but were too bright for an occasion such as a wedding and perhaps a touch inappropriate for the bride’s father; others were the wrong shade or had a herringbone the client didn’t care for. We got rid of the reds and homed in on a series of blues & greens before one swatch drew all our attention: a turquoise just like the water off a Hebridean beach. Once we’d both handled it & remarked about the colour of seawater, his eye circled around the table several more times, but each time he returned to this one turquoise. Under a magnifying glass it had at least seven individual yarns – three blue, three green and a yellow, to give it the translucence of sand under seawater.
Whether the pace of life is slower or perhaps we are just spoilt with digital platforms and ‘proceed to checkout’ buttons, buying from the Outer Hebrides is an experience in itself. Hopefully, one day every weaver out there will have a working website to market their products. It took a couple of phone calls but we had no time pressure and when it turned up, the cloth was worth the wait.
We had several linings to choose from; again, it had to be sympathetic to the tartan and the sea-green tweed. The client's decision was immediate; a dark-Blue Paisley matching the navy colour in the tartan. The pattern we now call Paisley is Persian in origin, but acquired its name from the Scottish town of Paisley, famous for weaving it in the 18th and 19th Centuries.
Bespoke Harris Tweed Argyle Jacket Design
The two buttons normal on an Argyle jacket presented our first opportunity to change something for the better. The quarters of a jacket – as you’re facing the wearer, these are the hems below the fastening button that curve away to the bottom-hem - has a steep radius of curvature in order to make the belt buckle and sporran visible. When two buttons are present, the lower button is un-fastenable because the opposite hem is too far away. To our mind it's become superfluous, a visual distraction. The jacket appears stronger for its exclusion.
Apart from that, we completed the design with all the classic features, but we gave our client slightly wider lapels than you would normally find in shop-bought jackets because his shoulders justified us being a little more generous. We roped the shoulders for the same reason. We set the button stance low enough to provide enough space that when fastened, the waistcoat would remain visible just above it. In turn, the waistcoat was buttoned low enough to allow enough tie to show. It’s such a shame to see waistcoats that button so high that the knot is barely visible and the rest of the tie is hidden. We only momentarily had a stand-off about the two buttons. I’m afraid we had to insist, a little like Edna Mode's ‘No Capes!’ moment in The Incredibles. We’re still friends. Basting the jacket and waistcoat together for a fitting, I was able to check the waistcoat and jacket pockets to reduce the degree of overlap. It is important to check that if the client wears a fob-watch, its bulk wouldn’t interfere with something in a jacket pocket lying on the outside and make a double-bulge.
All these decisions: the button-stance dropped an inch; moving a pocket an inch to one side; widening the lapel and roping a shoulder, removing one button – these are all things you don’t get with off-the-peg & probably not with made-to-measure either because there are no fittings and a limited choice of style features to choose from.
We added real horn buttons and hand finished with silk thread. We even added a hidden boutonnière behind the lapel.
The Big Day
We joked at the fittings that it would be a bad idea to upstage the groom. And while everyone got their own triumph during the day, there is no doubt that a well-fitted bespoke jacket does not go unnoticed in a crowd; this one even more so for its colour. One of the biggest pleasures as a tailor is working with a beautiful cloth. For a customer, it is the satisfaction from the decision to commission one, the new experience and knowledge of bespoke tailoring to acquire, the joy wearing it and gathering compliments like no other ordinary jacket would. It's the only one like it in the world.
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