I ordered a three piece suit made from a 11-12 oz [1] Charles Clayton nailhead smoothjazz picked up for me on a LL field trip to Tip Top in Brooklyn. It is a straight up the middle type of cloth. Here are some photos of my pattern layout that Des had sent me [2]:
All three pieces were more or less there for try-on, in what I think is called skeleton-baste form - held together largely by basting threads. The trousers, which are to be button fly, had a zipper tacked on for the try-on and were closed for the try-on with a pin. The waistcoat had only half of its back, etc. As a general matter, I was very impressed with his attention to fitting. I won't bore you with the details of the adjustments to be made, but will note that there is, as advertised, some advantage to having the fitter be able to cut and sew on the spot. Des told me that, as luck would have it, I was his worst fit on this trip and the only one where he had to strip down and open the coat and take a scissors to it. As expected, it was a good thing that he does all that in real time. He marked all the changes he wanted to make, took the coat apart and re-sewed it on the fly so I could try it on again while I was there. He couldn't do that with all the changes he wanted to make, as some changes also required pressing and more elaborate cutting.
It is still very hard to see how things will come out in the end at this stage since the suit is pretty unconstructed. The jacket coat is pretty soft, although that too is difficult to tell for sure.
One thing that I thought was interesting is that he uses a bit of fusing - not on the cloth as is typically done with a fused coat, but on the canvas itself. The open edges of one of the seams on the canvas he used tends to fray (it is the springiness of the mohair in the blend that causes the weave to unravel, he says) so he uses a long half-inch strip of fusing to seal the edges where the seam is pressed open. The cut edges of the canvas are not a concern, but he is worried that the fraying could undermine the seam where the canvas pieces are joined (actually a dart, I think). I am always interested in oddities like that.
I won't comment on shape, since it is pretty early to tell, but I will note that his preference is for a relatively clean fit in the front and across the tops of the rear shoulders but with drape at the base of the shoulder blades. We will see how it comes out and how I like it.
Notes:
[1] In my original post, I wrote that the cloth was 14oz. I noticed at the tryon that the cloth felt light to me and this morning I remembered to check my records --- it was 11-12oz. I corrected the original post.
[2] I fixed my Imageshack problems so I added the photos to the post itself instead of linking to the Photojournal.
