The London Lounge

Today I passed by a shop as I did many times before assuming it was just an ethnic fabric shop. However today something caught my eye and looked for the first time closely at a corner of the window where they had some Dormeuil and Zegna fabric rolls as well one roll of striped shirt fabric, so I walked in, asked about shirt Fabric and they pulled the full Sic Tess shirting book encyclopaedia... What great fabrics. If it is of interest, prices are from about £35/m for a 120/2 pipeline to £89/m for the top of the range Bugatti fabric. Min order 3 meters.


The shop is Jason's Fabric in Edgware Road, just outside the Bakerloo line station.

I hope it was worth sharing but not sure if this was the right place

Are these single or double width shirting fabric? 3 meter minimum suggests they're single width?

No sure sorry. Stock is ordered off the book directly from Italy

All S I C Tess cloths are excellent in my opinion. I am only aware of them being produced in 150cm width, and having been to mill a few times would be surprised if they produced a 90cm production at another site. As such you would need only between 1.8m per shirt to 2.5m per shirt dependent on your build. I would say whilst they are quite different from Riva & Bonfanti cloths they are excellent in there own way and am sure any shirts made in them will bring joy.

Joshua Byrne wrote:All S I C Tess cloths are excellent in my opinion. I am only aware of them being produced in 150cm width, and having been to mill a few times would be surprised if they produced a 90cm production at another site. As such you would need only between 1.8m per shirt to 2.5m per shirt dependent on your build. I would say whilst they are quite different from Riva & Bonfanti cloths they are excellent in there own way and am sure any shirts made in them will bring joy.

Could you comment on the differences between the SIC Tess coths and Riva/Bonfanti? Would it relate to the looms used respectively?

Exactly the looms at S I C Tess looms are modern industrial looms, but run at a low speed and using very fine raw materials, as such the cloths as good as anything produced in this manner. The Riva & Bonfanti cloths are mad on 19th century shuttle looms, and thus run much slower still, and further the shuttle size being bigger than a rapier loom, spread the warp yarns more whilst travelling through, as such it creates quite a different texture. I prefer the Riva type cloth, but for the type of cloth it is S I C Tess is as good as it gets, there are other producers as good but none better in my humble opinion.