The London Lounge

Some pictures of Prince of Wales,future Edward VIII,future Duke of Windsor,in 20s before the drape cut.
I love this clean silhouette

Also before he settled on the spread collar it seems.

Who made his suits back then?

Excellent and rare photos!

J.S. Groot wrote:Also before he settled on the spread collar it seems.

Who made his suits back then?

I think Scholte.
In a suit of 1923 is his label.

Interesting. Perhaps I'm just not accustomed to seeing him in an earlier style, but I think the drape cut is far more flattering on him. I think he looks a little pinched in the shoulder here, and broad in the hip. The drape suits have a more built up shoulder, which allows for gentle waist suppression. They make him look both more fit and more substantial.

The narrower shoulders also emphasize a very large head.

I agree that the narrower shoulder is less flattering; the mobility of the arms in these suits, is, however, exemplary--as good as Astaire. Look how quiet and tight to the neck the collar stays in the golf swing and the football shots (though since his neck is pulled down in the latter, there is a slight gap). These were presumably not, as is sometimes claimed about Astaire, jackets cut to look good with arms raised while dancing and sloppy when standing normally. I think it's more challenging (though perhaps not impossible) to achieve this kind of mobility with either more extended or more built-up shoulders. The extra structure wants to move on its own rather than with the body. (You can see this in Cary Grant's movies--he was a very physical actor, and in his earliest films prior to adopting the extended shoulder, the jackets moved more easily with him. By the mid- to late thirties, though he still had mobility, the shoulders made wedges when he lifted his arms.) The high armholes here also seem to be integral to the mobility, as has been discussed before.

Excellent point. Now that you mention it, the photos I've seen of him in drape cut suits don't show him doing much of anything. He's either walking from one place to another, lounging, or posed (a pretty apt description of his entire life with Wallis, by the way).

Does a more built-up shouder have to mean a lower armhole?

I think there is much ado about not too much in this thread. The clothes made by Scholte were all in his original drape style. And in reality a very refined and subtle drape as opposed to the exaggerations that grew out from the idea in the 1940s and still may exist to this day.



I have the advantage of having held five or six of Windsor’s coats in my hand. So the relating of these facts does not come as a matter of supposition but of practical experience. At the time I was struck by how similar the coats were to my own soft tailored clothes. In fact, I removed my own coat and held the two in my hands and felt very little difference.

Like my own coat, there was very little pad in the Duke’s. And if we look at the following picture we can clearly see why: Windsor had very square shoulders. He didn’t need any padding in the shoulder, just enough to attach the sleeve.



As regards the overall construction, the coats were classic soft tailored and felt sweater-like. The shape of the lapel, collar, notch, back neck and armhole of the Duke’s coat was virtually identical to my own. And that is not a surprise when you consider that the Scholte style was copied by tailors who worked with him when they opened their own shop. This style was subsequently taught and passed on to other tailors with little variation (and it was passed onto the man who learned from those tailors and made my coat.)

Cheers

Michael Alden

So today the real Scholte heir is not Huntsman but...Anderson & Sheppard!

I should be most interested to learn of the direct link between Huntsman and Frederick Scholte. Scholte was trained at Johns & Pegg; probably trained Anderson; sold out to James & James (both Johns & Pegg and James & James are names now owned by Davies & Son) and there we are! So, if you have a direct link between Scholte and Huntsman, I for one, would be jolly interested to know what it is. One thing is fairly certain; Scholte derived his cutting style from Johns & Pegg (which, ironically, were famous for cutting military coats in a fairly hard style) and all that I read about the distinctions between 'hard' and 'soft' tailoring seems fairly unconvincing: the whole point, surely, is for the tailor to make the best of the customer's shape. If he has a pig's ear to start with, he might well nip and tuck (Cary Grant, Robert Donat, Michael Douglas are examples of chaps who needed padding for screen shots); otherwise , he might let the cloth just drape over a good skeletal frame. Big deal. Talk about talking about nothing and petty point scoring!

There seem to be lots of young chaps onboard here now, with nothing better to do than rock a happy ship. For my own part (and it certainly is not my site, so this is hardly definitive) - but, so far as I am concerned: such point-scoring is not what this site (unlike certain kiddies' sites) is about.
NJS
PS I amended this from stronger wording: amended to avoid giving offence but there is a certain observation, from some members here, of a deliberately disruptive element.
NJS

When I saw the pictures at the top of this thread my first thought was "looks like drape to me". NJS, I couldn't quite see, however, how this was a manifestation of the enemy within!

Scot - it's just the constant needling about drape: on and on it goes...The phrase "The enemy within" sounds familiar but I cannot quite place it.
NJS

If anyone wonders what the Duke looked like in narrow trousers and true three-button non-drape coat, here is one of the few (imposed) instances:

Costi

The photo of Windsor in the narrow shouldered, fitted, uniform sums up what I have been trying to describe for years. He looks tiny, well, he looks his actual height (5'2"). So "Tightness accentuates, fullness attenuates" can be clearly seen in this picture when compared to the others above where, dressed in the more full cut, we cannot guess Windsor's actual diminutive stature.

Michael Alden