Jacket #5, White Silk With Polka Dots - An Experiment

It was when I ordered too much silk for the Georgie Porgie bow tie that I decided to work with woven jacquard silk in the next jacket project. Having spent a lot of time working with silks with  respect to bows and wool with jackets, I was interested in seeing if you could replace the wool component in a jacket for silks which were designed for ties. Silk which is made for jackets is lighter and more flexible and is often mixed with wool or cashmere. Our silks were designed specifically for ties and bow ties, and were completely 100% silk - so it was essentially an experiment.

The highs: The finish was amazingly bright and eye catching. The polka dots gave off a real brilliance and attracted a lot of people's attention.

The lows: It was our first time working with silk  -and the silk lacked some of the structural characteristics of wool. In places such as the collar, if the jacket was not pressed firmly, the felt would show after the course of the evening as the jacket lost shape. The silk polka dots also fray if rubbed against a surface too often - so it was a jacket that needed to be looked after. Sadly, this was also the final time that I would use a third party to do the jacket. The time taken between fittings was far too long and the jacket wasn't delivered on time which meant that I eventually found a workroom which would subsequently do all my work for me. Contracting to third party tailors who nearly all use the same workroom in Sydney no longer made any sense for me. It was the big magical trick of Sydney tailors - to tell you that they had some master craftsman who was their big secret - grand stories of where they were trained or how they came to be in Australia.... All smoke and mirrors unfortunately. I could tell some great stories here but it's best I shut my mouth. No doubt others out there will chuckle at this paragraph.