The Final Touches To Your New Suit >>> Holland & Sherry's Personalised Wool Weaving Service

When it was time to stop past Holland & Sherry's Sydney office for some new wool I took the time to go through the master books and talk to Simon about some of the wool weaves that were in the book. Part of the process was to refer back to the Mercury Textiles Dictionary which he had lying around. It is one thing to go through wool in a bunch, but to have the Mercury thing there to show you the exact weaving diagrams adds a bit more depth to your analysis. As we checked off Gaberdine for example we got the following definition from the 1954 edition.

The gaberdine is a fabric having a whipcord effect made for the worsted warp and cotton weft. It is usually woven on 11 staves as at an A, in a dobby loom with a fine reed. The warp yarns are good quality botany worsted and well spun to give uniformity of surface in the finished cloth. The weft is two-fold good quality cotton. Gaberdines are usually set with about twice as many ends as picks per inch....

 And it then follows on gaberdine:

This term was known in the 16th Century when in the Merchant of Venice Shylock reminds Antonio that he "spat upon his Jewish gabardine" which indicates a "rather long cassock" than a cloak or mantle. Blount writes: "what is gabardine"? "a rough Irish mantle", "a horseman's clock" or "a long cassock".

What a fascinating little book the Mercury is. I ended up following my nose and photographing a number of weaves which I shall talk about over the coming weeks.

At the end of my talk with Simon he showed me a lovely little bit of Holland & Sherry pride which was a special machine which allowed them to weave names, logos or text into the selvedge of the wool. According to Simon, the machine was still owned and operated by Holland & Sherry and he relayed anecdotally some of the more colourful stories of those who had used this service. The wool costs roughly $1200AUD per metre of wool at 1.4m to weave. The fabric component of a suit would therefore be in the vicinity of $4200AUD for the cloth alone but you would be joining the ranks of men such as boxing legend Evander Holyfield who is understood to have had 'World Champion' woven into his cloth, or a husband and wife who had their names woven into their white wool with a contrasting black thread. Using a service like this is not something you can do with any old tailor and Simon has said that any enquiries of this nature can go directly through to his office on +612 9267 8030. Of all the men I know in Australia, not one would dare use this super 120's worsted and cashmere wool service but I would put it to you that it would get far more attention than buying a Rolex and it would cost you half the price.

Customise your life or pimp your suit using the large number of colours on file at Holland & Sherry to create your own unique name or design to be woven into the slevedge of your wool. Not for the faint hearted, this super 120's blend of merino wool and cashmere will set you back around $1200.00 per metre.

Now this would be an absolute delight, a box check personalised. Well worth the money in my opinion.

The Barksdale Floyds, enjoying the unique offering of H & S by weaving his/her wool.