Pure Scottish Cashmere Scarves - The Real Deal

The Scottish aren't the only ones that can produce great cashmere, let me be clear. There is a range of cashmere from Mongolia that's produced by Zegna that is some of the most beautiful I have seen anywhere, but from memory it was only available in a small number of colours and we used it predominantly when we were making our design silk jacquard and cashmere scarves with hand-finished tassels. These were limited edition runs and frankly, not everyone wanted our silks on the reverse. When wearing cashmere in the depths of winter it seems more appropriate to have just cashmere on both sides, the silk can be a little too ritzy.

Our new and quite broad range of cashmere scarves are finished in that inimitable way that the Scots do it, with a natural thistle comb finish that creates a sort of moire shimmy on the fabric. It's immediately apparent once you have it in the hand and that is of course why most of our cashmere gets sold when people visit the Studio in Sydney and what makes it a difficult sell online. But for our existing customers who have trusted us over the years to deliver them the best quality products and fabrics - you will need to trust me, these are the real deal. And what is more, in colours this year that are particularly stunning. So, if you want to keep warm and you want something that feels like a second skin, consider this winter our pure Scottish cashmere scarves and I promise you will look after it and keep it forever.

Le Noeud Papillon Silk And Lurex Bomber Jackets - Bespoke Orders Only Through The Sydney Studio

We have decided on a price for the silk and lurex bespoke bomber jackets. That price is $7500.00 AUD . It's the most we've put on any of our work to date but it factors in the cost of setting up the most expensive silks to produce by way of both artwork and per lineal metre cost. Then we have to take into account the bespoke made and the fact that the customer can choose from a myriad of internal finishes. There are three fittings involved, the first produced in canvas. This is a proper experience and one that renders at the end of it, a work of art.

As Oscar Wilde once wrote, one can either be a work of art or wear one. As I middle age, I am inclined to believe I am long past being a work of art, so I choose to go with the fabrics we develop to cloak me as one :) . Of course, we don't expect to sell many, there are so few men out there with the balls to pull this jacket off and of course, it is highly unlikely that in the middle of a pandemic and with unemployment on the rise, that this will be seen as soup du jour fashion. Nevertheless, we soldier on and wish to be there for you when things take a turn for the better. In the meantime, see the details of the jacket on our instagram  .

Edward in a first sample leopard bomber jacket.

Our resident tailor who will finish your jacket over three fittings and to your exact specifications.

If You Are Bored And Love Literature But Still Don't Have The Time - Might I Recommend Anna Karenina Ready By Maggie Gyllenhaal On Audible

To my mind, in my youth, snobbishly, I graded humans into two categories. Those that had read War And Peace and those who had not. And to that extent, I believed, if you had read War And Peace, you ought to have read Anna Karenina as a flow on.

The reason I love Anna Karenina is because, as a priest once explained to me, pleasure and pain and two sides of the same coin. And so it was in my youth, and because I pursued difficult relationships; that love must also bring fear, dread and suffering. Anna Karenina to me is a didactic Christian based story of what right and wrong love is. Before I go any further, I would like to add I haven't read anything of what scholars say it is, I am going off the cuff with my own opinion, so, and because we have so many customers smarter than I am, if I am wrong, please don't correct me, just let me have my opinion.

And so we witness the pain Levin suffers when first rejected by Kitty, then we witness the pleasure that Kitty derives when she perceives Vronsky is her man, then the utter dread when she realises that lofty Anna has stolen the heart of her man, then the dread she feels that she slighted Levin, then the utter joy when they come together and the utter despair when Anna takes her own life.

But it is not the winter balls, the movement between city and country, the talks between Stiva and Levin on the subject of morality and 'fallen women' that excite me, but those small details of pyschology that penetrate your mind and ring true as if you were there, unable to disconnect yourself from the feelings of the characters, with them as life rolls forward for them, feeling their shame, feeling their vitality, loving as they love.

A journalist friend of mine sat on my Chesterfield today and said it was his favourite work of Tolstoy. I didn't necessarily agree. For myself, Anna Karenina is the most human of his works but to my mind -but it dwells mostly on the subject of love and marriage. I am more inclined therefore to revert back to War And Peace, for it covers a great deal more about life, it covers also the chaos and inherent instability and flux of all that is around us as structures and loves fall, some die, some rejuvenated.

If you are tired of Netflix, if you want something to do whilst you are cooking or drawing or just mincing about your living room, consider Audible's version of Anna Karenina read by Maggie Gyllenhaal - she is brilliant and not so much affected as those ridiculous English type authors that read far too pompously for my liking. She reads with grace and with little affectation. I love it, I cannot recommend it more highly - as I no longer have the University time to sit down and read the whole thing again. 

Stay safe, 

Nicholas.