Our Bespoke Tailoring

Bespoke culture has influenced so much of what I’ve done with Anglo-Italian. I am lucky to have spent much of my career in and around bespoke clothing, and have immense admiration for the skill and dedication required to produce garments entirely by hand. This is why we’re strict in what we term bespoke and with who is regarded as a tailor.

We’re celebrating two years of our bespoke offering, a task that has seen us open an atelier in Tuscany to sew the garments our cutter Caoimhe drafts in London. It’s worth mentioning that we are unorthodox in our bespoke offering as all the garments have to follow a discernible house style — soft yet clean, draped whilst contemporary. I could rely on superlatives and the number of hours required to make the garments but I don’t feel it conveys what really matters in bespoke clothing.

For me it’s about the blend of skill and culture — each cutter and maker has had their knowledge passed to them by their mentor or mentors, there is no set line of doing things or formal school. Techniques of cutting and the handwriting of sewing can be purely individual and it amazes me how geographies and cultures present what is discernibly a suit in entirely different ways.

It’s apt that I write this sat in Florence, a place I’ve come to visit more than anywhere else throughout my career. This city keeps drawing me back, it’s where I lived for a period to learn the language and commence my understanding of Italian bespoke making. A short drive away from the city is our proprietary workshop where we sew our bespoke jackets, up the coast from where our ready-to-wear and made-to-measure is made.

Our bespoke workshop overlooks the Ligurian sea and is plonked between vineyards. It’s the perfect place for Anglo-Italian Bespoke to be sewn — like Tuscany itself they are rugged and sophisticated all at once, with loose open stitches to contrast against the structure of Milanese and the baroque of Neapolitan tailoring.

We are beyond where I thought Anglo-Italian could ever be, doing our small part to maintain this incredible process of making in our own way — not aping a school or aesthetic but purveying our own transcultural approach to tailoring in its purest form.

I'm delighted to present a selection of bespoke garments currently being worked on by Caoimhe and our team in Tuscany.

-- Jake Grantham

Photography: Will Milligan