The Coat Route (2 page)

How did this happen?
When did clothes become disposable? I know it wasn’t this way when I was a kid. Like many of my generation, I grew up shopping with my mother basically twice a year, for spring-summer clothes and fall-winter clothes, mirroring what was, at the time, the traditional two-season cycle of designers and apparel makers. In the late 1980s, globalization started to alter that timetable. Looking for a leg up on the competition, some retailers began to bring in new inventory more frequently. At the same time, a widespread shift of production to China and other developing countries, where labor was cheap and plentiful, allowed apparel makers to reduce prices.

Meanwhile, the design and manufacturing process was speeded up, with instant communication and computerized machinery. Head-spinning turnaround times for products created to meet demand—what manufacturers call JIT, “just in time”—were now possible. Styles that designers saw on runways one week could be in production, as cheap knockoffs, the next. And shoppers, increasingly savvy about trends thanks to the Internet, lined up outside store entrances to get at the fresh goods.

So-called “fast fashion” retailers, like Sweden’s H&M, Spain’s Zara (which does most of its manufacturing domestically), the United Kingdom’s Topshop, and the United States’ Forever 21, were brilliant at training us—and especially our daughters—to adapt our shopping patterns to the new normal. What we learned from them, to borrow loosely from Ernest Hemingway, is that there is never any end to shopping.

They also taught us that the clothes we saw in the stores today would likely be gone the next time we came in. New inventory arrives twice a week in Zara’s more than seventeen hundred stores, for example. (One study found that the average Zara customer went into the store seventeen times a year—or about every three weeks.) The short life cycle of the stores’ collections and the high rate of sell-through means very little merchandise is pushed to sale racks. That strategy keeps profit margins high.

Shoppers learned that snoozing meant losing. There was no time to give serious thought to a purchase—and, really, how much thought was required when it came to buying a pair of $10.80 skinny jeans at Forever 21? Almost no financial or emotional investment was needed to walk out of a store buzzing with the pleasure of having made a purchase. Though the rush was short-lived, the next fix was never far away. And so what if our
sweaters bagged or our zippers failed? That just gave us license to buy more stuff.

This hamster-on-a-wheel shopping pattern has serious consequences far beyond causing a lot of us to wish for more closet space. The production of synthetic fibers requires millions of barrels of oil. Conventional cotton-growing relies on huge quantities of pesticides. Workers are exposed to toxins and often subjected to poor factory conditions in the around-the-clock race to feed the fashion beast.

Meanwhile, we are running out of places to dump our castoffs. The Environmental Protection Agency says that Americans discard about thirteen million tons of textiles per year, four times more than we did in 1980, and only about 15 percent of it ends up being recycled. The United Kingdom, which tosses out about a million tons of clothing each year, has a similar rubbish-to-reused ratio. And the mountains of clothing we’re building in landfills are mostly made of non-biodegradable, petroleum-based synthetics. The natural materials we toss do decompose, but as they break down they produce methane, a greenhouse gas that’s thought to contribute to climate change.

Besides clogging our dumps, depleting resources, and fouling the air and water, the fast-fashion model has helped obscure from view the path that clothing takes from raw material to finished goods. I admit to being unsure if, during the manufacturing process, any human hands ever actually touched the things I’m wearing. I’m probably not alone when I say that I feel as blind to the route most of my clothing has traveled as I once did to the chain of events that landed those pre-formed ground-beef patties in the freezer section of my supermarket. Constant consumption has also distanced us from the idea that the things we purchase
are special. The ubiquity of disposable clothing has led many of us to the conclusion that much of what we buy has little value.

That vicuña overcoat on John Cutler’s website, on the other hand, was obviously a keeper. It was a
slow
coat—the very antithesis of most of what was being sold in the mall. It got me thinking.

I started reading books about the bespoke world—lovely books, full of black-and-white photographs of elegant people like the Duke of Windsor, Fred Astaire, and Katharine Hepburn. I read about tailors and weavers and shearers and silk screeners, many of whom were struggling to go on. I went down a rabbit hole of history and found that the story of cloth and clothing is, in many ways, the story of man. I studied the suits and coats men wore in movies and on television. I developed a deep sense of nostalgia for something I had never experienced.

And then it occurred to me that what I really wanted to do was go and see all of this for myself. So I emailed and called almost everyone who had a hand in the making of John Cutler’s vicuña overcoat and asked them if I could visit. Some of them said okay right away. Others hesitated. Some probably thought I was a little strange. Eventually, they all said yes, and I started packing.

Well, let’s be honest. First, I went shopping. Then I started packing.

Plato wrote, “
Finally, I went to the craftsmen, for I was conscious of knowing practically nothing, and I knew that I would find that they had knowledge of many fine things. In this I was not mistaken; they knew things I did not know, and to that extent they were wiser than I.”

In my travels, I did find wise people. I also found some
obsessive-compulsive types who spent an astonishing amount of time and money curating their own wardrobes. I got to peek behind the velvet curtain into the clubby, little-seen world of bespoke tailoring, where “knowing, not showing” is the unofficial mantra. I met men who share what Tom Wolfe, who knows a thing or two about sharp suits, calls the “secret vice”—men who pride themselves on being able to spot bespoke details, like working cuff buttons and hand-sewn buttonholes, from across a room.

In the company of a renowned researcher, I went high into the Peruvian Andes in search of vicuñas, the skittish, long-necked animals with Kewpie-doll eyes that were almost wiped out by hunters for their valuable fleece and were brought back from near-certain extinction in one of the great conservation success stories of the century. I traveled to Florence to meet Stefano Ricci, the larger-than-life luxury-menswear designer and maestro of silk, who provided Cutler with the overcoat lining. I went to England and watched beautiful worsted cloth come off looms in 150-year-old mills, and saw mottled buffalo-horn buttons being shaped and polished on Victorian-era machines. I ate guinea pig in Lima and truffles in Tuscany.

I watched tailors at work in the basement workshops of Savile Row. I spent time in Sydney with John Cutler, whose personal closet was a museum-worthy collection of handmade sherbet-colored cashmere coats and silk trousers. And I shared some meals with his cast of quirky clients, who, I was relieved to discover, have a sense of humor about their oddball fastidiousness and addiction to bespoke clothing—especially when they are a little drunk on excellent champagne. And I went to see the vicuña coat. I found it draped over the back of a sofa in a penthouse apartment in a Vancouver high-rise.

I discovered a world that is, in many ways, as threatened by
extinction as the vicuña was just a few decades ago. Tailors and other traditional tradesmen find it difficult to attract young people into their professions, in part because of limited opportunities for apprenticeships and education, but also because few younger workers are willing to spend years toiling away in an unglamorous back room to become a master in
any
field. European trade-group leaders have speculated, with deep regret, that the current generation of expert artisans—weavers, leather toolers, carvers, shoemakers, and tailors—might very well be the last.

But I also found some who were thriving, against all odds. Having conceded the low and middle markets to the offshore megafactories, they had headed for the high ground of ultraluxury, which was proving itself, again and again, to be an astonishingly resilient niche. In tough times, the wealthiest of the wealthy—like the man who commissioned the vicuña overcoat—had become even more discerning. They demanded top-quality goods, expert craftsmanship, and, especially, things that no one else could have—all hallmarks of bespoke. Savvy manufacturers had also homed in on developing countries where freshly minted millionaires—many of whom were in Mao suits just a decade or two ago—were realizing that they would need to dress the part.

Of course, most people can’t afford a $50,000 bespoke vicuña overcoat, or even the $6,000 version made of far more pedestrian sheep’s wool, and dropping that kind of money on custom-made clothing might strike some as flat-out obscene. But the fact is that those who can afford such luxuries and choose to spend their money that way are keeping centuries-old trades alive.

I didn’t know anything about tailoring when I set out on the coat route. The zenith of my own sewing career was the creation of a calico wraparound three-armhole dress in seventh-grade home-economics class. I came away from my travels in awe of
what talented, skilled people can do with fiber and cloth and thread, and envious of the satisfaction they must feel spending their days crafting beautiful things from scratch. They are
makers
, something that fewer and fewer of us can claim to be. And they wish for nothing more than to have the good fortune to be allowed to carry on. I wish that for them, too.

J
ohn Cutler looked up from his cutting table as Keith Lambert walked into his ground-floor tailor shop in the middle of Sydney’s high-rise financial district. Lambert, a strapping forty-three-year-old wine-company executive with the symmetrical, square-ish good looks of a TV anchorman, was impeccably dressed, as always. The tailor recognized the navy pin-striped suit Lambert was wearing as one he had made for him a few years back. The fit, Cutler noted with satisfaction, was still splendid. The shirt, too, was a J. H. Cutler creation of the best Sea Island cotton, and the tie—oh yes, he remembered that one—a luminous Stefano Ricci silk in an intricate blue-medallion print. Just right. Cutler greeted Lambert, who, as usual, was holding Rosie, his Jack Russell terrier. Cutler didn’t mind. He was used to the dog by now
.

The tailor put down his heavy shears and invited Lambert into the consultation room, a clubby space with robin’s-egg-blue walls, tufted leather furniture, and an heirloom Persian rug. The paint color had been selected for its serenity and for the way it seemed to help quiet any twinges of doubt felt by clients as they prepared to spend large sums of money on themselves. The cut-grass smell of peony
parfum d’ambiance,
with which Cutler occasionally spritzed the air when he opened up in the morning, seemed to be soothing as well
.

All around, little touches like the framed black-and-white nineteenth-century photographs of the original J. H. Cutler shop, the cylindrical glass case holding old ledgers listing some of his great-grandfather’s
first orders, and illustrated books, featuring the Duke of Windsor and Cary Grant and other sartorial giants, confirmed for the men who came in to discuss their wardrobe needs that they were part of a glorious tradition. And, in fact, they were. John Cutler was the fourth generation to take up the family trade
.

Lambert settled into the green chesterfield sofa, and put the dog down by his feet. Cutler thought his client was looking quite well, despite all he had been through. It was no secret that Lambert had had a difficult stretch. He lost his job as the CEO of Southcorp Limited, one of the largest winemakers in the world, when the board of directors—including Robert Oatley, his own father-in-law and the high-profile billionaire founder of Rosemount Estate wines—sacked him after profits nose-dived. It was the stuff of soap opera, a high-stakes family drama played out in newspapers and on the news. If Lambert didn’t talk about it, Cutler, of course, would never ask. There was an understanding between tailor and client; the relationship was not unlike that of doctor and patient, based, above all, on discretion and trust
.

Lambert accepted the coffee Cutler offered—it was a bit early for scotch—and told him why he had come. He wanted a new overcoat. He was going to be spending more time in North America and needed something suitable for real winters. For the next hour or so, Cutler teased out Lambert’s vision for the garment. Before he suggested a style or fabric, he always tried to understand how his client was feeling and how he hoped to feel when he had the garment on. For Cutler, tailoring wasn’t simply a matter of disguising paunches or squaring off round shoulders. Sometimes it was about shoring up a wounded psyche, giving a man renewed confidence to take on the world—whatever the world was throwing at him
.