The Joy of Discovery

The wonderful thing about discovery, regardless of what it is that we have discovered, is that it feels as though we are the first ones to discover it; even if we are the last.

Take cycling, which you probably discovered years ago, I have re-discovered only during Lockdown. It feels oh-so-new to me (there’s a song in there somewhere), and I am almost at the point of wanting to evangelise about it, but I will spare you. When I say re-discovered, what I mean is I have made use of my old Fixed-wheel bike during Lockdown which has not been used in over eight years, not since the birth of my first child and even then only a handful of times. Prior to that, I had not ridden a bike since I discovered BMX bikes back in the 1970’s.

I was at the vanguard of this new craze as far as my friends and family were concerned, but I certainly wasn’t the pioneer, Lawrence Payne was: Lawrence’s father brought him one back from a business trip to the US in 1979. And what an everlasting impression it made on this 7yr old. I still get goosebumps now when I see pictures of my heroes with their racing machines. Teenagers who looked like grown men with their facial hair and hulking frames. Guys like Greg Hill, Stu Thompson, Harry Leary and Bob Haro, to name a few.

Personal discovery is just like this; I may be ahead of him, but I am following you. Certainly this is how it was with my latest sartorial discovery: High-waisted Trousers. While I have joked with our Patrons for many years about the joy we are certain to experience when we start wearing our trousers as high as our octogenarian forefathers - if not because fashion dictates then simply because we will realise how comfortable they are - I find one of our patrons has pipped me to the post!

And when I say one, I mean just the one, because for many of our Patrons wearing their Strides at the prerequisite position of their hips, is already high enough - in some cases, it is too high! Small wonder, given that todays Jeans and Chinos are made to be worn lower than this, what we mistakenly refer to as hipsters. But Hipsters were so named owing to the fact that, up until the 1950’s trousers had been worn at the waist, until the hippies of the 1960’s dispatched with sartorial etiquette and shimmied their flares down to their hips. You can imagine what the old rear guard thought of that…

If you think about it, it makes perfect sense: the Waistband of a pair of trousers is so named because it used to be worn at the Waist i.e. one’s natural waist, somewhere around the navel.

But it was not comfort alone which now has me anxiously awaiting two pairs of high-waisted trousers from two of our respective workshops. The tipping point came when I noticed my Saxon frame for the first time i.e. long in the torso, short in the legs. Or perhaps I have been looking at the sartorial cognoscenti on Instagram too much during Lockdown, who have already started to sport high-waisted trousers.

So, to redress the balance, it seemed fortuitous to conduct a little research and development and make some High-waisted Trousers of my own…

The first pair we are making will utilise our eponymously named English-cut, which will be handmade in India using an age old trouser pattern originally drafted by our head-cutter Phil Saunders . Replete with Double English Pleats, a la Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief, and using Fox Brothers, Fox Air, which is a high-twist plane weave. I have two pairs of trousers made in this way, one pair using a green linen from Dugdales and another pair using Fox Brothers, Heritage Flannel. Both sit the highest on my waist of all my trousers, and are the most comfortable trousers I own.

The other pair will be a pair of our Fatto-in-Italia trousers, made using a new pattern I have drafted and using Hardy Minnis, Fresco Lite, replete with Continental Pleats a la Jude Law in The Talented Mr Ripley. Comfort aside, it is a wonder it has taken me this long to take the plunge, given the influence these two films have had on one’s wardrobe these past couple years.

Only time will tell if I have reached sartorial nirvana. But whilst I may have spared you my newfound love of Lycra, I shall remind you not to knock the High-waisted Trousers until you have tried them. After all, why do you think we call ourselves Brown in Town…

Good Day One and All…