Wedding Suit: A Taste of One's Own Medicine

Photo @kittywsphoto

Call it woman’s intuition, but at some point nearing our nuptials I sensed that Saffron Darby may not share my view that what a Gentleman should wear to his wedding/the wedding of the year should be a grey double breasted suit cut from Dugdale Bros finest Yorkshire tweed. 

Not that we hadn’t paid attention when Saffron Darby shared with us the colour scheme such as it was, but when my bride revealed her inspiration; a Chinoiserie purse which once belonged to her great grandmother, I presumed that the fabulous gold and floral colour-way was a reflection of her dress and not just her bouquet - little did I know. 

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You see it is one thing to dispense with sartorial advice when commissioned to make a wedding suit, but it is another thing entirely when it comes to designing your own. Firstly, there is no devil’s advocate, which is often the role which I play in such circumstances. Moreover, being objective when indeed you are the object can be difficult to achieve.

A Trouble Shared

In my experience, decisions pertaining to a bridegrooms suit are often made more swiftly when a bride is involved in the decision making process. Not least because she is abreast of all the minutiae of the day including what colour her dress will be, but also which colours she likes her groom to wear based on experience. Brown in Town goes to great lengths to find the most flattering for a groom and we start the consultation process by ‘doing one’s colours, darling’, which is a neat trick which we have learned from the ladies and which ensures we choose from a colour palette that is becoming of the wearer. 

Rarely does my own opinion conflict with the brides, there may have been one occaision which I shared with Saffron Darby pertaining to a groom being steered away from his choice of selected cloths which ergo put her off the idea. Oh dear…

So, without further ado and with only a matter of months to spare before the Big Day, we set about selecting an alternative cloth for our suit. Realising the stakes were high - fashion design marries tailor - we considered all of our options for an autumnal wedding set to a backdrop of the historical Old Marylebone Town Hall in London. Being November, there was also a high chance of rain on the day, which was another reason why we thought the grey tweed a fitting choice as we had rather fancied walking from The Standard Hotel where we were to spend the night before the wedding to the Town Hall next morning. So, naturally we chose white! 

Inspiration

We had long been inspired by the incredible white double breasted suit worn by Charles Dance on a past issue of The Rake magazine. Whilst I may not be able to compete in the silver fox stakes, as luck would have it I was in the process of making a pair of our trousers in ecru using Dugdale Bros sumptuous 14oz English & Town Classics worsted wool, which we selected owing to it's robust but soft hand and the fact that the worsted twill was still visible in the cloth. So, now all we had to do was have a coat made to accompany them and get to the church on time. There would be no need to change the design of the coat, as I was confident the deconstructed Fatto-in-Italia style which I have come to favour over the past few years would cut a dash and offer the most comfort for a day of ceremony, dining, celebrating and of course the obligatory photos.

Double Denim

Then the rains came, and washed away any notion of our walking to Old Marylebone Town Hall in our white finery, but this was not to be the only surprise. Enter our Bride in her ‘white’ wedding dress?! 

Of course, Saffron Darby looked amazing and in spite the shock, on reflection I would have to say that all criteria were indeed met; at least according to my Bride who loved my suit, and a great deal more than she says she liked Plan A. However, Plan A has become this seasons go to for both suit and separates as the coat makes a superb jacket and when worn on as suit on it's maiden voyage on our honeymoon in gay Paris, it made me feel just as I had intended when I designed it: the quintessential English gentleman..