Snow is a letter sent from the sky. So wrote Ukichiro Nakaya, the physicist who gave his life to the study of snow crystals. The shape of a crystal records the weather of the upper air in which it formed. Clothing is no different. In the way a garment is cut, in the way its seam allowances are finished, the period that made it and the work of the person who wore it remain. With the third delivery, the last of the season, the eye leaves the postal route and descends: to the garrison, the mountain worksite, the coal seam. A deeply cut rise. Edges left raw. Leather laid only where the cloth wears through. As Nakaya read the sky in a crystal, a day in the life of the wearer can be read in the structure of a single garment.
LOT.410 MACKINAW COAT
GRAY PLAID, BLACK PLAID
Mackinaw is a place name in Canada. In the early nineteenth century, coats cut from blankets were made for the British troops garrisoned there, and that is where this garment begins. In time it left the army behind, becoming workwear for men in the mountains and, later, dress for the street.
The basis here is a 1930s US military mackinaw coat. To make it something for daily wear, the waist belt was removed and details such as the lapel and the stitch widths were drawn again. Two wool cloths are joined by needle punching, and the marks left where countless needles passed through become the buffalo check itself. A coat that pictures snow beginning to settle on the ground, and that stands for the concept of the season.
LOT.412 BRITISH POSTAL WORKER DUFFLE COAT
NAVY, BLACK
It was the British Navy in the Second World War that made the name duffle coat known. The original taken up here comes later, after the garment had passed from the services into civilian hands: a coat worn by British postal workers around 1960.
Two things separate it from the military version. It has no hood, and the front closes asymmetrically. Structural lines and finishes are almost all left raw. That economy is carried over, and to it was added an original melton reverse in bonded double cloth, which brings the weight down without losing warmth. Each roll is finished with the nap disturbed, giving an uneven surface close to that of a vintage piece. The wooden toggles are lacquered one by one.
LOT.332 LEATHER-PIPED CUFF SPORTS JACKET
BEIGE, BLACK
Leather frames the cuffs and the pocket openings. It is there to protect the places that wear through, and it is where this jacket began.
Forward set sleeves, side adjusters, a zipped chest pocket. On this evidence the garment is certainly made for motorsport. Yet the proportions of the back and front width, and the difference between front and back hem lengths, show that the maker had wider occasions in mind. The BLACK is made in a lambswool double cloth beaver, with horsehide at the cuffs, so that two materials meet and set each other off.
LOT.607 SWEAT COAT
HEATHER GREY, MUD BROWN
In 1920s America there was a garment known as the sweat coat, a jacket made up in sweatshirt cloth. A collar, a front placket, cuff and waist ribs knitted in the round. Simple to the eye, it comes apart into something intricate.
Those elements were drawn out as far as they would go and given a new reading. The buttons are nut. The mud dyeing is done on the finished garment, which leaves its own unevenness across the surface.
LOT.533 ZIP-UP KNIT BLOUSON
NAVY, BLACK
The pattern does not line up. On this blouson, made in France in the 1940s, the lines across the front panels sit slightly out of true. No one treated it as a fault to be corrected. It was knitted that way, worn that way, and it survived. That misalignment is carried over here. The yarn is merino from the Rocky Mountains of North America. A double knit structure holds the warmth, and it can be worn as an outer layer.
LOT.122 ONE-PIECE COLLAR SPORTS SHIRT
LIGHT GRAY PLAID, NAVY PLAID
A one piece collar, the stand and the fall drawn from a single pattern. That is why it rolls softly when open. Behind it is the sports shirt worn for winter sport from the late 1940s into the 1950s.
A yarn of cotton blended with alpaca is woven in a loose 2×2 twill and brushed. On both chests, the patch and flap pockets are matched exactly to the pattern. The elegant and careful craft of a period that did not spare its labour is brought back.
LOT.224 M-43 FIELD TROUSERS
BROWN, BLACK
A deeply cut rise, and a wide silhouette falling straight from thigh to hem. The shape belongs to the 1940s U.S. ARMY field trouser, which was made to go over another pair. The adjustment tabs at the hem are there so the ankle can be drawn in and tucked into a boot.
The cloth is 100 per cent wool with a dry handle and firm body, which builds that straight silhouette more solidly.
LOT.204 ENGINEER TROUSERS
DARK BROWN, CHARCOAL
The original is an eighteenth century work trouser unearthed in California. A deep rise, and a silhouette that keeps its width from thigh to hem. The cloth is a military moleskin, a heavy material with, as the name has it, the sheen and faint nap of a mole's skin, once used for the work jackets of French coal miners.
To reach the handle of a vintage cloth, a yarn with some roughness in it was chosen on purpose. Mercerised in the preparation, it holds a fine sheen and a coarseness at once. The finish is garment dyeing. Depth gathers at the seams and in the weave, so that a single colour never reads flat.
The custom stamped buttons and back parts are iron, left unplated on purpose. Given time, rust will come. Worn, washed, worn again, the colour and the surface shift. A trouser that completes itself inside the time of the person who wears it.
LOT.010 US MILITARY HAT
BROWN, BLACK
The uniform of the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) was often paired with a denim hat made in the same cloth. In the 1930s it came to be called the Daisy Mae, after the female character in Al Capp's comic strip Li'l Abner. The design itself goes back to 1908.
Over the First World War the making was simplified. The cotton lining was taken out and the sweatband changed from leather to denim. The crown moved from four panels to six. The reference here is the M37, the final specification laid down in 1937, and the details of the transition towards it remain strongly present. Last season the hat was cotton; this season it is a wool with body and spring, finished with a dry handle.
