The OneShirt: A Phoenix from the Ashes [4/24/13 UPDATE: A SHIRTMAKER, AN ENGLISHMAN, CHAMBRAY, AND F

[wmb]



Maybe I'm biased since EoE is 75% of what I wear but I think it's versatile enough to take a BD.

Plain poplins look bad as BDs but the small amount of visual interest in an EoE allows for it to be ever so slightly more casual, though it works perfectly with a spread collar and French cuffs.

Agreed -- love my eoe bd's...

 

[unbelragazzo]

If those tags are written by SG, definitely misleading

 

[zalb916]



And, again, you're ignoring the incentives of shirtmakers like your own that don't have the stuff to sell. Have you ever heard a BMW dealer load praise on Mercedes? Nope, quite the opposite--because they don't sell Mercedes.

I'm not saying Freddy is crooked or dishonest--but as you say, he is human and has his own interests to serve.

My point about my interactions with Freddy was not meant to address this point that you keep making. It was meant to address your point that "We buy stuff like SG chambray on reputation." I'm saying that I don't order fabric for my shirts that he makes based on reputation. When I pick fabrics with him, there's never a discussion about the manufacturer. That is what I meant. Maybe he is totally crooked, but he's not using the supposed reputation of the fabric company to fool me.

 

[TheFoo]



To be clear...did SG ever lie about the fabric makeup? Or did everyone just assume it was all cotton and never ask until now?

Yes. They told Torsten it was 100% cotton, then retracted recently.

 

[TheFoo]



My point about my interactions with Freddy was not meant to address this point that you keep making. It was meant to address your point that "We buy stuff like SG chambray on reputation." I'm saying that I don't order fabric for my shirts that he makes based on reputation. When I pick fabrics with him, there's never a discussion about the manufacturer. That is what I meant. Maybe he is totally crooked, but he's not using the supposed reputation of the fabric company to fool me.

If you are making choices without respect to the reputation of a fabric maker, then I'd argue that you aren't making informed choices. Your shirtmaker, like any other, is unreliable on his own.

 

[zalb916]



To be clear...did SG ever lie about the fabric makeup? Or did everyone just assume it was all cotton and never ask until now?

This link seems to imply that SG was, at least, inaccurate at some point to a buyer:
http://www.the-journal-of-style.com/2013/05/01/chambray-gate/

It's not clear if the inaccuracy was deliberate lying or just a mistake. It also appears that the company did correct itself.

 

[TheFoo]

They did not correct themselves. They admitted fraud after being pressured by the distributor and mounting evidence against them.

Look, they are total F***ers. I don't understand the need to defend them despite their obvious manipulation and dishonesty.

 

[Ataturk]

Looks like your outrage is proportional to how much of the chambray you bought.

 

[zalb916]



If you are making choices without respect to the reputation of a fabric maker, then I'd argue that you aren't making informed choices. Your shirtmaker, like any other, is unreliable on his own.

Not really. I've got two ways to choose a fabric: the reputation of a fabric maker or the word of my shirtmaker. Well, three. I can do a hybrid. This also assumes for any option that I'm also looking at and feeling the stuff myself.

But how do I know about the reputation of a fabric maker? I've read about some on the internet. I've tried a number of them out. But what does that really tell me? On the other hand, my shirtmaker has decades of experience dealing with fabrics. In my expereince, he tends to only stock fabrics he deems to be good quality, and he has proven honest to me over the years. For instance, I never even get an invoice until after the shirts are in my hand. For me, I feel more confident trusting my shirtmaker over the reputation of fabric makers, because I find my shirtmaker more reliable than my own ability to determine the reputation of a fabric maker. Someone who knows more about the reputation of makers or feels less comfortable with the honesty of their shirtmaker may choose otherwise.

I'm making an informed decision based on my situation. It may be entirely different for someone else.

 

[archetypal_yuppie]



We buy stuff like SG chambray on reputation, which is the only metric that can be relied on with any consistency, but then tell ourselves that our refined senses pickup on the intrinsic quality.

Some of us do, some of us don't. Humility and the ability to rationally appraise something ex the known heuristic tendencies comes in to play.

In men's clothing, reputation is everything, and it always trumps what you think you feel between your fingers.

I don't know to what extent you're exaggerating or overreacting, but it seems foolish to adopt this view. Reputation is certainly not everything, and if you think there is a reason to pursue high end clothing, you ought to believe that you have the ability to appraise intrinsic quality in fit/materials/craftmanship at some level. Otherwise, why are you embarking on the project in the first place, because someone else says it looks good?

Also, you say don't trust your tailor too much, but also say reputation is everything and is more important than what you feel... so I don't know how you square those.

None of this is meant to suggest that anyone should be able to feel the polyester in the material.

Anyway, pretty hilarious thread overall, good stuff everyone.

 

[zalb916]



They did not correct themselves. They admitted fraud after being pressured by the distributor and mounting evidence against them.

Look, they are total F***ers. I don't understand the need to defend them despite their obvious manipulation and dishonesty.

Nobody's defending them. I think most of us are completely uninvested parties just talking about the facts that we see.

 

[zalb916]



Reputation is certainly not everything

Exactly. It's also highly subjective and prone to change. For example, there are numerous well-reputed fabric makers that have lowered the quality of their products over the years. I can read all these great accounts of their impeccable reputation from clothies on the internet. I can maybe even have my own positive experiences with the fabric from a few years ago. However, it's usually my tailor who's gonna tell me, "Just to let you know, this manufacturer now makes their stuff in China, and the quality has dipped. I know, because I've been working with the stuff for 30 years and noticed a difference a few months ago." Do I not trust him, because he's selling me shirts? Do I rely on my partially informed knowledge of the fabric maker's reputation? I guess that's my call to make based on my relationship with my tailor.

 

[NOBD]

Damn, how entertaining can a thread get?

 

[james_timothy]

Off the subject, but what good thread isn't always off the topic..

teh original
pure cotton

The old cloth is absolutely lovely.

I just received a swatch of the "old" Simonnot Godard chambray in the mail. Here is old versus new, side-by-side:

Not even remotely the same kind of shirting. For better or worse, the old-style is clearly much more irregular--both in the weaving and coloration. If you look carefully, the dye density in the blue yarns varies quite a bit. In contrast, the blue yarns in the new-style chambray appear to have taken the dye much more evenly.

The older cloth on the left appeals to me more than the generic-looking cloth on the right.

The thing is, though, there IS something nice about that Chambray. Its a bit rougher and fuzzier than broadcloth, but not as thick as Oxford, and has in interesting nap and a very dry hand. I am as anti-poly as anyone. But why can't someone make that same style in all cotton? It would be nice.

There is a thread of thought out there that cloth makers drove towards technical perfection at the cost of aesthetic appeal.
Here's a long quote from Bud Strickland of Cone Mills (taken from Loomstate), making that point:

Magnadraft was touted to be the latest and greatest technology in its day (the 1960s). What it was, rather than having a lever hold tension on the rolls in the drafting zone where the roving is elongated in making the desired yarn size, weighted rolls were used. The weighted rolls were magnetized and held in place by magnetic force.. So that's how Magnadraft came about.

Over time magnets can lose some of their power unless they're re-magnetised. You didn't really know which rolls were providing a little more tension than other rolls, so you're starting to get all these variations within the yarn, just due to the the strength of the magnet changing over time. And of course, people didn't realize exactly what was happening until after the fact. And that 's where a lot of the yarn character came from. It was a little bit more pronounced than the older technology, which from a technical standpoint turned out to be better. But from an aesthetic standpoint, of course, Magnadraft gave a look that everyone came to love.

Nowadays, of course, you're simulating the Magnadraft spinning inconsistencies, by programming the yarns with a computerised spinning system. What is the system and how does it work?
Yes, it is programmed.. We use a computerised system that can make slubs, we can control the number of slubs, the thickness of slubs, the length of the slubs, the frequency of the slubs, and combine different slubs in one yarn. The system we use is made by Amsler. It's a Swiss-made system. There are others on the market but that's the one we use - it allows us to engineer the yarns to reproduce those looks.

The clothmakers use a computerized system to program the machines into making cloth with the imperfections that came from older technologies, because people liked the cloth from the older technologies better.

It raises interesting questions of authenticity.

Back to the main line of the thread.

 

[Shirtmaven]



And what did you think of them?

Nice.. except they do not look like a dress shirt.
does not fall the same way cotton does

i have had some 100%wool brushed flannel in a shirt weight.
but that was an odd piece