Materials

Everything begins with the cloth. What follows is what each material does, and why it is in the collection.

Linen

Linen is a flax fibre, and it behaves unlike anything else in heat. The fibre is hollow, which is why linen moves air rather than trapping it, and why a linen shirt at thirty degrees feels like relief instead of endurance.

It also creases, and that is not a flaw to be engineered out. A linen shirt that holds a crease is telling you the fibre has not been coated or resin-treated into behaving like something else. Ours are washed before they are cut, so they arrive already soft rather than needing a season to break in.

Canapa

Canapa is hemp, and it is the least understood good fibre in menswear.

It is stronger than cotton, it holds dye without going flat, and it is one of the very few fabrics that genuinely improves with washing — the fibre bundles separate a little more each time, so a canapa popover is softer in its third year than its first. It regulates temperature better than linen and creases less. The only reason it is not everywhere is that it is harder to spin and slower to finish.

Worth buying for that reason alone: a shirt that is better for having been worn.

Bamboo viscose

Bamboo viscose is a regenerated cellulose fibre. The bamboo is broken down and reformed into filament, which is a chemical process, and we would rather tell you that than let the word bamboo do work it has not earned.

What it gives you is drape. Viscose falls in a way no natural fibre matches at the same weight — it moves with the body instead of holding its own shape, and it is cool against the skin in a way cotton is not. That is why it is used for the camp collar shirts and nothing else in the collection. It is the right fibre for one specific job.

Cotton

Cotton is decided by construction rather than by the fibre itself, which is why the same material appears three ways in the collection.

Pique is a raised, textured weave — it holds a collar upright and resists clinging, which is why it has been the polo shirt's fabric for a century. Moss stitch is a knit rather than a weave, producing a dense, slightly pebbled surface with more give and more weight. Stretch cotton carries a small percentage of elastane for a closer line through the body without the fabric fighting back.

Three different garments from one fibre, and the difference is entirely in how the yarn was put together.

Wool and cashmere

The cold-weather cloth comes from Biella, in the foothills of the Piedmontese Alps.

Fine fibre lives or dies at the finishing stage. Scour cashmere in hard water and the fibre hardens; the garment will feel thin and slightly wiry, and no amount of wear will bring it back. Biella's water runs off the Alps exceptionally soft and low in minerals, which is the unglamorous physical reason cloth from that valley handles the way it does. It is also why the district has never relocated, despite two hundred years of cheaper alternatives.

A knit made from properly finished fibre holds its shoulder through a season instead of collapsing at the seam. A coat drapes because of the weight the cloth was woven to, not because of what was sewn into its lining.

Designed in Paris. Garments assembled in Asia.