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fashion: feature
John Pearse, for a lifetime
Stanley Moss finds the ideal fabric—but
it’s up to John Pearse of London to shape it into a bespoke
jacket
READERS OF THESE RAMBLINGS MAY recall
the account of an odyssey to the Hebrides of Scotland in August
2007, following
the footsteps of Johnson and Boswell. There, a coat-length of
real Harris tweed was purchased at the Kenneth McKenzie Mills in
Stornoway, Isle of Lewis. The tweed eventually found its way to
the premises of John Pearse in Soho, London in February 2008, where
measurements were taken, and the venerable process of custom tailoring
a bespoke jacket began. (The archaic term bespoke refers
to the practice of first buying the cloth before it is actually
made into a garment: the cloth was said to be spoken for, and thus
could not be taken by anyone else.)
While jackets can be made up in a matter of weeks,
owing to the itnieraries of the client, this finished garment was
delivered in August 2008, but well worth the six-month wait.
Mr Pearse’s minimalist shop, a few steps
from Savile Row, is an oasis of contemporary style mixed with traditional
standards of fine tailoring. There’s a selection of Pearse-created
ready-made suits, jackets, coats, shirts, caps and pyjamas on hand,
but John is best-known for superior made-to-measure, both for ladies
and gents. In addition to cutting a very fine, fitted silhouette,
his jackets often sport eccentric, colourful and idiosyncratic linings.
For the tweed jacket, Mr Pearse located a printed silk of newspaper
headlines from the 1968 Paris student demonstrations, a perfect
match ideologically for the jacket’s intended wearer. With
the leftover cloth he cut a beautifully finished vest. As always,
the details shine, the angle and placement of pockets, the drape
of the shoulder, the slight curve of the waist, even the colour
of stitching on button holes becomes an aspect of perfection.
The joy of working with a master tailor cannot
be overstated. Pearse’s creations do not come cheap. Your patience
is required. These are garments which last a lifetime, cut to the
client’s unique dimensions, built to bring out the best of
the wearer and the beauty of the cloth. The first time you don a
jacket made just for you, the irrefutable pleasure of wearing a
singular personalized object comes close to a true sense of all
which is sublime. •
John Pearse
6 Meard Street
London W1F OEG
England
Telephone 44 20 7434-0738
Fax 44 20 7287-3862
jp @johnpearse.co.uk
www.johnpearse.co.uk
Stanley Moss is travel editor of Lucire.
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