This tailored jacket from Whitcomb & Shaftesbury is machine washable. Such cases are very rare. Why?
Firstly, most good tailored jackets are made with canvas across the chest and melton below the collar, neither of which react well to machine washing (even at cold temperatures). It can become distorted and diminished.
Second, the material of the jacket itself is generally not machine washable. Cotton is the easiest in that regard, but even then the material must be washed thoroughly beforehand, often several times, to remove all shrinkage.
Bespoke tailoring is also more demanding than a regular suit. This is because inside there is more complex canvas work, sometimes more detailed handwork, and the overall shape is made more precisely into 3D forms that can be distorted by washing. That’s why professional ironing after dry cleaning is very important.
So when Whitcomb showed me a really cool machine washable jacket he was working on for a customer, I was intrigued.
But it’s not about convenience. Rather than the fact that I could wash it at home, I was more concerned that a bespoke cotton jacket would become closer to ready-to-wear.
Bespoke customers are often disappointed when they request a cotton jacket. They’ve seen pieces in stores from Italian brands like Boglioli or British brands like Drake’s and want something soft, casual, but tailored to fit.
Tailor-made cotton jackets generally don’t look that way due to the sharpness caused by their internal structure, but since they are not washable, almost all ready-to-wear cotton jackets are industrially washed.
This garment wash takes place in a large tub, walk-in laundry room and provides an attractive fade around the edges and seams of the jacket. The material itself is often industrially cleaned beforehand to break down and soften the cotton.
This can happen when dry cleaning, but only over a long period of time. In general, the goal of dry cleaning is to not affect the material as much as the customer would like. King Charles has a beautifully faded cotton jacket, and when I asked the tailors who made it for him, they said they were all at least 10 years old.
Even after a year or two, most people don’t have the patience to wash their clothes repeatedly like this. It’s been sitting in an undesirable state for too long and I don’t enjoy wearing it. Even raw denim suffers from this problem today. We recently discussedTailoring doesn’t have the benefit of being much more personalized in a way that fades.
My hope for the Whitcomb & Shaftesbury jacket was that when I washed it at home it would start to break down quickly and fade, bringing it closer to the attractive, lived-in look of an RTW cotton jacket.
As pictured here, the jacket has been machine washed three times. Regular detergent, regular cycle, 30 degrees, low spin. Then hang it on a good hanger to dry.
The jacket was made using melton material under the collar rather than canvas on the chest, but the collar was hand-stitched to give some control and shape to the front. It’s surprising that, despite all the basics that make it typically tailored, the jacket retains its shape so much when worn.
The jacket not only fits me better than RTW in terms of 2D – correct length, width, overall shape – but it also fits me better in terms of tailoring – chest shape, sleeve pitch, neck closure, etc.
After the second wash, I tried steaming to get the wrinkles out. We have a good steamer at the office, so it took about 10 minutes to work through all the parts of the jacket.
This made the body and sleeves sleeker, but had less impact on the patch pockets, leaving them largely unchanged. Changing this will require some careful ironing.
Anyway, after 30 minutes of wearing it, most of the wrinkles reappeared, especially in areas like my elbows and waist. And honestly, it looked better that way.
The Whitcomb team also pressed it when I first got it and everything was perfectly smooth, but after a bit of wear it looked even better again. That’s the beauty of things, the point. (I’ll write a follow-up article on style points like these.)
After three washes, the seams and edges of the jacket are starting to fade a bit, but it’s barely noticeable. As much as the color is good in terms of style, fading is likely to be more noticeable in dark colors such as navy or black. Maybe that would be a good idea next time.
The tack stitching around the pockets also had to be strengthened to cope with machine washing and heavy use. I passed it through my pocket. But since then they’ve been perfect, and that’s Whitcomb’s note for the future. After all, they haven’t made many of these jackets yet.
Because there is a lot more to say about this project, we have intentionally divided our coverage into two sections. One is about the practicality of a washable bespoke jacket, the second section is about the aesthetic choices – material, color, design – why I like that style so much, and how I wore this jacket.
The second piece will be published in . wednesday This week. If you don’t mind, please hold off on asking questions about those things until then.
This jacket is custom made by Whitcomb & Shaftesbury and costs £2400 including VAT. Other colors available in the same material include black, navy, olive, and beige.
Photos of the featured costumes are shown above and below.
