B&tailor polo coat and three piece suit in a brown vintage glen check fabric through Robin Pettersson Tailor

Earlier this year I commissioned a new B&tailor overcoat and a three piece suit (jacket, waistcoat and trousers) through Robin Pettersson after previously having a pinstriped B&tailor suit made with him to an excellent result. 

B&tailor makes the most beautiful polo coats I’ve ever seen and I had been tempted for one for over a year and finally decided to pull the trigger. It will be made of a light brown 80 % wool 20 % cashmere fabric from Holland & Sherry. The length will be just below the knees in order to give warmth during the cold Swedish winters and also because a longer coat elongates the body which I find quite lovely and flattering especially for shorter and average tall men (I’m 180cm). The lapels will be peaked and 11cm wide and the pockets jetted. 

The suit will be through CMT (cut-make-trim, an expression when you bring your own fabric to the tailor). I found an amazing brown glen check with a green contrasting check that will be great for my skin and hair complexion (blonde and pale skin) in Milan last year at Il Vecchio Drappiere (fabric store) when I met with some of my suppliers. The cloth is a vintage fabric from Carlo Barbera and was labeled as pure wool. However it for sure has quite a lot of cashmere in it too, probably more so than the fabric for the polo coat which you can tell by it’s softness. At first I considered to only make a jacket out of it but the expedite at the store advised me to make a suit instead. There where only 4.7 meters left so I decided to purchase all of it and make a 3p (three piece) and hopefully have enough left for an extra pair of trousers. You should always consider to make an extra pair of trousers for suits since the jackets have a much longer life time than trousers. If you for instance buy a pinstripe suit it will most likely look wrong with odd trousers, so if your first pair breaks then you can just replace them with the second pair and still be able to use your jacket. 

Anyway I’m really happy with the fabric because it appeals to my style and it will be extremely hard to come by anything similar in the tailors fabric bunches. 

The jacket will be made by B&tailor but I’m actually using Robin Pettersson's own line for the waistcoat and trousers. There are two reasons for this. First of all Robin has teamed up with the very talented William Baxter who previously worked as a trouser maker at Timothy Everest in London making bespoke trousers for several movie stars for their blockbuster movies. William now makes all the trousers and waistcoats for Robin's own tailoring line and I wanted to try his services. The second reason is that it’s much cheaper than the trousers from B&tailor and I believe he can achieve a similar result. Even tough I’m using two different tailoring houses for the same suit I’m not worried about the clash of styles. This is because Robin is so acquainted with the B&tailor house style after having worked with them for a while now. Everything will also be tried on at the same time during the fittings which will give us a good perception on how the items look together so we we can coordinate them accordingly. 

It took a while for me to acquire the fabric for the suit and therefore we had one fitting of the overcoat made before the first one of the suit.

A few weeks ago Robin had a trunk show in Stockholm and we were able to make a first fitting of the suit and a second fitting for the polo. As previously mentioned in my Zaremba post one of the many perks of bespoke is that you save the customers bespoke pattern which allows the tailor to use the same one for the next commission and alter it even further. Thanks to the already extremely well fitted pinstripe suit I’ve made with B&tailor the suit jacket and polo coat sat near perfect and only very small alterations had to be made. Next time the overcoat will be ready for me to pick up in time for winter and we will have a second fitting of the suit. However I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s no alterations to be made for the jacket, but It’s worth having it anyway just in case. Robin mentioned that we probably won’t be able to improve the fit for my next commission since we now have established something very close to perfection. 

The trousers and waistcoat for the Robin Pettersson Tailor line also looked good for being the first fitting I've made for it and we only had to make a few adjustments. They will probably need a few more adjustments than the jacket for the next fitting but that’s only natural since it’s my first pair of trouser and waistcoat that I make with Robin and William’s own service. 

I will of course later post the final result of the polo coat and the second fitting of the suit. It will probably come sometime in November or December so make sure to stay updated. We are also collaborating with Robin Pettersson Tailor so if you’d like to see some of our items in person, make sure to swing by his showroom in Gothenburg at Victoriapassagen and check them out, email him in advance in order to make sure he has what you are looking for and that he is available. You can of course also buy our products of him on site. 

Tie in these pictures by Passaggio Cravatte. More images of the fitting below. 

Sincerely,
Thomas Bodfält
Founder