Cuffs, collars, sleeves, and yokes

Paul Vincent

The Kent shirtmaker. Just about the last of its kind. It stands at the top of the road on a leafy hill, twenty miles outside London, in a Victorian-era workhouse, where over three narrow floors, shirts — and some neckties — of unimpeachable quality are hand-cut, sewn, and finished.


The hand-made shirtmaking business is a staggeringly labour-intensive one, and has gone on, much the same, on these premises, for very nearly one-hundred years. The scale of operation here has been pared-back in recent months, and the focus now is on small runs and bespoke finishing, for which there is still a healthy, mostly domestic, demand.
There's plenty more to say about the shirtmaker in Kent — maker of the Kelly collar shirt, among others — and about its characters and contraptions, and it is all done here.

Other words

T-Shirt oder nicht T-Shirt
Was lustig ist – und nicht so sehr lustig-ha-ha, sondern eher lustig-huh – an dem T-Shirt hier im Workshop ist, dass es, naja, eigentlich gar kein T-Shirt ist. Oder besser... Mehr lesen …
Herdwick on the grapevine
It wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t so nice. But then, if they weren’t so nice, it wouldn’t be so good. The pleasure-pressure paradox, that, of working alongside acquaintances... Mehr lesen …
Factory record
Consider the bumblebee. A ludicrous little fella: oblivious entirely to the impossibility of his fuzzy and rotund form being able to fly. One might wonder, if he stopped to think... Mehr lesen …