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 ou pas t-shirt
Ce qui est drôle — et pas tellement drôle-ha-ha que drôle-hein- — avec le t-shirt ici à l'atelier, c'est que, eh bien, ce n'est pas vraiment un t-shirt du tout.... Lire plus...
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... Lire plus...
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... Lire plus...