The Best Clothing Is Made Without Warning
Aka the time I had a custom chore coat made an hour before a wedding.
Last weekend I found myself in Raleigh for a wedding. I’d been there once before, in the summer of 2022 to write about the “omakase” service offered by Raleigh Workshop, which gives participants the chance to hang out with its founder Victor Lytvinenko and create their own one-off garment in real time.
During that trip, Victor made me a pair of wide-legged, slash-pocket jeans from a British selvedge denim he’d been gifted years before. I’ve worn them a ton since, and they’d aged beautifully with a few washes (and one cycle in the dryer to intentionally shrink them after weight loss). While in town for the wedding, I’d made plans to meet with Victor for breakfast the morning after, and show him how those jeans he’d made looked a year-and-a-half later.
After finishing brunch on Saturday, I realized I was just a few blocks from Raleigh Workshop. I texted Victor to ask if he’d want to meet then for a mid-afternoon coffee or cocktail, and he replied that he’d just finished playing soccer but could be there in 20 minutes. Sure enough, Victor was soon in the building, clad in soccer shorts and sneakers.
After initially discussing going out for a beer, his eyes flashed with a delightfully manic energy I recognized from our meeting a year before. “Do you want to make something?”, he said, leading me into the functional workshop behind the brand’s retail space.
Still in his soccer gear, Victor began showing me some of his recent creations, including a chore coat made out of the issue of The New York Times that had featured Raleigh Workshop and was published on his birthday last year. I noticed an army-drab roll of nubby seersucker set out on a work table, and suggested that a chore coat made from that material could be fun.
Within minutes, Victor was pulling out his patterns, and taking measurements from the Fujito jungle jacket I’d worn into the store. Checking the clock—it was about 1:45pm, and I’d have to return to my Airbnb by 3:00pm to slip into a tux for a 4:00pm ceremony—he assessed our prospects.
“We’re gonna eyeball it. It’s not going to be perfect, but we’re going to get it done.”
After pouring us some glasses of red wine from a friend’s vineyard, Victor got to work tracing the patterns and cutting the fabric before stitching it together on a sewing machine. I watched as concrete shapes like the pockets and plackets emerged, which Victor formed with an iron.
After an hour, a rough version of the chore emerged. It would still need to be hemmed and the pockets and buttons were yet to be added, but it was a real, three-dimensional garment that had been but a roll of fabric just an hour before. After eliding on a plan to meet again the next morning, I returned to my Airbnb, where my friends—one of whom had texted me about my whereabouts somewhat anxiously—were greeted by the sight of me wearing a half-finished chore coat brandishing a half-empty bottle of wine. I rapidly changed into my tux, drained the bottle—aided by said friends, I should add—and attended the ceremony and reception, where I was hailed by a stranger at its conclusion with the words “Tuxedo and cummerbund guy: I liked your dancing!”
The next morning—against all odds, not hungover—I was picked up by Victor and escorted back to the workshop, with the aim of finishing what we’d started the day before. Beginning at about 11:15am, we now had the time crunch of a 2pm flight.
After finishing the hem, we started with the pockets. I decided on four, and while we’d use Raleigh Workshop’s standard shape for the two up-top, I asked for larger pockets below. Freestyling with chalk, Victor sketched out their placement before cutting the pockets out of the fabric, shaping them with an iron and stitching them to the front.
The next concern was the buttons. The workshop had plenty of metal shank buttons used for jeans, but Victor thought they might prove too heavy for the feather-weight seersucker. After sifting through a bag of mismatched horn buttons in the back, I stumbled on a plastic cylinder of silver-colored shanks in a lighter weight that looked quite amenable to the fabric, in terms of both weight and color.
Using a 1940s buttonhole making machine, Victor punched in five holes on the front and one on each sleeve. It got a little dicey, as the machine seemingly jammed a few times—Victor explained that it wasn’t set up for a fabric as light and slippery as the seersucker—but he ultimately punched the buttonholes through after a few false starts.
A little after 12:15pm, the jacket was finished, complete with the 1/1 patch Victor gives to all “omakase” products, and both of our signatures on its inside. I ordered an Uber for the airport, imagining how I’d explain to my wife that what was originally planned as a simple breakfast meeting had evolved into having a custom chore coat made in two 60-minute sessions.
Upon reaching the airport—and despite its terrible food options—I was still operating on a sort of high. A big part of that, for sure, was having attended a great wedding with friends. But it was also the contagious energy I’d picked up from Victor. At a time when so much of what we wear is “designed in X” but made in another place far, far away, it’s energizing to have a front row seat to that rarest of events in garment manufacturing today: spontaneous creation.
Cut, Make & Trim
A few things I’ve been up to lately: at Robb Report, I interviewed modern Savile Row legend Richard Anderson, and endorsed The Armoury’s new Berkeley captoe oxford.
There’s also a new issue of WM Brown out. Writing for the magazine is some of the most fun I have all year. I’ve also enjoyed how its assignments have increasingly pushed me out of my classic clothing/booze comfort zone. While the present issue saw me write about Fox Brothers fabric, Islay scotch and a Californian maker of bridle leather bags, it also tasked me with stories on a father-and-son sign painting business and a company converting ex-military G-Wagens to civilian use. Check it out!
On a jaunt into New York Wednesday, I caught sight of The Armoury’s new Model 11 sack jacket made with madras from the Original Madras Trading Co. OMTC is legit—I’ve written about them previously, for InsideHook and Robb Report—and I suppose that the amount of time I’ve spent professionally praising the producer of hand-loomed cottons left me an easy target. I picked it up in-store, and look forward in receiving it post-alterations in 10 days or so.
How fascinating it must be to witness that!
What a cool story. I’ve got friends in the area that we visit regularly. I’ll put this place on my list to visit next time we’re in town.