Designer Spotlight

Luxury retail has a habit of foregrounding the house name and leaving the individual craftsperson invisible. This series exists to correct that, in a small way — a running introduction to the tailors, leatherworkers, shoemakers and perfumers behind specific pieces in the maison.

This edition centres on our senior atelier tailor, who has cut half-canvassed jackets for over twenty years and still takes sixty individual measurements for every made-to-order commission — more than the industry standard, by design. "A jacket that fits at fitting one and still fits at year ten was measured properly the first time," is how she describes the discipline. "There's no fixing that later with a good iron."

It's a philosophy that runs through the Midnight Two-Piece Suit and every made-to-order piece built on the same house pattern — proportions borrowed from the atelier tradition, adjusted individually rather than sized off a chart.

The same discipline shows up, differently, in our perfumer's approach to a new composition, and in the pattern cutters at the Leather Maison who work around a hide's natural markings rather than cutting blind. Different crafts, same underlying standard: the parts no client ever sees are held to the same bar as the parts they do.

Future editions of this series will introduce the shoemaking team behind the Footwear Gallery and the pattern cutters at the Leather Maison. Check back in the Journal, or follow Craftsmanship for new entries as they're published.