How to Make a Coat

Since the release of my free video series The Making of a Coat in 2012, I realised the need for a ’how-to’ video series on coat making and an in-house coat making class, particularly Savile Row coat making.

So many people say, ‘tailoring is a dying art’. It's not because there are fewer people taking up the needle but rather aspiring tailors are finding it harder and harder to secure an apprenticeship under a master of the trade.

I fully support colleges and evening courses that offer classes on how to make a coat as it can really help a lot of people develop their skills and quench their thirst for knowledge. I myself enrolled in the London College of Fashions Handcraft Tailoring Diploma in 2005. The faculty made it out to be the only course one needed to take to become a tailor. That after one year you would know everything you needed to to venture into the trade and be a success. Of course, once I started there they sang a different tune. I was then told then that they don't turn out tailoring apprentices any more, the course was too short, the class sizes too big and the curriculum too broad to handle such a detailed subject as handcraft tailoring.

Our course on coat making was only one-third of the entire year, meaning we only had a few short months to get our project finished and learn all the skills necessary to do so. Since I had already learned coat making in Ireland, this reality was less daunting to me than many others in my class.

I recalled being quite annoyed at the faculty for feeding me one story before I joined and another when l enrolled, l was hugely sceptical at their claims but wanted to believe them anyway. Even given my own experience, l would still encourage others to follow my footsteps and take a coat making class locally if one was available to you. Coat making is a highly skilled subject and even if you only got a brief introduction to it, with the support of the video series you would see it for what these courses really are. Just the first step in a long road to becoming a handcraft tailor.

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