To Edwin’s way of thinking the ultimate end of formal dress is to show the human form in its best light – to present one’s self to advantage. And, to that end, any garment should lend authority, gravity and dignity. It should minimize weakness and vice, maximize strength and virtue. And to fully focus the force of personality through the lens of fabric, a man requires a tailor.
And not just any tailor. What is required is a remarkable man. An artist working faithfully in a rapidly disappearing art, deeply rooted in a tradition that stretches back through the centuries. A tradition that includes countless suits, crafted to fit countless numbers of men – gentlemen and rogues, saints and killers – the just and the unjust alike. When viewed at this level the tailor’s art encompasses, not merely needle and thread, scissors and fabric, but the whole cloth of mankind in all its shapes and sizes. And this is exactly the altitude from which Mr. Giles, Edwin’s tailor, considers his craft.
Mr. Giles is descended from a long line of Saville Row tailors. So the material he has measured most carefully is the cloth of his own life. Each suit he has made has taken over 1,000 stitches. Each stitch has been made by hand. With measuring, fitting, and adjustments these thousand stitches absorb about 100 hours.
So 100 hours per suit, divided into perhaps 50 working years, makes 20 suits a year. A few allowances for quality, tuning up old suits, having a nice weekend, and working at a reasonable pace — this is, after all, a marathon, not a vulgar sprint — and Mr. Giles has calculated the span of his own life. He believes he will live to make 1000 perfect suits.
Fortunately, Mr. Giles has no modern ideas about retirement. Many, many people have worked hard to make him the craftsman he is. And he is happy to be absorbed in a long and honorable tradition. He will work until he can no longer maintain the standard. And his fervent wish is to die in the harness, on the job, with the feel of the fabric between his fingers. When he lets go his grip on this world, the last thing he wants to feel is a fine worsted wool slipping between his fingers as he goes.
The suit that Edwin lays out on the four-poster bed is suit number seven hundred and twenty-one.
When this particular suit was fitted, Mr. Giles explained to Edwin that cloth that he had selected, or spoken for (and hence the term Bespoke tailoring) was the last of a very old fabric. A fine fabric, and one that he had used to cut a suit for Edwin’s father. At this mention of his dead father, Edwin had stiffened slightly, causing the cuff of his pants to rise 1/32 of an inch by Mr. Giles measurements. For Mr. Giles, this 1/32nd of an inch was a vast gulf filled with meaning. The good tailor quickly changed the subject to silence. Edwin had not thought of his father since.
But now, alone in strange land, and confronted with the fabric again, Edwin’s thoughts turn to his father. He remembers him only in fragments, but always with a wry smile and an air of feckless joy. Happy, that is it, he remembers his father as being happy.
Edwin looks at the fabric carefully. It is a light grey wool with subtle flecks of green throughout. The fabric is remarkable in itself, but nothing when compared with the garment complete. To fully appreciate the suit, one has to note how it slides effortlessly over the canvas of fabric that forms the structure of the jacket. It has not been bonded together with chemical glue as mass-produced, off-the-rack suits are. No, this suit moves and rolls, flows naturally like skin. It is not an exaggeration to describe this garment as being alive.
Mr. Giles has cut several other suits for the younger Mr. Windsor. Although Mr. Giles enjoyed Edwin’s father’s custom for many years, and came to know the man, he never again spoke of him to Edwin. It had been such a tragedy for a young boy. And, if the truth be told, it had hung his frame with a certain melancholy. So that the suits that Mr. Giles cut for Edwin were impossibly elegant. Wrought with a sadness, cast in the light of a great house in decline. And for each suit, when he had taken the measurements, he had heard something sacred and sad in the proportions.
With a deft hand Edwin throws a full Windsor knot into the silk tie. Two tugs and the knot is perfected. He folds the collar, double folds his shirt cuffs and inserts cufflinks. The links are nothing ostentatious or outrageous, just delicate circles, complete in themselves. Socks, pants, shoes, belt. Then he slides into the jacket and tugs his shirt cuffs free. Edwin takes a moment to admire the cut of the suit in the mirror. How diminished the suit had been without the wearer. But now, it is complete. And Edwin is completed by it. The art of the tailor is in the intersection, in the dance of fabric and occupant.
There is something terribly appropriate in dressing for dinner, Edwin reflects. Composing one’s self in order to be with others. For whatever faults Iphagenia Rielly might have (and misplaced lust is surely one of them) she did retain a sense of propriety. Of gracious living, if that were a phrase Edwin could use. And as long as a sense of this, a vestige of style and sensibility remained in the world, all hope could not be lost. Progress could be made.
Edwin leaves the room with a spring in his step.