Dear fellows of the HTA. I want to share something special to mee. I May, I got a call from the Dutch association of tailors - BMA - with a request: I was asked to make the man's outfit for the EMTC in Dortmund/Germany on the 26th of May. Still packed with a big workload I ascepted the challenge.
The EMTC is bianual event organized by Austria, Switserland, Germany and The Netherland. This event is for exchange of knowledge, networking and showing the best of tailoring of each country. There were workshops and of cause 'fashion shows' . The category I was chosen for was a comparative show. All participants got the same fabrics and were free in their creativity to do what ever they want. We got a light blue flannel from Holland&Sherry and a tweed from Moseltweed. The last one is the product of a sustanbility project in Germany at the river Mosel. There are about 2000 Merino sheeps in this area. The wool was thrown away as it is to expensive to spinn the yarn and weave cloth. A woman set up a project to collect the wool. She found a spinning company and a weaver who were willing to make a cloth out of the wool. ......
In a two weeks time I created a suit. The brace top tousers I posted earlier is part of that suit. My idea was to create a combination of a coat and a cape. The coat was ment to refer to the gentleman wearting a suit from the finest wool. The tweed cape refers to the sherpard who traditionally wears a cape/cloke. I was surprised to get a lot of very positive reactions after the show.
The lady's outfit was made and showed by my lovely colleague Joke Rozenbeek. A great work of couture!
Because of the little amout of time I had to work with manufacturing techniques but still a lot of hand sewing was involved. One day befor the event I spend about 16 hours in my atelier to get the coat finished. It was a lovely experience and I met a lot of great tailors. I am still far away of beening a master tailor but it is a lovely jouney.
Looks great congratulations
Great work! Interesting story. I'm glad somebody is saving that Merino wool... It breaks my heart to think of products like that simply being thrown away.