Watching you videos is a great joy. They have been answering many of my long held questions after over 60 years of sewing. But one thing has me curious.
I have been wondering why the upper collar is turned in between the canvas and the melton on the long edge, But not the ends? On photos and in books I have seen called bespoke Seville Row tailoring like yours the ends of the jacket collar are folded back over the melton and hand stitched like you teach. Not trimmed more and tucked in between the melton and canvas on the ends like the long edge is.
I am thinking this is to make the coat look to be a truly hand crafted garment and not manufactured?
Or is it tradition (which I truly appreciate)
Or maybe some structural reason I can not see?
I have seen some Asian tailors tuck in and call themselves bespoke. But by the other shortcuts I see them take I can see the difference between them and the amazing work I have watched you do.
The main reason is balance as previously explained. Another would be the shaping of the collar with the padding stitch. If you tuck the cloth between the layers this would mean taking out all the stitching near the notch. In short there wouldn't be much padding left on the under-collar.
The reasons I do it are
1) Sometimes you finish a coat and the notch just does not LOOK right and you want to change it, I find this quite often as I am recreating vintage fashion plates
2) Ive tucked it under the Melton in the early days, when you press the coat it "telegraphs" through onto the top collar, and once you have steamed it you CAN NOT get that imprint out
I can see that now- because recognising balance is so important. Well done Robbie!
Is it so tailor can change design of collar in the future, if wanted?
Complete guess from me – if you wanted to do a really complicated alteration and lengthen the front balance, you'd need a bit more collar length, so you wouldn't want to trim it. That wouldn't preclude removing the padding and tucking it under, though that would probably show up as a lump. Probably wrong though!
Roy sent this in a private email to me, and I asked him to share it here.
I want to throw it out there and see if anyone would like to hazard a guess as to what the answer might be. I of course know the answer but maybe somebody else has a theory on it.