The Glenwood Guide — Categories
Casual & Resortwear
Dress casual and resortwear are named parts of what we take on — the looser the garment, the more the cut has to carry.
Businesswear, tuxedos and resortwear are the three areas we name as our own, and the third surprises people. Casual does not mean unconsidered — if anything the opposite. A structured jacket has canvas and padding doing work for the silhouette. Take those out and there is nothing left to hide behind but the cut.
Why unstructured is harder
A half-lined or quarter-lined jacket puts lining only where it needs to slide — the shoulders, the sleeves — and leaves the back open. A lighter canvas and a softer, less padded shoulder let the jacket sit on you rather than over you. The result moves closer to a shirt in weight while still reading as tailoring, and every error in the pattern shows.
This is exactly the kind of decision that is easy in a bespoke commission and impossible off a rail. It is settled at the first appointment, before the pattern is drafted.
Warm-weather cloth
What survives a North Carolina summer, from the English and Italian mills we buy from:
- High-twist wool — spun hard before weaving, which leaves the cloth porous, springy and remarkably crease-resistant
- Fresco-type open weaves, the traditional answer to a hot climate and still the correct one
- Linen, unmatched for coolness, which will crease — that is the deal
- Hopsack, an open basketweave that makes a superb warm-weather blazer
Weight is only half the story. What determines how a cloth wears in humidity is how much air moves through it, and that is a function of the weave far more than of the grams.
Where This Leads
Tailoring & AlterationsBegin Here
Come and be measured
745 W. Johnson Street, Raleigh. Tuesday to Saturday, 10:30 to 5. Appointment preferred.