The development of cloth

[gruto]

Cloth was often much heavier 30 and 40 years ago. But, it appears to me that also the make has changed from a coarser finish to a much softer structure. How do you look at the development?

[jamesd]

When i first joined our firm in late 1980s our lightest Range was approx 400gms moving up to 585gms.Happy days all suits looked clean when made ..tailors never had problems making them..what joy.
The demise of the heavyweight has happened with the rise of the Ready to Wear market .Maybe since mid 70s when we started importing ready-made suits from Europe .Odermark we one of the first to bring European fashion to UK market this in turn captured a new generation of suit wearers .Unlike before them this generation didn't wait 8 weeks for a suit they got it the same day.Why i mention this is that European taste was not like ours much lighter and much softer.By 1980s it reach fever pitch with Armani and Hugo Boss leaving Merchants like ourselves out of sync.So UK mills eventually followed suit with lighter cloths and softer handle(to compete with market demands).A very large factor in all of this is the machinery at the mills.Long are the days of paper presses and in house finishing plants.Modern Machinery has in no doubt kept UK Mills alive and competing, but has also lost our unique status.
As a company we are still very interested in coarser yarns and Heavyweight cloths as we feel its part of our history and in our D.N.A