What Is The English Drape Cut Suit?
The most inimitable kind of drape one can have in one’s suit today. From Fred Astaire to the Duke of Windsor - they’ve all had one, but what is it?
‘Drape’ is one of the recent buzzwords in menswear as more and more traditional dress vocabulary has been filtering through to us - the TikTok generation. While ‘drape’ has been a bit of a buzzword this past year that gets a little overused or misused, it is probably right we should use it more often, for drape is of utmost importance in a good quality suit.
The particular type of drape we associate with the old-fashioned era of twentieth-century English aristocracy and Old Hollywood actors born in this green and pleasant land is the ‘English Drape’ or ‘English Cut’, and it’s just beautiful.
Responsible for crafting the legendary English Drape for all of London, particularly for the likes of the Duke of Windsor, was Dutch master tailor Frederick Scholte. Scholte revolutionised English tailoring at the turn of the 20th century, with The Duke of Windsor saying the following,
“Scholte had rigid standards concerning the perfect balance of proportions between shoulders and waist in the cut of a coat to clothe the masculine torso... those peculiar proportions were Scholte’s secret formula.”
Scholte trained Peter Gustav Anderson and later developed the famous English Drape or London Cut - a look Anderson & Sheppard is still crafting today. The King is currently the most well-known royal client.
Colin Heywood, Managing Director of Anderson & Sheppard explains the drape cut in the following:
“We perform a bit of ‘sartorial magic’ by combining drape through the chest with a high armhole. That helps keep the jacket body in position, gives the wearer good, free movement, and it looks elegant as well. It sounds like a contradiction when you say the armhole is high, because customers sometimes think that means it’s going to be restrictive, but it’s not; you move so freely that you’re hardly aware you have a jacket on.”
The cut-out newspaper image we have here is the only one we have of Scholte. His legacy, no doubt is present for all to see in great, masterfully-made suits in England today.
For those interested in what legendary houses like Anderson & Sheppard are up to these days, a brief history on how they started (and why they moved off Savile Row), and where the future sits for them, here’s a great recent discussion by Permanent Style and Anda Rowland (Director) on YouTube,
