Our Barchetta Blazer is our version of a soft unstructured jacket. Oscar always wanted to make the lightest and softest jackets possible. There is no competition nor prize, but intellectual curiousity, and to push the limits of what is possible.
We started and ended with fabric, sowing thread and buttons. That is it. There are no shoulder pads, no padding, no lining, no canvas, no plastic, just the bare essentials.
This is a clean sheet design. We didn't take an existing jacket and try to engineer it backwards, like Giorgio Armani famously removing the stuffing from a jacket. Our jacket is more of a shell than a whole jacket. It is soft and weightless. Many of our clients comment that they don't feel that they are wearing a jacket.
We cut a one piece front, the way jackets used to be made over a century ago. This requires more fabric but removes a whole seam that would need to be finished which adds bulk and weight. We couldn't have that now.
The blazer sits at the neck points not at the shoulders like most jackets which ensures a better fit in our opinion, and further enhances the feeling of weightlessness.
The jacket is crafted with a notch lapel, patch pockets and a patch ticket pocket that caused quite a stir when we introduced it over a decade ago. Side vents and functioning cuffs complete this jacket. The curved breast pocket which mimics the profile of a small boat - a barchetta in Italian, also gave its name to this jacket.
Our Barchetta Blazer can be worn as a separate jacket / blazer, or combined with matching khakis in to a casual suit. For summer we craft quite a few seersucker suits, and winter we cut corduroy, moleskin and tweed versions - including rare Scottish tweeds. We also cut jackets in jersey fabrics which make great travel jackets, are decadently comfortable and still retain their shape. These are available to order during one of our trunk shows. If you would like to know more about our unstructured approach, more information can be found here: https://udeshi.co.uk/blogs/news/the-unstructured-approach
Simply reducing the weight of the fabric as much as possible, by making the garment in the thinnest and lightest fabric possible – a bit cold in winter, doesn’t change the fundamental problem of the jacket sitting on the shoulders. One of the few times Oscar’s master’s degree in philosophy has a practical application: get the jacket to sit somewhere else – in our case, the collarbone. Our bespoke cutter who has half a century of cutting experience, helped develop this system with Oscar, and this subtle but crucial change, makes all the difference. We apply this principle to all our sleeved garments. We create razor sharp Savile Row silhouettes, but with an unparalleled level of comfort. Our garments made of nothing but fabric, thread and buttons are what we call our unstructured tailoring. Photograph of a bespoke Shetland tweed jacket and waistcoat completely unlined without canvas and lining.
Our garments with canvas and the option of shoulder pads are our structured tailoring, soft tailoring would probably be a more accurate description. A lot of our clients have commented that our jackets are like wearing pyjamas - you don’t feel you are wearing a jacket. When we use canvas and shoulder pads, we use the thinnest and lightest pads possible and the lightest possible canvases for the cloth and routinely use tropical weight canvas that weighs as much as paper for soft cashmere winter coats. We dispense with domette – the felt in the chest that we find makes a jacket feel thick and substantial and traps the heat, by finishing the canvas in a special way from our French trained baste maker. She is responsible for putting the bespoke jackets together for their fittings. She is very exacting and slow, but every stitch is accurate and done with a light hand, and only when she is satisfied, does she hand over the jacket for a fitting. She even keeps the heir to a certain throne, and a sultan waiting, because it has to be right. Photograph of a bespoke double face double brushed Italian cashmere peacoat with canvas but no shoulder pads and no lining.