Construction! Proportion! Craft!

What lies behind the enduring power of the suit? Of great tailoring? How is that amplified when it’s bespoke? What makes a good suit? Does it still matter? Why? And how much should it cost? All these questions, and many more are on the (cutting) table this week, as Clare sits down with Savile Row tailor Dominic Sebag-Montefiore, creative director of iconic bespoke house, Edward Sexton.

Thank you for listening to Wardrobe Crisis Series 11! We'll be back soon with a new series of inspiring interviews from fashion's front lines.

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This week's guest, Glen Rollason, describes pattern making as the architecture of fashion. It's the bones, the structure, the technical process that gives our clothes shape, moves them from the 2D to the 3D, and helps them fit. Pattern making is drafting, design, and highly skilled technical process - but it's also team work.

No pattern, no coat!

From the basics (what is it, where do you begin) to the artistry (fit, form, allure) through Raf Simons, bust darts and the crazy complexity of national sizing standards, we've got it all in this dynamic conversation about this essential fashion ingredient. Plus, why do we need to keep capacity on shore? How might small factories / design labs work in future? What's going on with apprenticeships, and what are we going to do about skilled people ageing out of the industry?

Scissors at the ready!

Thank you for listening to Wardrobe Crisis.

Find links and further reading for this episode at thewardrobecrisis.com

Read Clare's columns & support the show on Substack - wardrobecrisis.substack.com

Tell us what you think. Find Clare on Instagram @mrspress

Got recommendations? Hit us up!

And please leave us a rating / review in Spotify/ Apple & help us share these podcasts.

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In the last of our mini series, Made in Melbourne, we meet Australia’s National Designer of the Year 2025, Amy Lawrance.

Amy launched her namesake label just a couple of years ago, but she's highly experienced - working for other labels, teaching at RMIT, and she is an extraordinary, couture-standard maker.

Her architectural patterns are blisteringly original, she uses mostly undyed silks and has been experimenting with decorative embroidery stitches that she discovered studying vintage dressmaking manuals.

As she tells us, her atelier is "very, very small scale and very, very hands-on"; everything from pattern-making, to sampling to final production is by her own hands. "A lonely team of one!" she jokes, but she loves it.

Not that it comes without challenges. Any small fashion business owner will be familiar with these. Like, how are you going to pay for it all? Will you need a second job forever? At what point should you give up? Or shift your aims from running your own show to helping grow someone else's vision?

Resist! It's worth it in the end!

In our discussion, we talk about passion, solitude, the joy of sewing, and the gap between that and selling, doing media, all that stuff that not every creative automatically loves. Why should they? We cover trend cycles (hello, Pantone Colour of the Year), self doubt, origami, the joy of having a dog and what it's like to stand before the judges at one of these big fashion prizes. But big picture: this is an episode about the sometimes elusive "Why" - why do what you do, the way you do it. Enjoy!

Thank you for listening to Wardrobe Crisis.

Find links and further reading for this episode at thewardrobecrisis.com

Read Clare's columns & support the show on Substack - wardrobecrisis.substack.com

Tell us what you think. Find Clare on Instagram @mrspress

Got recommendations? Hit us up!

And please leave us a rating / review in Spotify/ Apple & help us share these podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.