This bespoke jacket from Whitcomb & Shaftesbury is machine washable. That’s pretty rare – why? 

First, most good tailored jackets are made with canvas in the chest and melton under the collar, both of which don’t react well to machine washing (even on a cool temperature). They get distorted and can shrink. 

Second, the material of the jacket itself can’t usually be machine washed. Cottons are the easiest in that respect, but even then the material has to be thoroughly washed beforehand – often multiple times – so all of the shrinkage is taken out.

Bespoke tailoring is also harder than a regular suit, because there’s often more complex canvassing inside, sometimes more delicate handwork, and overall the shape is more precisely made in a 3D shape that can be distorted by the washing. It’s why expert pressing after dry cleaning is so important. 

So when Whitcomb showed me a very nice-looking machine-washable jacket they were working on for a client, I was interested. 

Not, however, because of the convenience. I cared less about the fact that I could clean it at home, and more that it would bring a bespoke cotton jacket closer to ready-to-wear ones. 

Customers of bespoke are often disappointed when they commission a cotton jacket. They’ve seen one in a shop from an Italian brand like Boglioli or an English brand like Drake’s, and they want that softness, that casualness, but made to fit. 

Bespoke cotton jackets don’t usually look like that because of the sharpness created by their internal structure, but also because they can’t be washed – and nearly all ready-to-wear cotton jackets are industrially washed. 

This garment washing takes place in large vats, in large wash houses, and gives the jacket attractive fading around the edges and seams. The material itself is also often industrially washed beforehand, to break down the cotton and soften it. 

This can happen with dry cleaning, but only over a long period of time. Generally the aim of dry cleaning is not to affect the material, as customers want it the same. King Charles has some cotton jackets that have been beautifully faded, but when I’ve spoken to the tailors that have made these for him, they note that they’re all at least 10 years old.

Even if that were one or two years, most people don’t have the patience to repeatedly clean clothes like this – to have it for so long in a state they don’t like and therefore don’t enjoy wearing as much. Even raw denim suffers from this problem today, as we discussed recently, and tailoring doesn’t have the advantage of becoming so much more personal in the way it fades. 

My hope with the Whitcomb & Shaftesbury jacket was that it would quickly start to break down and fade when I washed it at home, making it closer to that attractive, lived-in look of RTW cotton jackets. 

As pictured here, the jacket has been washed in a machine three times. Regular detergent, regular cycle, just 30 degrees and low spin. It’s then been hung on a good hanger and left to dry. 

The jacket was made without canvas in the chest or melton under the collar, but some control and shape was given to the front with hand sewing on the collar. It’s remarkable that the jacket maintains so much shape of that shape when it’s worn, despite all the underpinnings bespoke usually has. 

The jacket doesn’t just fit me better than a RTW one would do in 2D terms – the right length, width, overall shape – but in bespoke terms, with shape to the chest, pitch of the sleeve, hold on the neck. 

After the second wash I did try steaming it, to take some of the wrinkles out. We have a good steamer in the office and I spent a good 10 minutes working every part of the jacket. 

This made the body and sleeves smoother, but had less of an effect on the patched pockets, which didn’t change much. Some careful ironing would be required to change those. 

In any case, after half an hour of wearing most of the wrinkles had returned, particularly in areas like the elbows and the lower back. And frankly looked better for it. 

The Whitcomb team also pressed it the first time I got it, which made everything perfectly smooth, but again it looked better when I’d worn it for a bit. This is the aesthetic of the thing, the point. (I’ll do a follow-up article on style points such as this.)

After those three washes, the jacket has started to fade slightly on the seams and edges, but it’s barely noticeable. Great as the colour is from a style point of view, the fading would be more noticeable on a dark colour like navy or black. Perhaps that’s a good idea for next time. 

The tack stitches around the pockets also needed to be reinforced, to cope with the combination of machine washing and heavy use I put the pockets through. But they’ve been perfect since, and that’s a note for Whitcomb for the future – they haven’t made many of these jackets yet, after all. 

There’s a lot more to say on this project, and so I’ve deliberately split coverage into two sections: this one on the practicalities of a washable bespoke jacket, and the second one on aesthetic choices like the material, colour and design, as well as why the style so appeals to me and how I’ve been wearing it. 

That second piece will be published on Wednesday this week. Please hold questions about those things until then, if that’s OK. 

This jacket cost £2400 including VAT from Whitcomb & Shaftesbury, made bespoke. Other colours available in the same material include black, navy, olive and beige. 

Clothes pictured in main outfit, shown top and below:

• ‘East-West Passerby’ tote by Métier in Suede Marrakech
• Bespoke trousers by Whitcomb & Shaftesbury in Art du Lin (covered previously here)
• Black alligator belt by Rubato
• Boy Scout shirt by Husbands in white voile (not currently available)
• Loafers by Alessandro Gasperini (being covered soon)
• Zepherin sunglasses by Jacques Marie Mage (also being covered soon)