“We didn’t know if it would work,” says Sunspel’s creative director David Telfer. He’s referring to last year’s collaboration with Casely-Hayford, the menswear brand celebrated for its modernist take on Savile Row tailoring.
The four-piece Sunspel x Casely-Hayford collection reworked blazers and suits in jersey, so they felt more like cardigans than anything more traditional. Everything was done with the comfort-first mindset that comes with Sunspel’s fabrics.
“When we started chatting for the first collaboration, it felt like an unusual thing to do because it was during the sweatshirt boom,” Telfer says, referring to our post-lockdown world. “No one was really talking about tailoring then. Now everyone’s talking about it.”
Fashion has been inundated with as many collaborations as Hollywood has produced Spider-Man remakes. Sometimes it’s because of the clout that one brand can bring another. Other times it’s an opportunity for marketing departments to convince you to buy more stuff. But for Sunspel and Casely-Hayford, two brands with esteemed reputations in their fields, neither of those tactics applies.
“It was more about utilising one another’s areas of expertise to push our own individual barriers,” says Charlie Casely-Hayford.
Now, a second collection builds on the first, enlarging the “modular” selection by adding five more pieces that focus on the three-piece suit. Wide-leg trousers, a two-button blazer and a boxy waistcoat speak to classic tailoring of yore, while layers come in the form of a cropped, raw-edge jacket and a chunky overcoat. Made of a Sunspel-crafted wool jersey, they’re designed to tackle winter’s elements without compromising on comfort.
“I think the suit is being turned on its head, so it’s almost anti-establishment in a way,” says Casely-Hayford. “It’s been adopted by a lot of people who may never have worn a suit previously, and I think that’s why this collaboration works so perfectly: it’s a really easy transition from casualwear into tailoring.”
Mention of revolutionary behaviour immediately brings Charlie’s late father, Joe, to mind.
“My dad’s career started in the mid-Eighties and it kind of kicked off from making deconstructed shirts from World War II tents. There’s an exhibition at Somerset House [“The Missing Thread”, about black British fashion] and a big part of it is about him. I guess I had that in the back of my mind, because as we were starting to design this, we were also pulling out pieces from the archive.”
What would Joe have had to say about tailoring today?
“He was always completely unfazed by whatever was said in the press,” says Casely-Hayford, smiling. “Because the suit is an eternal garment, and people always come back to it, it just means something different to each generation. It’s what we used to call in our family ‘a cultural signifier’, where something has so much memory that, when you put the garment on, there’s already a story being told.” ○
