Search Results for: book review pattern cutting for menswear

Book Review: Pattern Cutting for Menswear

Unfortunately, menswear really is the ugly stepchild of the fashion industry – there seem to be about two menswear books for every ten for women, plus there are hardly any commercial patterns out there for men (and if there are, 90% of the time it’ll be that same button-down shirt I’ve seen a million times, argh).

The Aldrich book seems to be the de-facto standard for menswear drafting as far as I can tell, but I tried her teeshirt draft for men and hated it so I’m loathe to buy it to test the rest, really. Perhaps it’s the standard just because there are so few to choose from and not because it’s particularly very good? So I asked for (and received!) this book instead for my birthday, as I’d love to draft more menswear for James and possibly for future patterns, too.

Now I haven’t actually tested the drafts in here yet (though I fully intend to), but I really like a lot of things about this book. Most obvious is that it’s a modern menswear book – instead of just covering the basic tailoring styles, it shows you how to draft things like hoodies, jeans, and parkas on top of the more standard jacket and button-down shirts. There are 20 different styles in all, with instructions on how to adapt the basic blocks to match the given style. So this is more like how the Japanese pattern books do things, only a bit easier to follow than the standard Pattern Magic “instructions”!

IWTV tribute crew shirt

It should come as no surprise to anyone who’s been following me on social media for the past few months that one of my first makes of the new year should somehow involve the “Interview with the Vampire” tv show (aka “the show so good I think it altered my brain chemistry”). I also spoke more about it in my end of year roundup if you want more explanation of just how good this show is, and how to watch it (short version: AMC or Amazon in most territories).

Anyway, in the official Behind the Scenes documentary, Sam Reid (the actor who plays Lestat) wears a slate blue teeshirt with a coffin drawing on the front, which I really liked, so I did a bit of investigating. Sam’s a massive Anne Rice nerd (to an encyclopedic degree!) but it turned out that this was the “crew shirt” for the show – a promo item made and distributed to cast and crew only. Usually these are pretty tacky affairs with just the show logo on a tee or trucker cap, but I really liked the subtlety of this one – it looks like it does have the show name on the sleeve and a bit of text on the back that can’t be read (my guess is maybe “Memory is a Monster”?), but mostly, I was into the coffin drawing. I did some cursory searches on eBay but with NDAs these days, I didn’t really expect to find anyone selling theirs. So if I wanted one, I’d have to make one myself!