Meanwhile, in a garment that has been tailored with greater care, a ‘floating’ canvas is delicately affixed to the
cloth with an intricate series of stitches. A painstakingly hand-sewn, floating canvas will lend a handsome natural
roll to the lapels, it will breathe, and will in fact benefit from the heat of your body, increasingly conforming to
your shape the more your wear the item.
In his seminal sartorial text, Elegance: A Guide to Quality in Menswear, G. Bruce Boyer writes, “Fused suits can
easily be detected because they have a decidedly stiff feel, not unlike cardboard, in those areas (the chest,
lapels, pockets, and collar) where the material is joined. Stiffness is not, however, the major drawback of the
fused suit. The real problem is that after some wear, and cleaning, and time — often less than a year — the glue
begins to dry out and the layers of the fabric start to ‘bubble’, pulling apart in spots. This deterioration creates
a stunning visual effect not unlike blistered paint on an old barn wall. And nothing can be done to prevent,
correct, or reverse this process. You are stuck with it, and it will only get worse as time goes by, whether you
wear the suit or not.”
According to Boyer, “There are two kinds of crazy people: those who think they’re Napoleon, and those who think they
can buy a good suit cheap. Every purchase should be a long-term commitment.” In Elegance, he writes that purchasing
a cheap fused suit is a false economy. “Fused construction is, as you might expect, much cheaper for the
manufacturer but much more expensive for the customer in the long run. A $200 fused suit that lasts a year is just
twice as expensive as an $800 hand-stitched one that lasts eight years — even without considering fit or appearance
or comfort. Unless you think looking like old paint is great fun, avoid the fused suit.”
Do note that The Rake’s office copy of Elegance is a 1985 first edition, so you’ll need to multiply those figures by
four or five to get contemporary ready-to-wear pricing. Substantially more for authentic bespoke. This, says
Christopher Modoo, creative consultant at Wensum Tailoring and cofounder of men’s outfitter Kit Blake, “should
always be made in the traditional manner,” with a floating canvas construction “where all layers are connected by
hand. This method gives the maximum control to the tailor to create the best fit.” He notes that nowadays,
ready-made suits can be constructed to comparable standards of handcraftsmanship as bespoke tailoring — although,
Modoo says, “I have always felt it was a shame to put so much effort into making a stock size.”
Modoo expresses the somewhat heretical opinion that while the idea of canvas interlining inserted utilising a
combination of machinery, heat and glue is “not as romantic as the thought of a crossed-legged tailor” meticulously
hand-sewing it in place, quality ‘semi-traditional’ industrial construction involving a certain amount of machine
stitching and a lick of judiciously applied adhesive can yield impressive results. With padding and the right
pattern, “You can even create that all-important lapel roll,” he says.
Two decades into the 21st century, the received wisdom that a fused suit will inevitably be flat, lifeless
and prone to blistering after dry-cleaning is no longer necessarily accurate, Modoo says. “So-called ‘bubbling’ on
suits is a combination of poor dry-cleaning and inferior fusing,” he reckons. “The technical name is delamination —
this is caused by moisture and heat causing the layers to come apart. To prevent this, conscientious menswear
workshops will religiously check the heat and atmosphere by the fusing press.”
In further sacrilege, Modoo remarks, “Fusing can be an art and done well, can even improve the drape of lighter
cloths. In fact, the comment I hear most often from bespoke tailors about quality factory-made suits is how ‘clean’
they look.” The trick to maintaining that smoothness is keeping laundering to a minimum and avoiding cheap,
corner-cutting dry cleaners, Modoo suggests. “They wreak havoc on hand-canvassed garments, too.”
So it follows that perhaps flat out refusal of fusing is foolish. Nevertheless, in an ideal world, you’d be able to
wave a hand at your wardrobe and cackle, like a dandyish Pennywise the Dancing Clown, “They ALL float!”
