Floating Canvass
A canvass, ready to be attached to the front of a coat.
As any bespoke tailor will tell you, the only way to properly make a coat, is by using a ‘floating canvass’. Where Made-to-measure usually, and Ready-To-Wear always, use a type of fabric that is fused to the front of the coat, on the inside that is, we bespoke tailors never do that. The problem with fusing exists on several levels. First, it is a chemical product, a synthetic weave covered with tiny globulets of glue. That’s right, glue. By applying heat and pressure, this cloth is melted into your coat. Sort of a pity, when you are buying a lovely mohair or casmere suit, isn’t it? While fusing does give the coat more body, it often makes it stiffer than is comfortable, and often makes a coat look ‘dead’. The biggest objection however, is that fused coats slowly die when you take them to the dry-cleaner. When fused well, a fused coat will last a long time, but within a few years, all fused coats will start to display tiny and very unsightly bubbles all down the front. And once that starts, the show is over. Pressing it carefully can help a bit but only for a few wearings. Deterioration will have set in, and is irrevocable.
So, we use canvasses. These are made of horsehair cloth which contains hairs of the horses’ tail. Sometimes there is also camel-hair woven into it. This gives the cloth a wonderful rolling and springy feeling, quite elastic. Using special techniques, two layers of this are sewn together by hand, using hundreds of tiny stitches. This procedure gives the canvass itself the shape of your chest, as you can see in the picture. The bulge in the middle is what I mean, that is put there to nicely drape around the roundness of the chest. The rolling bit on the upper left corner is there to gives ease of movement to the front of the shoulder. I sometimes bring a loose canvass with me when visiting customers: I quite like to show details like that.
After the canvass has been made this way, it is attached at only a few strategic points behind the front of the coat, while the rest of it ‘floats’ loosely, thereby allowing for the ultimate comfort in wearing. And because it is sewn into place nothing can ever destroy its shape, unless it is a force that would destroy the coat itself. And that is why that coat that was handed down from your grandfather to your father to you, still looks perfect: it was made with a floating canvass, because fusing didn’t exist in those days. It’s a lot of work to make a couple of thousand stitches on a canvass, but when I do it, I simply figure: a stitch for each day of wear. Makes me smile at work 
It’s why there are so many instances where someone takes an ancient coat out of the attic: belonged to grandpa etc, and it still looks and wears great. No wonder.
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