Versailles Dinner Jacket

The Versailles is the brocade dinner jacket — a self-coloured Italian silk in a soft tonal motif, ivory on ivory, the pattern visible only when the light is on it.

French brocade has its own long history; the looms in Lyon were taught the pattern to dress the court at the palace north of Paris. We took the cloth and put a shawl collar on it. Nothing else.

Soft shoulder, half-canvas, single covered button. The lining is a plain silk in the same ivory, so the jacket reads from the inside the same way it reads from the outside. Three fittings. Buttonholes are sewn by hand. The trouser waistband is hand-built — cut wider than standard, in the same cloth as the trouser interfacing.

It is the dinner jacket for the host, not the guest.