Harris Wharf London Loro Piana Prince of Wales Blazer

Loro Piana has been weaving at Quarona, in Piedmont, since 1924, and for the first six decades of that it made cloth and nothing else, selling to tailors rather than to the people who eventually wore the results. The name is usually attached to very fine wool and to cashmere. Here it is on a cloth that is very nearly half cotton, which is a different proposition: wool gives elasticity, recovery, and warmth, cotton gives coolness, a matte surface, and a tendency to crease at the elbow and stay creased, and at roughly fifty-fifty neither fiber is in charge. What comes out has the drape of a wool and the dryness of a cotton, and it reads casual at a distance and structured up close. The check is a Prince of Wales, which is a specific thing and not a general one. Underneath it is a glen check, small and large checks alternating in a broken twill, and what makes it a Prince of Wales rather than a glen check is the fine overcheck laid across that grid in a second color. Here the two colors are blue and brown. Brown against blue is an old and underused pairing in tailoring, warmer than blue and grey and considerably less severe.

A blue and brown check in a cloth that behaves like this is a jacket somebody actually reaches for on a Tuesday, which is a rarer thing than a good jacket. We bought it for the cloth rather than for the cut.

Fifty-one percent virgin wool and forty-nine percent cotton, woven by Loro Piana, made in Italy, in a blue and brown Prince of Wales check. Two-button fastening. Color: Blue/Brown.

We do not know whether this jacket is canvassed, half-canvassed, or fused, and we do not describe a lining or a vent. Those are the facts that separate one blazer from another, and we would rather say we cannot give them to you than describe a jacket we have not opened. Ask us and we will look.

Half cotton means this jacket will crease where it bends and relax where it is worn, which is how the garment is meant to behave rather than a fault in it. Half wool means the creases mostly fall out overnight on a hanger. Expect it to feel softer in the hand than a worsted jacket of the same weight.

The brown in the check is the instruction. It opens the jacket up to tan, olive, cream, and mid-brown leather, none of which sit easily under a plain navy blazer. A white or ecru shirt, a flat trouser in one of the check's own colors, and nothing else patterned.

Dry clean. A wool and cotton blend is more heat-tolerant than pure wool and less forgiving of a hot press than pure cotton, so if you press it, press it cool and under a cloth. Our general guidance on garments made from more than one material covers the rest.

The 2b. Blazer in Vitale Barberis Canonico houndstooth is virgin wool woven as a broken check, the Men 2b. Blazer is a salt and pepper houndstooth in four fibers, and the Men Pleated Trousers are virgin wool. There is more on the house on the Harris Wharf London designer page. Everything we carry from Harris Wharf London is listed together.