The Art of Hand Finishing

The difference between a machine-made suit and a handmade one is not always visible from across the room. It reveals itself in the details — the slight irregularity of a hand-sewn buttonhole, the soft roll of a lapel shaped by steam and pad stitching rather than by a press, the way a sleeve hangs from the shoulder with a gentle fullness that no factory can replicate. These are the marks of hand finishing, and they are what elevate a bespoke suit from a well-fitted garment to something genuinely alive.

The buttonhole is perhaps the most telling detail. A machine-made buttonhole is perfectly uniform, stitched in a fraction of a second by a programmable head. A hand-sewn buttonhole takes between fifteen and twenty minutes to complete, with each stitch of gimp-wrapped silk placed individually and pulled to a consistent tension. The result has a subtle three-dimensionality that a machine cannot achieve — a raised, corded edge that is both more beautiful and more durable than its machine-made counterpart. At L&S, every buttonhole on every garment is sewn by hand, including the non-functional sleeve buttons that many tailors skip.

Pick stitching — the row of tiny, evenly spaced stitches that runs along the edge of the lapel and sometimes around the pockets and front edge — is another signature of handwork. Its purpose is partly structural: it helps the seam allowance lie flat and reinforces the edge of the cloth. But it is also decorative, a quiet signal that the garment was assembled by a person and not a production line. We use a fine silk thread, usually in a tone that matches the cloth so closely that the stitching is visible only on close inspection. It is not meant to shout. It is meant to reward attention.

The sleeve head is a detail that almost no one outside the trade ever thinks about, yet it has an enormous effect on how a jacket looks. The sleeve head is a strip of wadding — at L&S, we use a combination of lambswool and cotton domette — that is inserted at the top of the sleeve where it meets the shoulder. Its job is to support the fabric as it transitions from the shoulder line into the sleeve, creating a smooth, rounded crown without any dimpling or collapsing. Setting a sleeve head properly requires the tailor to ease the fabric by hand, distributing the fullness evenly so that the sleeve falls in a clean, natural line. It is one of the most technically demanding steps in jacket construction, and one of the most satisfying to get right.