Hardy Minnis is the merchant house formed when two London woollen merchants, J & J Minnis and John G. Hardy, came together at the end of the 1960s. It holds a Royal Warrant for supplying cloth to the Royal Household, and today it trades as part of Huddersfield Fine Worsteds. The reason we talk about it constantly is Fresco. Fresco is not a generic description, it is theirs, patented in 1907, and it is the cloth we have put more Chennai customers into than almost anything else on the shelf. If you own one suit that has to work in this city in May, this is a strong candidate for what it should be made of.
Two London merchants, joined in the 1960s
J & J Minnis was set up by the Minnis brothers in London's West End in 1874. John G. Hardy's woollen merchant business followed in the 1890s. Both built their names supplying the tailors of the West End, Hardy leaning towards tweeds and country cloths, Minnis towards worsteds. At the end of the 1960s the two joined to become Hardy Minnis.
The Royal connection is real rather than decorative. The company has held a Royal Warrant for the supply of cloth to the Royal Household, and John G. Hardy cloth was chosen in 1929 by the Duke of York, later King George VI, for the Regimental Tweed of the Brigade of Guards. The black and white Prince of Wales check has been associated with the house ever since.
Hardy Minnis is a merchant, not a weaver. It specifies and owns the cloth and has it woven in England. Today it operates within Huddersfield Fine Worsteds, which holds the rights to the Hardy Minnis name along with several other historic British cloth firms.
Fresco, patented 1907, and why we keep recommending it
Fresco was patented in 1907 by Martin Sons & Co, now a sister name inside the same group. The idea was specific. Take worsted yarn, twist it hard, then weave it in a porous plain weave so the cloth stays open even after it has been pressed or crushed. Most open weaves close up under an iron. This one does not.
What that gives you is a cloth with a dry, grainy handle that moves air, resists creasing because the tightly twisted yarn springs back, and holds a press through a full day. It was made for people wearing wool suits in places where wool suits are a bad idea, which is a fair description of Chennai from March to November.
The book runs across weights and plies. There are two-ply and three-ply constructions, the heavier ones surprisingly substantial for a summer cloth, and Fresco Lite at around 9oz with a smoother handle for anyone who finds the classic Fresco surface too rough. Our usual recommendation for someone in this city is a mid-weight in navy or charcoal. It sounds counter-intuitive to go up in weight for heat, and it is exactly right. The heavier Frescos hang better and breathe just as well.
Two honest caveats. Fresco has a visible texture and it will never look glossy, so if you want a sleek suit this is the wrong cloth. And the name is a trademark of this house. Plenty of merchants make excellent high-twist cloths, and we will happily show them to you, but only Hardy Minnis cloth is Fresco.
Alsport and the country side of the book
The other cloth the house is known for is Alsport, John G. Hardy's collection of traditional tweeds. Gun club checks, herringbones, window-panes, all the classic country patterns, in the sort of hard-wearing cloth that was built for standing about on a Scottish hillside. There is a Worsted Alsport too.
Current Alsport weights run around 16 and 19oz. To put that in context, a Chennai-appropriate suiting is roughly half that. This is not a cloth for this city under any circumstances we can imagine, and we will say so plainly rather than take the order.
Where it does make sense is a single sporting jacket for a customer who spends real time in cold places. A gun club check jacket in Alsport is an outstanding thing to own if you go to England, Europe or the northern hills with any regularity. Bought for that reason it will last decades. Bought to wear in Adyar it will be worn once.
Hardy Minnis at Sellers
We have been cutting suits on Sardar Patel Road since 1997, and if there were a better general answer to the Chennai heat problem than a high-twist worsted, we would have found it by now. Fresco is the original of that idea and it remains one of the best executions of it.
The suit we suggest most often to a customer building a first serious wardrobe here is a mid-weight Fresco in charcoal or navy, cut with a half-lined or unlined jacket so the cloth can do its job. That combination has more actual wearing days in a Chennai year than anything else we make.
We can order across the Hardy Minnis and Fresco books. Put a piece of Fresco in one hand and a smooth worsted of the same weight in the other, and you will understand the difference before we have finished explaining it.