Huddersfield Fine Worsteds is what happened when a group of historic Yorkshire cloth firms stopped competing and merged. The name has been in use since the 1920s and the modern company dates from a 1976 merger, and it now holds the rights to Hardy Minnis, J & J Minnis, John G. Hardy, Hunt & Winterbotham, Martin Sons & Co, Learoyd Brothers, Broadhead & Graves and others. That makes their book one of the deepest a tailor can order from, and it includes Fresco and Alsport. For us it is a working resource rather than a brand. When a brief is unusual, this is where we go looking.
A merchant house built out of old Huddersfield firms
Huddersfield Fine Worsteds was registered as a company in 1920, bringing together Learoyd Brothers, Joseph Sykes and A. Crabtree. A further merger in 1976 produced the modern business. Along the way it absorbed a remarkable list of names: Broadhead & Graves, Josiah France, Martin Sons & Co, W E Yates, and the merchants John G. Hardy, Hunt & Winterbotham and J & J Minnis.
Some of that history goes back a very long way. Hunt & Winterbotham trace manufacturing at Cam Mills in Dursley to 1532. Martin Sons & Co, the firm that patented Fresco in 1907, dates to the 1840s.
The company is based at Elland in West Yorkshire with a London showroom on Regent Street, and was bought in 2009 by HMS International of New York. It works as a merchant house and fabric operation rather than as a single mill. It owns the names, the patterns and the specifications, and the cloth is woven in England.
Why the word Huddersfield is in the name
Huddersfield is to worsted cloth roughly what Biella is to Italian suiting. The town and the valleys around it have been the centre of British fine worsted for two centuries, and the concentration of spinners, weavers and finishers there is why so many of the names on a tailor's shelf are Yorkshire names.
Worsted is the key word. In a worsted the wool fibres are combed straight and parallel before spinning, which gives a smooth, strong, fine yarn. That is what makes a crisp suiting cloth, as opposed to the woollens that are carded rather than combed and end up softer and fuzzier, like flannel and tweed. Almost everything you would want to wear as a suit in Chennai is a worsted.
What HFW offers a tailor is scale. Their catalogue runs to a very large number of collections, which means that when a customer asks for something specific, a particular shade of grey, a window-pane at a wearable weight, a formal cloth for a wedding, the odds are good that the answer exists in one of their books.
What we actually order from them
Fresco first, and by a wide margin. The high-twist porous weave that Martin Sons patented in 1907 is still the most useful hot-climate suiting idea anyone has had, and HFW hold it. The books run through two-ply and three-ply constructions and a lighter, smoother Fresco Lite at around 9oz. For most Chennai customers a mid-weight Fresco in navy or charcoal is the single best suiting decision available.
After that, their conventional worsted books cover the whole business vocabulary in weights that suit an air-conditioned working life. This is where we go for a plain charcoal or a quiet stripe when the brief is simply a good office suit that will be worn hard.
Alsport and the tweed side of the book we treat as travel and cool-season cloth only. At around 16 to 19oz those are serious winter fabrics. Beautiful, and wrong for eleven months of a Chennai year. We would rather tell you that before you order than after.
Why a deep book matters to a tailor
Most customers never think about the merchant behind the swatch, and that is fine. What a deep book buys you is that we very rarely have to say no. Odd colour, specific weight, a formal cloth for a muhurtham and a lighter version of the same thing for the reception: it is usually all in there.
It also buys consistency. If you like a cloth and want a second suit in it two years later, a large merchant is far more likely to still have it than a small mill running short seasonal lots.
We can order across the Huddersfield Fine Worsteds range, including the Hardy Minnis and Fresco books. Tell us what the garment is for and when you will wear it, and we will bring out the two or three pieces that actually fit the brief rather than the whole shelf.