← Threads Magazine Podcast: "Sewing With Threads"
Threads Magazine Podcast: "Sewing With Threads"
Back to School for Tailoring, with Duane MacLeod | Episode 81
00:36:49
Duane MacLeod was drawn into the world of tailoring seemingly by accident. Now the owner of a one-man tailoring business couldn't be happier. He shares his enthusiasm for the craft and how he arrived at this point, in Episode 81 of Sewing With Threads.
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- [00:01]
Carol Frazier
You're invited Threads fans to join us May 3rd through May 10th, 2025 on an exclusive tour of London. This tour features a custom glovemaking masterclass with Rina on and a workshop at Hand and Lock, Britain's oldest embroidery atelier. There's also a guided tour of Savile Row and shopping at high end fabric stores. The trip is filled with activities to teach and inspire. To find out more about the Travel with Threads London Tour, go to shop.threadsmagazine.com the group is limited to 15 participants. Reserve your space now. Welcome to Sewing with Threads, the monthly podcast with the staff of Threads magazine. I'm your host, Carol Frazier, and my guest Today is Duane McLeod. Duane is a menswear sewist based on the coast of Maine. His sewing journey started 12 years ago when he made a duffle coat from a Japanese sewing book. Like many sewists, he eventually decided to try a tailored jacket. That first tailoring project launched him in a new direction. Little did he know then that his fascination with tailoring would eventually take him to England for a year of formal tailoring school. He now has a fledgling bespoke business based in Maine. You may know Duane better by his social media moniker, ainelymenswear. Welcome Duane.
- [01:27]
Duane McLeod
Wow. Thank you. This is such a treat to be here. It's just wonderful. Thank you.
- [01:33]
Carol Frazier
Oh, well, thank you for joining me. It's a treat to talk to you. You and I have worked together on a couple of articles in the past and I'm always really inspired and interested in what you've been working on in your sewing and your level of attention to detail and your willingness to try a lot of new things. But I'd love to know. I know that you had a career as a nurse before all of this. What prompted you to try making your own clothing 12 years ago?
- [02:02]
Duane McLeod
Oh boy. Well, 12 years ago my daughter was a fashion design major in an art college in California and I was looking, I pretty sure, for a birthday gift for her and I wanted to find some sort of sewing related thing. And in that process of searching I came across these Japanese sewing books and there is one called Men's Coats that has this very kind of seductive cover that looks like a Burberry trench coat. And when I saw that book I just thought, oh man, look at that. It was like, is this really possible? So I went ahead and I purchased that book. And I don't know if your listeners and readers are probably familiar with those books, but they are sort of like IKEA in that they are all done through little illustrations. And so you don't really need to know how to read Japanese. You can just of follow the pictures and put it together. So I decided that I would make the duffel coat out of that book. And I just was instantly hooked on the whole process. And after making that coat, I just couldn't stop. I was just so, I don't know, so interested in the whole possibility of taking a 2D thing and turning it into a three dimensional garment. And I just have never stopped.
- [03:41]
Carol Frazier
I find that absolutely amazing because it's so different from how most people learn how to sew. And I think a lot of people are intimidated by IKEA instructions. I happen to love them. I think they're usually. They're usually incredibly clear. And I've always thought we should do an issue of Threads that's only diagrammatic illustrations like that and see, but I don't think people would love it. But do you have special skills that made it possible for you to interpret those diagrams and turn them into a coat? It's not absolutely obvious that somebody could do that.
- [04:11]
Duane McLeod
Wow. You know, I. I mean, there weren't a lot of translation programs back then, but I did find some sites where I could figure out certain words. But actually I would just study the diagrams and sometimes it would take a while to figure out exactly what it was trying to tell me to do. But that was all sort of the puzzle. It was really just an enormous puzzle. And I just. I don't know, I just kind of fell down the rabbit hole of the whole thing. And I eventually made all of the coats in that book. There are four. There are four different designs in that book. And I eventually made all of them because I just wanted to try new things. They all had different types of pockets. And I just was. I don't know, I just. I guess that's how I'm wired. I just wanted to just know more and to just try new things all the time. So I eventually worked through the whole darn book.
- [05:20]
Carol Frazier
Well, after working on, on those projects, have you moved into using what I would consider to be sort of more of a standard type of pattern that comes with instructions and, you know, the amount of yardage listed and all that.
- [05:36]
Duane McLeod
Kind of thing I did. You know, I have to credit Peter Lapin, who is sort of, I consider the ambassador of men's sewing. And during this whole process I found him online. You know, I probably googled sewing for men or men who are sewing or whatever. And Peter just opened up a whole world to a lot of New sewists, both male and female. He was just sort of an inspiration to many, many people, and he sort of made everything seem possible, like that there were no limits to what any of us could do if we were just willing to, I don't know, take a. Take a chance or try something new or experiment. And so, you know, I. He was very into using vintage patterns which were at the time really inexpensive on places like ebay and Etsy. I mean, you could pick up a great old Vogue designer pattern for, I don't know, $6 or $7 or some crazy amount now. And so I started picking up some vintage patterns and just working with them. But eventually, I think everyone, or I think everyone is eventually going to want to tackle a tailored garment. I mean, that was the. That was what happened with me was that, you know, I made some shirts, I maybe made some trousers, but it was like, man, I really want to know how to make a tailored jacket. And that opened up a whole new world for me.
- [07:39]
Carol Frazier
Well, what was your first step in tailoring? Was it from a pattern, or did you use a tailoring guidebook or of some sort?
- [07:48]
Duane McLeod
You know, I found out about Roberto Cabrera's book on menswear tailoring, and I purchased a copy. I have the old edition that is just all done in line drawings. So. So again, very ikea, like, in its own way. And I think I used a vintage Vogue pattern, a Bill Blass suit pattern, and using the Cabrera book and that pattern, went ahead and made myself a tailored jacket. And I just. I don't know, I just really fell for all of the technique there just really seemed so satisfying to me. And, you know, I've. I've always been interested in making things. I've always been kind of a maker person. And the whole kind of construction element to tailoring, where there's a. A canvas where there's almost like a skeleton and you're building on top of that, just really intrigues me. And it just kind of keeps me wanting to do it all the time.
- [09:06]
Carol Frazier
You know, I come from the background of being. Of learning to sew at my mother's knee, essentially. And her skills were essentially dressmaker skills growing up. Although she went into tailoring a bit when I was a child, too, and made my dad a couple of things. But the dressmaker stuff was really where it was all at because there were three girls in the house and she made all of our clothing. So that's what I know. And I find tailoring to be a little on the frightening side. There's just a lot going on inside that is not standard for what I do. But I think that once you get into it, you must learn to understand it. And I'd love to know what you learned at the Tailoring Academy. And you can tell us a little bit more about how you got into deciding that you wanted to go there. That helped set you on a pathway where you feel now that you have control over all this, you're not having to follow a set of directions exactly, but you have skills that you can apply.
- [09:56]
Duane McLeod
Wow. You know, the Tailoring Academy just kind of popped up on Instagram for me. I don't know what we did without Instagram, really. It's such a great way to find people or to find, you know, things that interest you. And somehow the Tailoring Academy showed up. And at the time, it was really in its infancy. I think that Brita might have had six students total. And they were in an old mill building in Macclesfield in the uk. I think they were on the top floor of what had once been a silk factory or a silk weaving place. And it had, like, these huge beamed ceilings and skylights, and it just looked like magic to me. It was just like, oh, my God, this is. This would be my dream. And I just continued to follow them. I was just always intrigued by what the students were making there. And eventually what. How it all transpired was they decided to expand a little bit and offer, like, an online class. And I was still working at the time, and one of my co workers agreed to switch shifts with me so that I could do, like, an online drafting class with them over Zoom. And there were four of us in that class, and we drafted a man's jacket, as I recall, and also a pair of trousers. And it was just an amazing experience in how the instructor made the four of us who were, like, from all over the world. I was in the United States, several of them were in the uk, but really made us feel like we were in this thing together. There was a certain sort of camaraderie that developed. And one of the people that was in that online class with me eventually went full time the following year. Her name was Kelly, and she was an expat living in the uk. I think she was originally from Texas. And I remember getting a message from her after she had started at the Tailoring Academy, saying, you have to come and do this. And I never. I never forgot that. And I just knew that I had to go and do it, that there was not going to be any option that I was just somehow I was going to end up there. And I remember writing to Britta, who runs the Academy, kind of saying, I would love to come and do this. And I don't think that I'm probably your ideal candidate because I'm an older person. She sent me a very lovely rejection letter saying that, you know, that age had nothing to do with it. The problem was, is that there was no way for a person to obtain a visa long enough to come and do the full course. And what eventually happened, Brita worked on breaking the course down into two segments so that international students could come on a tourist visa and break the whole year into two parts, which would still be legal and we would be able to cover all of the material that the UK students were privileged to get. And so I was in the first class of international students. There were six of us total.
- [14:04]
Carol Frazier
So it's a one year program.
- [14:05]
Duane McLeod
It is, it's ten and a half months technically, but pretty much a year. Yeah. And, you know, the only requirement is that after six months you have to leave the country. So most of us would take a trip to either Paris or Italy or wherever you could. Just all you had to do was leave the country and come back in to reset your visa and then you would finish out. The rest of the program was brilliant. It really was.
- [14:35]
Carol Frazier
So what was the curriculum like? What did you learn? What did you do?
- [14:38]
Duane McLeod
Oh, boy, I really don't. I. A lot of times I think, oh, man, I wasn't really prepared for how much work this was going to be. In addition to, in addition to doing the, all of the tailoring, all of the, you know, the hands on kind of work, we were also required to develop what they, what the school called the portfolio, which in a sense was like writing your own tailoring textbook, your own personal textbook, basically. And we would meet with Brita occasionally through the, through the semester or through the course and she would want to know how that was developing or what, what we were doing as far as, you know, kind of making a record of what we were learning that was personal just to us, that made sense to us. So it's a very, to me, it's like it's a treasured thing and I use it constantly because I've kind of taken the elements of the course and put them in my own words. I've illustrated it in ways that make sense to me. And I also used it as like a travel journal. So it's kind of a kooky handwritten textbook with little sketches of things that, you know Were in the town or things that were all part of my experience. So every project that I work on, I break out my portfolio and it just has all the information that I need in my own words and in a way that makes sense to me. So it was an enormous amount of work. I could just say that. I mean, I think most of us spent a lot of our evenings in our rooms, really working on our own individual portfolios. I think I might have been the only one in the bunch that did, like a handwritten one. Most of the other students were younger and they probably did some kind of digital type portfolio.
- [17:10]
Carol Frazier
Well, if anybody follows Duane on his website or on Instagram, you know that he is a very hard worker and incredibly productive. So when he says it's a lot of work, I just get even. Imagine how a mere mortal would handle it. But I've seen. I've seen a photograph of a couple pages from your portfolio, and they are beautiful. I wanted to ask you, do you have art training?
- [17:30]
Duane McLeod
Yeah, I was an art major in college. How I ended up in nursing, I'll never know. But I've always been. I've always had a maker gene or something. My parents were very DIY people and I think I inherited that from them. And I. I just get great pleasure from making things. And I just. I don't know. I follow like a pleading company in New York. And they just recently posted a story that appeared in the New York Times about new young makers and how I think this was. Parsons in New York is kind of latching onto that, that not everybody is going to be a designer. There are people that want to be the makers. They want to be the craftspeople. And I think that this is. Maybe I'm on the tip of a new movement. I don't know. But I think that there are a lot of us who just want to. The makers that want to be the craftspeople that are keeping sort of dying crafts alive.
- [18:55]
Carol Frazier
I agree. I think that is a movement that's really gaining quite a lot of momentum right now. It probably began a little before the pandemic and took off during the pandemic and is really catching up now. And also the idea of a more responsible use of resources. If you make your own things rather than constantly buy and consume and buy and consume, it feels like a better way to live, actually. So I know that you ended up making a number of jackets and I think a waistcoat. Did you make trousers, too, during the course of your year or your 10 months?
- [19:30]
Duane McLeod
Right? We did. We did A jacket, a waistcoat and trousers. So I did. I think I made four jackets during my time there. I made two waistcoats and I made one pair of trousers. I have to admit, I am not a real trouser maker. It was probably my least enjoyable part of the course. I don't really know why, but I just enjoyed making the other things a little bit more. I should say that as international students, we had two six week periods that I considered to be independent study, where the UK students who are in a degree program went off and did some other things. The six of us, the international students, were just cut loose to do whatever we wanted to do with minimal instruction. I mean, the goal was to sort of test ourselves to see how much we had retained and to just work as independently as we possibly could. We were, you know, frequently reminded that we were in a workroom situation and, and that this was all about the making. And so we were sort of cut loose to do whatever we wanted to do and just to have that kind of support in whatever project we decided to do. I mean, I did a jacket that had like a drawstring in it, which is about as far away from traditional British tailoring as you can get. But I was like, so totally supported in doing that project, you know, at another classmate who wanted to do like a Neapolitan style jacket, which again was a big departure from what we, you know, had formerly been taught, which was very traditional British kind of look. But we were completely supported in doing those kinds of things, which was just so, I don't know, it's just really rewarding and just made you feel like, yeah, I can, I can go out there and I can do this. I mean, one of our, one of the students made like heart shaped pockets. It was just like, so. It was so incredible. We could, you know, there was no judgment. We just were able to take tailoring in the direction that we wanted to go, which was just brilliant. It was just great.
- [22:27]
Carol Frazier
Well, I know that you now have started a business, Hold Fast Bespoke. And what about your classmates? What did they end up doing after this course?
- [22:38]
Duane McLeod
I think that one of my classmates has an apprenticeship with Givenchy in Paris. I think she's in the menswear tailoring section. I've kind of lost track of some of the others, but I do see the things that they're making. So, you know, we're kind of scattered all over the world. My benchmate, who, you know, we had, we had beautiful equipment to work with. I also have to tell you that we just had, you know, we had, you know, beautiful benches to work on. And so my benchmate, who was on the other side of my bench, actually went on to be one of the tutors this year. But, I mean, she was just so incredibly skilled. She was intimidating to work across from. She was so. She was so fast, and she made it look so easy. But. But she went on to be one of the tutors, which I think that she must be adored by the students there because she was awesome.
- [23:42]
Carol Frazier
One thing I wanted to ask you about is you were talking about being a maker. I know you've made a lot of things, including a sailboat. What is it making clothing that is different, that has really captivated you and kept you at it for this long?
- [23:56]
Duane McLeod
Well, I think, first of all is that I can do it in a really small space. My. My little sewing space is unbelievably tiny, but, you know, making a tailored garment, you're just, like, working on a bench. I, you know, when I came home and sort of revamped my. My sewing space to try to replicate what I had at the tailoring academy, all of our benches, we had, like, a thick wool felt mat that covered the top of our benches. It was maybe, I would say, probably about a quarter of an inch thick. And it was such a delight to work on that because, you know, if you needed to maybe hold something in position, you could. You could jam a pin down into that felt to hold something. And it was just such a great surface to work on. Things weren't like, slipping and sliding all over the place. It had a certain amount of grip to it. And the other advantage of it being a wool felt is that it could also take the heat. So all of our ironing stations were also covered with it, and we would just iron onto this flat felt surface. So when I got back, I found a source, covered my workbench with felt, and, you know, have just tried to replicate, you know, what I had there in my own little space, and it's totally possible.
- [25:37]
Carol Frazier
Okay, so listeners should know that Duane has written an article talking a little bit about this experience he had in the UK That'll come out in the fall issue of Threads. And in that article, Duane, you mentioned a couple of things that I wanted to ask you about. One is special chalk that you've discovered among the Savile Row tailors that you visited.
- [25:57]
Duane McLeod
Yeah. Oh, man. Savile Row was an eye opener. It really was. What a. What a place. All of my preconceived notions about what the pinnacle of bespoke tailoring would be, like. Were totally blown out of the water. It's a very welcoming place, and the people that work there are just so enthused about everything that they do, and it's infectious. It really is. So I, you know, I went to London, I made a beeline to Savile Row because I just was curious and I. I just wanted to see what it was like. You can actually see the tailors. They're down. They're down below the street level, and. And you can actually look down and see them working, which is, for me, which is amazing. But I went to one of, you know, one of the top tailors there, Anderson and Shepherd, They've worked for movie stars and celebrities all over the world. Actually invited me to come out back and meet some of their cutters, which I never dreamed would ever happen. I mean, I couldn't believe it. And they were actually much younger than I ever thought that they would be. I just pictured they'd be a bunch of old men like me. But they were actually very. You know, they were actually quite young. There were men and women. And so while I was out back there, I just asked them, I said, what do you guys use for chalk? And they showed me the brand that they use, because one of the constant gripes that we had at the academy is that we all hated the chalk that we were working with, because you do end up using it a lot. And so they kind of shared the brand that they used at Anderson and Shepherd, and I immediately found a source. I bought two boxes, and before you know it, I think everybody at the Academy was using that chalk. But it was great stuff, and I brought it back with me, so I have a lifetime supply.
- [28:09]
Carol Frazier
I think you also made yourself a little sharpener for the chalk.
- [28:12]
Duane McLeod
I did, yeah. We had chalk sharpeners at school. And, you know, one of our tutors, Quentin, who is just. He is amazing. I should add that, you know, a lot of the students and the instructors at the tailoring academy all come from a, like, an industrial engineering background. So there's some sort of connection with engineering and tailoring because we're sort of engineering clothing. And so Quentin, as a. As an engineer, made chalk sharpeners for the tailoring academy. And I just kind of, you know, came back home, found a little box, and I said, if Quentin can do this, I can do it. So I went to the hardware store and got all the supplies, bought some razor blades online, and, you know, made my own. And it's. It's a. It's A very handy tool for, for somebody, you know, who's into tailoring, who does a lot of chalk chalking because, you know, we don't use a lot of pins and tailoring, you know, where it's, it's a lot of it is chalked directly onto the fabric and then you cut it out and off you go.
- [29:30]
Carol Frazier
So now that segues me right to people who'd use a lot of chalk because they're doing a lot of tailoring. You have your business going now, and I know you've, you've done a couple of different commissions. What do you see in the future for that, for your little business now?
- [29:47]
Duane McLeod
Oh, wow. I have been really so lucky here coming back. You know, I met with a Small Business Administration advisor who was just terrific and very helpful. And I was not, you know, I was not the person that they normally see. You know, here's this old guy coming in saying, I want to start a tailoring business. And I'm like, at the top end of the luxury market, you know, where, where do you start here? So his suggestion was, well, just go out and do some market research and go and see who's out there. So I went to a couple of the better known independent menswear shops in Portland, Maine, and was lucky enough to walk into David Wood, which is a, you know, very upscale but very contemporary menswear store. And the owner there just got it. Yeah, that's all I can say. You know, it's like, it was just like, okay, I understand this and I get what you're doing and I have customers who, who would want this. You know, it's. There are people out there that really care passionately about their clothes. And I participated in a Maker's Day with them. And they had invited some of the representatives from some of the clothing lines and shoe lines that they carry to be in the store to meet with their customers. So I had a chance to meet some of their customers and it was just a eye opening experience for me. I mean, especially a guy like me who's been like, making his own clothes for like the past 12 years or so and not really shopping to see what. To see what men are interested in. And it was a real eye opener in that what they were really looking for is clothes that function in their lives. That, that was like, really important to them is that they needed clothes to like, do a job for them. Like a guy said, I need a jacket that I can throw up into the overhead compartment in a plane and I'll come out looking okay. Or that sort of thing. I have another customer right now I'm working for, working on this outlandish, sparkly boucle jacket for this customer. But this is a jacket that he needs. It has to work for him because he's going to use this jacket almost as, like, publicity because he goes to lots of fundraisers in the LGBTQ community. So it's this kind of rainbow glitter jacket, about as far from British tweed as you can get. But it's that people need clothes that really function for them, and that has been a real eye opener for me. And it's fun to work on those kind of projects because it has nothing to do with me. It's really all about them, which is a real treat for me anyway.
- [33:21]
Carol Frazier
Yeah. I do wonder if men are more likely to think about their clothing in terms of the function than women are and then want it to look good after secondarily, maybe.
- [33:32]
Duane McLeod
Yeah, I think so. It was very interesting to their approach to clothing. And it's different also. I'm on the other. I feel like I'm on the other side of the fence. It's like I always made things to please myself. It's like I make the clothes that I want to wear, but now I'm making clothes that somebody else wants to wear. So it's a different. It's a different feeling, and it's very fun. I'm really enjoying it a lot. I'm, you know, I've. I'm working on a. Right now I'm working on a wool overcoat for David Wood in Portland. And, you know, they wanted certain details on it, and so I'm, you know, I'm putting on the details that they want. And this is just kind of fun to be doing that kind of thing where you're making somebody else's vision a reality. It's a trip.
- [34:39]
Carol Frazier
I'm sure it is. And that does feel like the next chapter. It does seem like it's another, like, as you said, you spent 12 years sewing the way you wanted to in the styles that you wanted, and then you learned some new techniques, and now you can apply them to an even bigger world of clothing, which is a wonderful feeling, I'm sure, to expand out.
- [34:59]
Duane McLeod
It's really fun for me. You know, I have no idea where it's going to lead. That's the other kind of fun part about it, is that it's sort of an adventure. You know, people contact me sometimes. It's, you know, I don't know if it's going to go anywhere that's what I. I don't know. I have a gentleman who's interested in a very big, oversized coat in a in this brilliant yellow color. And, you know, I'm just kind of out beating the bushes looking for fabrics for him right now, and I don't really know if it's going to go anywhere, but. But it's a lot of fun working on it and thinking about and how I'm going to do it, you know, how I'm going to pull it off.
- [35:46]
Carol Frazier
Well, Duane, it has been wonderful talking to you. Thank you so much for sharing your whole journey and letting us in a little bit on what you see in your future. Even though it may be vague, it sounds really promising and as you say, a lot of fun. I'm so glad you could join us. And I want to thank the listeners listeners for listening in.
- [36:06]
Duane McLeod
All right. This has been a treat. Thank you so much for inviting me. It's just been great. I could talk about clothes all day.
- [36:14]
Carol Frazier
Okay, well, we'll have you back and we'll do that somewhere sometime. Thanks so much.
- [36:22]
Duane McLeod
You're welcome. Bye bye.
- [36:24]
Carol Frazier
Thank you to our guests for joining us and thanks to all of you for listening. Please remember to send your comments, questions and suggestions to th at threadsmagazine. Com and please like, comment and subscribe wherever you are listening. Until next time, keep on sewing with threads.