Song brocade: East in the lining

Song brocade — 宋锦 — is one of China’s great silk-weaving traditions, born in Suzhou and once reserved for court dress and the mounting of paintings. Its patterns are geometric, its colours mineral: celadon, imperial blue, antique gold, aubergine.

The Celestial Song commission put that cloth on a Savile Row board: a long double-breasted smoking jacket with deep velvet peak lapels, turnback cuffs and velvet-covered buttons, the brocade’s pattern placed seam by seam through collar and back, and a bird-and-branch silk lining inside.

It is the house’s East-meets-West argument made in cloth rather than words — a weave from one tradition, a shoulder from another, and no compromise asked of either.

The finished jacket, with its details, is in the gallery.