Photography by Alex Natt

The coat you’re looking at is, in some ways, the culmination of more than two years of careful thought. While this piece is a ready-to-wear number, it’s a very close replica of a bespoke overcoat that was made for me last winter, and which I’d spent most of the preceding year dreaming about in turn. I’d wanted a big tweed raglan coat for years, but hadn’t found the tailor who felt like the right fit to take the job on – fussy so and so that I am.

Then, maestro Fred Nieddu entered the picture. The former head cutter at Timothy Everest, Fred now operates his own bespoke tailoring studio in Shoreditch, east London, where he cuts lovely pieces like this for clients and also for leading film studios – he’s the tailor behind all the menswear in Netflix’s hit drama, The Crown, for instance. I met him shortly before he left Everest to set up his studio, and he’s since made me a handful of really beautiful sports coats. His house style is fascinating. He’s Italian by blood and so has a natural fascination with soft tailoring, but he trained at Meyer & Mortimer, one of Savile Row’s stiffest military tailors, so today his approach to tailoring combines these two traditions into something that feels contemporary and comfortable.

Which brings us neatly to this overcoat. Fred cuts a lovely Raglan, which is relaxed, yet has presence. The stand-and-fall collar adds drama, as does the length, which I wanted to fall below the knee, with a long waist belt to match. True to my original bespoke piece, Fred cut the master patterns for this ready-to-wear version, before the cloth was sent to a small, specialist outerwear workshop in north London, where it’s been lovingly sewn together expressly for No Man Walks Alone. Each coat is finished with hand-sewn buttonholes for a thoughtful bespoke touch.

It’s also a thoroughly useful piece. You can dress it down easily, as I have in these pictures; with a simple rollneck and jeans, or a denim shirt and cords, but it also works over tailoring. Just last week, I wore mine over a chocolate mohair double-breasted suit and camel rollneck combination to a posh party. The flecks in the coat’s cloth (670-gram Irish Donegal tweed woven by Magee) help with this. No matter what you wear beneath the coat, there seems to be a fleck in there that harmonises nicely. At said party, for example, I noticed there’s a handsome camel coloured fleck in the coat, which came out seemingly for the first time thanks to the rollneck underneath. There’s also crimson and jade green in there, and a little bit of soft, butter yellow. With all these wonderful accent colours in the cloth it’s a hugely fun coat to wear, but thanks to the navy blue base it’s sensible enough to be an everyday winter coat, too. There are only eight pieces available, so if you like it, you’d better get in quick. If there’s enough demand, we’ll organize a second run of coats made to order through a preorder campaign so everyone who wants to can secure their size in advance.

Thanks so much for reading, and for supporting this fun project. I hope you like the coat as much as we do!

TTFN,
Aleks

Aleks is freelance journalist and creative strategist. He writes on men’s style for publications including Monocle, British GQ and Robb Report US. He is a Contributing editor for FT How To Spend It magazine and the host of HandCut Radio, a critically acclaimed podcast that interviews key figures in men’s style, media and luxury. He lives in north east London.