If images of your father and grandfather wearing beautifully tailored but slightly old-fashioned suits from this Chicago-based company is the only lasting memory you have of the 94-year-old brand, it’s time to take a second look. The new Oxxford suit, one of the few still made entirely by hand in the United States, features lighter super wool and cashmere fabrics, softer construction, and a sexier shape that consists of smaller lapels, higher armholes and leaner, flat-front slacks. In other words, all the elements of contemporary suit making that the best English and Italian clothiers have been stressing for years. To spotlight its position as the quintessential American suit maker, this year Oxxford Clothes introduced Oxxford 1220, a new tailored-clothing collection that focuses on iconic American menswear style. To that end, all of the suits and sport coats bearing the Oxxford 1220 label are modern reinterpretations of those from America’s early-20th-century fashion heyday, when men’s clothing was defined by its full sculpted chest, trim-cut waist, softer shoulders, and bold expressive lapels.
Inside Information
Oxxford’s expertise is in its superior construction, including the lightest horsehair canvas inner linings and sleeves applied using a distinctive chain-link stitch, instead of the stiff, unyielding tape method preferred by most suit makers, which allows for complete ease of movement the minute you slip on the jacket.
