Crispaire 2.0

Returning with the pen after four years or so to have a look at what has undoubtedly been my favourite suit ever since I acquired it. It’s not without reason, meaning, it’s not just that it’s a brown high-twist fabric, nor is this update without reason; upgrade alert.

The Crispaire suit was my second personal order suit from Ring Jacket, the first being the olive mohair suit and along side the two succeeding suits; the two fox air suits, these four are what I consider my best fabric choices and overall the main staples of my wardrobe, at least in terms of how often I wear them. Interestingly I peaked with my first four acquisionts.. That’s also the reason why I am now excited to have finalised an overhaul, adding new trousers to all of them.

Crispaire

Reading up on fabrics appropriate for summer back in 2020, high-twists were mentioned fairly often thus that inevitably lead to a deep dive into the range of available high-twist and plain weave fabrics where fox air, crispaire and spring ram were among the bunches that stood out to me.

This might just be my impression, but I have noticed that linen usually comes up as the most summer appropriate fabric among Europeans and Northern Americans, while in east and some parts of south-eastern Asia high-twists have a similar reputation. I’m among the latter and to be honest, although I do own linen suits, I would die wearing one during summer in Kyoto.

Back when I ended up picking this Crispaire cloth the choices had boiled down to the former and Fresco and I have to be honest, I’m not only glad I went with Crispaire, but I never really was impressed with Fresco for some reason. Granted, I only have experience with Fresco trousers, but now that I have experience with Crispaire, Fox Air, Spring Ram, Finmeresco and other equivalents such William Halstead’s 2-Ply, all as trousers thus providing grounds for comparison I am still convinced fresco isn’t for me.

Although it’s hard to know what sort of perception people have of oneself, whether I have become an actor synonymous with these type of fabrics, I think it’s fair to say that I have at least been a big proponent of high-twist fabrics since the start. That said, don’t take my words about Fresco as a recommendation not to acquire it. This is really just based on preference and Fresco is well known for a reason.

Cloth Properties

Holland & Sherry

 　→ Crispaire 3321056

• 100% Worsted Wool

• 280/310g

• Plain Weave

Familiar with and impressed by the quality Holland & Sherry provides I was confident in the choosing of Crispaire over Fresco. I find the quality of their fabrics, from colour to texture and in this case breathability to be exquisite.

To be more specific the reason I chose Crispaire over Fresco came down to two aspects. 

The first one being the touch of the cloth.

Crispaire is not as coarse as Fresco which normally isn’t a significant factor. In fact I like coarse fabrics, like Fox Air, but there is something about the specific roughness and thickness sort to speak, of Fresco I don’t particularly enjoy.

Now, again, this is by no means to say that Fresco isn’t any good, quite the contrary, but you have to go with what feels right for you.

I actually find Crispaire to be remarkably soft for a high-twist, to the extent that I almost don’t want to compare it to the other high-twists. If you are persuaded by the properties of a high-twist cloth but don’t like coarse fabrics, this is definitely your choice.

Both as a suit or worn as separates it is just a pleasure to wear. It feels far less constrictive when worn compared to other high-twists, but that it does come at a cost when we start nitpicking.

In my experience Crispaire is not as breathable as most other high-twists. Mind you, these are minuscule differences. When it’s hot it’s hot.

All high-twists I’ve come to know are excellent for hot climates, but this impression does result in me preferring either of my Fox Air suits on the hottest days.

As with all things in life it’s a matter of weighing pros and cons and the softness of Crispaire is unequalled.

If we disregard the comparison, Crispaire on it’s own terms is an incredibly breathable cloth. The 2-Ply yarn makes for a good amount of spacing in the warp and weft letting air flow nicely.

Furthermore, Crispaire is actually my favourite cloth for “generic” tailored trousers. I had a spare pair made as well as trousers in other shades as I found myself wearing these as separates more often than not. Now four years later I have 3 different pairs of the same brown quality, one of those pairs as a result of the recent suit upgrade and the fact remains that they get a lot of rotation in my weekly wear.

Cloth Look

Back to the two reasons for choosing Crispaire over Fresco, although the least important of the two reasons: I preferred the shade and colour nuance of Crispaire over Fresco.

Now mind you, back when I first wrote this that was my perception. I actually haven’t looked at the Fresco bunches since, so take my assessment of colour and variety with a pinch of salt.

Despite the broader range of brown shades from Minnis Fresco, of the the darker brown shades in the different high twist bunches, the Crispaire dark brown just matched what I had envisioned perfectly.

It mostly has a solid brown appearance but there are slight nuances to the brown shade, albeit not as much as some other high-twist cloths.

Being quite the aficionado of brown in tailoring there is no doubt there will be more brown suits added (evident when updating this article 4 years later), but it was important to me to have exactly this shade for the first one.

The Suit

Going with the same preferences as the Classic Mohairs suit, for its first iteration both the jacket and trousers were exactly the same. The jacket, based on the No-269 model, a 3-roll-2 buttoning with double stitching along the lapel and down the skirt.

The double stitching is picked up on hip pockets, fittingly giving the suit a somewhat more casual appearance. The lapels are the same 9,4cm lapels with a slightly higher gorge line. To me they appear quite wide, but not overtly wide as such. I have considered adding a little width to my future orders but looking at the jacket as a whole I think these are the best proportions. And 9,4cm is fairly wide after all.

As you can see, there’s a single line of stitching on the sleeve cuffs as well as along the darts.

This jacket is also quarter-lined, unsurprisingly, seeing as the fabrics inherent breathability is why I acquired it in the first place.

I went for a contrasting brown cupro for the lining and brown horn buttons.

Trousers

The suspense! Now, finally we’ve arrived at the main point of interest, at least from my point of view: the trousers upgrade.

First things first. The main reason I wanted new trousers was due to changes in preference mostly regarding rise and to some extent because I now prefer a slightly fuller cut.

As far as tailoring goes I hold both Ring Jacket and Igarashi with the same high esteem, they both epitomise excellent Japanese tailoring. Since two years ago I started my relationship with Igarashi, went on to add new trousers to both the olive and the brown Fox Air suits, some of my flannel suits and a whole range of separate trousers. The final act of the upgrade is this suit and the olive mohair suit, and finally we can call my wardrobe the 2.0 version as a whole.

In the case of the two trousers I initially ordered with this suit which can be seen below, one of them I had the crotch altered to allow for a higher rise which made it viable as an alternative to the new ones. As such I reckon I can dress it up, sort to speak, with the old trousers which has a more refined style while with the new trousers where it more casually.

Igarashi Bespoke

So, Igarashi Trousers. I’ve written about my first encounter with Igarashi and a couple of years past I still am amazed of their work. The new trousers are, perhaps as expected, in line with the design I’ve mostly been wearing the past few years which is the trouser design that got me hooked on both high rise and tailored trousers in the first place.

An elongated waistband with two buttons, side adjusters, double outwards pleats and in this case a coin pocket.

My approach to coin pockets these days is that I try to limit adding them to only the suits that I often wear as separates and those where I have a spare, more refined looking pair in addition to the new ones. This isn’t a rule I’m following pietistically, but I try to limit elements that will exclude suits for slightly more formal occasions, although I am of course aware of the irony in this matter regarding patch pockets, nor do I actually care. My passion for tailoring didn’t come about because I wanted to stroll around Wall-street looking like Gordon Gekko, quite the opposite.

In terms of rise, these as well as most of my trousers the past two years are at about 30-31cm which is about as high as I can go given my short (or honestly proportional I would say) torso.

Some Thoughts

I mentioned in the beginning of the article that this suit has some significance for me personally. It’s not a deep personal story, but rather a sartorial one.

First up, the fabric. Cutting to the chase, this suit is the perfect brown “base” suit. I had been through a couple of brown suits in my rather short journey up until the point of acquiring this suit and as much as they were nice suits, none of them were ever this suit. From the beginning, before I knew about cloths and how to articulate what I wanted due to lack of knowledge, this was the exact fabric I was envisioning; a slightly coarse or textured brown plain weave. It’s not necessarily the prettiest suit ever or a colour most people lean towards (ed. well these days both brown and green literally are the new navy so I guess I was ahead of the curve), but for that base brown suit that I wanted, this was exactly it. When you then add the fact that I now acquired this fabric in a suit that matches my preferences down to the finest details (ed. at the time, and now also upgraded preferences), hopefully you can appreciate why this is significant for me. It’s like a chip off the shoulder. And with regards to the shoulder…

The shoulder on this suit, despite that fact that I’ve gained 7-8 kilos (which I intend on shredding off) since I first acquired the suit, has always been perfect. It was back when I first got it, and it still is till this day.

I’ve always been quite strict on shoulder construction and look as it is my favorite part of a tailored jacket. In recent years I’ve had to temper that obsession a bit as I notice that although a shoulder might look perfect when you acquire the suit, it doesn’t necessarily take too kindly to weight gain (and loss for that matter). Which is of course a part of life. But in the case of this suit, it’s always bliss with perfect-looking shoulders.

Jacket Specs

• Jacket No-269

  • Quarter Lined

  • 3-Roll-2

  • Double Stitching

  • Patch Pockets

  • 9,4cm Lapels

  • Working Buttons

Trouser Specs

• Trouser: Igarashi Bespoke

• Two Pleats / Out Pleats

• Side Adjusters

• Coin Pocket

• Rise 30cm

• 6 cm Turn-ups