If you had told me 12 years ago that the Japanese sewing book Men’s Coats by Ryuichiro Shimazaki (Bunka Shuppankyoku, 2008) would eventually take me to tailoring school in England, I would never have believed you. But that’s exactly what happened. My journey in making started well before I encountered Shimazaki’s book, yet the experience of sewing one of the featured coat designs pointed me in a direction I hadn’t anticipated.

I have always been a “maker.” My brother reminded me that our parents were as well. My father, an optician, built additions onto our house. My mother was my Cub Scout den mother. The other boys in our neighborhood came over, and she helped us make things. The creative making never stopped. I eventually built my own house and a sailboat. But nothing changed my life as much as learning to make my own clothes.

The Japanese coat book was my entry point into making outerwear in classic styles, and it eventually led me to Roberto Cabrera’s textbook, Classic Tailoring Techniques for Menswear: A Construction Guide (Fairchild Books, second edition, 2015). I couldn’t get enough of it. The combination of the physical construction and the unique properties of the materials involved (even their smells!) had me hooked. There was just so much to learn, and along with that, the realization that I could never learn enough.

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Duane MacLeod, MainelyMenswear.com, finds creative inspiration in the motto “Be your own luxury brand.”