Cloth maker · Merchant
Holland & Sherry
A London cloth merchant of long standing, now with a mill of its own and a very large book.
Holland & Sherry began as a wool merchant in the City of London in 1836 and is now one of the largest suppliers of suiting and jacketing to tailors worldwide. It is principally a merchant, selecting and branding cloth woven for it, though it also owns weaving operations in Scotland.
Merchant first
A cloth merchant's product is selection and service: assembling bunches, holding stock, cutting lengths, and getting cloth to a tailor in Seoul within days. Holland & Sherry does this at scale, and the range of its books, from workhorse worsteds to exotic fibre blends, is among the widest available to a tailor.
It also owns weaving capacity, including in Scotland, so parts of the range are woven in-house. The bunches do not always make the distinction obvious, and it is a fair question to ask.
What a merchant actually does
Selects cloth, has it woven to specification, assembles it into bunches, holds stock in depth, and ships cut lengths worldwide within days. For a tailor this is the whole service: no workshop can hold thousands of cloths, and none can wait months for a mill run.
It also means a merchant's bunch may contain cloth from several mills, and the bunch will not always say which. Asking is reasonable and a good merchant answers.
The range
Unusually broad: everyday worsteds, jacketings, coatings, and a long tail of exotic and blended cloths (cashmere, vicuña blends, silks) assembled into named bunches. The house also owns weaving capacity in Scotland, so parts of the range are made in-house.
For a customer this breadth is the reason a tailor can offer a genuine choice rather than a curated dozen.
Merchant and mill
The distinction between a merchant and a mill is one of the most useful things a buyer can learn, and this house sits on both sides of it. A merchant designs and commissions cloth and sells it in books; a mill weaves it. Many famous cloth names are merchants, and a tailor's bunch will contain both without distinguishing them. Neither is superior. A good merchant's edit is a real skill and the reason a tailor carries a particular book. But knowing which you are looking at explains why two bunches can contain cloth from the same loom.