Cloth maker · Merchant
Huddersfield Fine Worsteds
Huddersfield Fine Worsteds is a Yorkshire cloth merchant offering several old English ranges of sturdy, well-behaved smooth wool suiting.
Huddersfield Fine Worsteds is a West Yorkshire cloth merchant holding a number of long-established English bunch names. Yorkshire remains the centre of English fine worsted production, and the merchant's range reflects that: substantial, well-behaved suiting cloth.
Yorkshire worsteds
Huddersfield and the Colne Valley industrialised fine worsted weaving in the nineteenth century, and the surviving businesses are the remnant of a very large industry. English worsted has a characteristic dry, firm handle that differs noticeably from Italian finishing of the same fibre, a difference of finishing routine rather than of wool.
For a tailor, the practical distinction is that a Yorkshire cloth generally takes a press harder and holds a crease longer, while an Italian cloth of the same weight feels softer in the hand.
The bunches
The merchant carries a number of long-established English bunch names, covering suiting and jacketing across the traditional weights, including some considerably heavier than the modern market usually offers.
For a customer wanting a genuinely English suit (English cloth, English finish, English weight) this is where the tailor will look.
English finishing
The characteristic difference between an English worsted and an Italian one of the same fibre and weight is the finish: English cloth is generally finished drier and firmer, so it takes a press harder and holds a crease longer, at the cost of some softness in the hand. Neither is better. An English cloth suits a structured English coat and an Italian finish suits a soft Italian one, which is why the two traditions developed the cloth they did.
Historic bunches under one roof
Several long-established English cloth names now sit within this business, which is a common outcome in a consolidating industry and one that buyers should read carefully. A historic bunch continuing under new ownership may be woven to the same specification or may not, and the name alone does not answer the question.
The trade generally handles this honestly, but it is a fair thing to ask a tailor directly.