Country wear for men

On a formal driven day the convention is a tweed jacket, breeks or country trousers, a checked shirt and a tie, with knee-length shooting socks, sturdy boots or wellingtons, and usually a flat cap. Colours stay muted and natural, because the point of the cloth is to sit quietly against the landscape rather than stand out from it. Ties are expected on the smartest days and optional on many others. Walked-up and rough days are looser: tweed still works, but a shirt without a tie is normal and moleskin or cotton is perfectly acceptable. If in any doubt, ask your host what the day calls for. Nobody minds the question, and every shoot has its own habits.

An estate tweed is a cloth woven in a pattern tied to one particular Scottish estate. The tradition began in the 1830s, when families taking on Highland estates wanted a way to clothe and identify their keepers and ghillies but had no clan tartan to draw on, so they commissioned checks of their own. Glenfeshie is usually named as the first, around 1835. The colours were chosen from the ground itself, the heather, bracken, stone and birch of that particular place, so the cloth worked as camouflage as well as a uniform. Almost every country check worn today descends from those patterns. Some estate tweeds are still reserved for the estate that owns them, and many others are freely available.

A shooting jacket is a tailored jacket, cut roughly to the length of a suit jacket and built to be worn as the main layer. A field coat is longer, looser and worn over the top, usually with a waterproof outer, and is closer to outerwear than tailoring. Many men own both and choose by the day: the jacket for a dry autumn morning or a smart driven day, the coat for January rain. If you are buying one first, the jacket is the more useful and the more versatile, because it also works away from the field.

Knee-length shooting socks, held up with a garter tied just below the knee. The usual method is to pull the sock up over the bottom of the breek, tie the garter firmly over the join, then fold the top of the sock back down to hide it. Done properly the two meet cleanly and neither slips through the day. Socks are one of the few places where colour is welcome, so a burgundy or mustard against a green tweed is entirely normal. Below that, walking boots on dry ground or wellingtons in wet.

Brush it after every wear with a soft clothes brush, working in the direction of the nap. That lifts off mud and dust before either has a chance to settle into the weave, and it does more for the life of the cloth than anything else you can do.

If it gets soaked, hang it on a broad hanger and let it dry at room temperature, well away from a radiator or direct sun. Never tumble dry it. Wool shrinks and turns brittle under direct heat, and a tailored jacket has canvas and padding inside that will pucker if it dries unevenly. Once dry, brush it again and it will come back. Beyond that, dry clean sparingly rather than often, and store it over summer on a wide hanger in a breathable bag with cedar. Our garment care guide goes into more detail.

No. A good deal of what we make in tweed never goes near a field. A tweed jacket worn with flannels or cords is one of the most useful things in a wardrobe from October through to spring, and a country suit is at home at a winter wedding, at the races, or at a weekend in the country. If you want the look without the field detailing, we simply leave the action back and the shoulder patch off and cut it a little cleaner. See our casual wear for how tweed sits alongside the rest of a wardrobe.

Earlier than you think. In the UK the grouse season opens on 12 August, partridge on 1 September and pheasant on 1 October, and orders bunch up in the weeks before each of those. A country order also has fittings in the middle of it, and those have to suit your diary as well as ours. Leaving a clear run means an adjustment at the fitting stage is a small thing rather than a scramble. If you have a specific date in mind, tell us at the consultation and we will be straight with you about whether it is achievable.

Yes. Tweed jackets, breeks, country trousers and full tweed suits are all made for women, cut to a women's pattern rather than adapted from a man's, and in the same cloths. See our bespoke tailoring for women, or mention it when you book and we will set the consultation up accordingly.

It depends on the garment and, more than anything, on the cloth. A hard-wearing everyday tweed and a fine, rarer estate cloth are two different orders even when the garment is identical, and a shooting jacket with a full waterproof membrane sits differently again from a plain one. Your tailor will go through numbers with you at the consultation, before anything is committed to. Our suit packages set out the options.