To celebrate the days when people dressed up not only for driving but also for racing, British bespoke tailors Henry Poole have created a driving suit for Aston Martin’s design director. It has the coolest inside pockets in the world.
A three-piece tweed suit for driving a race car? It’s not as crazy as it may sound. Reichman’s suit, made of a light gray Prince of Wales check cloth, was based on a 1969 design worn by racing driver Nick Cussons.
“We didn’t have all this Nomex fireproofing in those days, and we wanted to be able to have drinks after the race, so we used a good worsted suit made, where the wool would simply singe if it caught a-lite,” Cussons told photographer Lara Platman. Although the first thing that comes to mind when I think of 1960s racing accidents involving fire is still not an impeccably attired driver emerging from a raging inferno of fuel and magnesium with nary a singe on his suit, but not-so-instant, terrible death.
What makes the suit wonderful, aside from all the little tailoring tricks to make it comfortable for driving, are the inside pockets, cut specifically to suit the demands of an old race car. There are pockets for spark plugs (pictured above), a tire gauge, spanners—and even one for an oily rag.
Special thanks to Lara Platman for letting us use her photo of the suit. Lara takes rather magical pictures of cars. Her new book about Harris Tweed, that intoxicating fabric woven in the Outer Hebrides, is out now.