How We Buy Gran Sasso: Two Dozen Colours, Two on the Shelf
The knits on the Gran Sasso wall this fall were chosen on a January morning at a table of swatch boards and sample sweaters. What an appointment is, why a crew offered in two dozen colours reaches us in two, how gauge, ply and stitch decide a sweater's next ten years, and why a 54 is always a 54.
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Jersey Dress Shirts: Not All Synthetics Are Evil, or the Same
A knitted dress shirt is not a polyester shirt. What jersey actually is, why polyamide and elastane behave differently from the cloth that gave synthetics a bad name, and how to choose between the Xacus Active, the Stenströms jersey and the Bugatchi stretch shirt by build and by how you wear it.
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Patrick Assaraf in Canada: The Iconic T-Shirt, the Merino, and How It Fits
Patrick Assaraf in Canada: the Iconic Pima cotton tee, the merino knitwear most people miss, honest fit advice and current prices at Mr. Derk in Edmonton.
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Goral of Sheffield: English Shoemaking, Ninety Years On
Sheffield-made, Blake-stitched shoes on Horween Chromexcel from a family that has made shoes since 1936. Two to start, both here now: the Mellor sneaker and the Baslow Chelsea boot.
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De Bonne Facture: Paris Menswear With The Atelier Named On Every Label
Paris slow menswear made by named European ateliers, now at Mr. Derk in Edmonton and photographed here for the first time. What makes De Bonne Facture worth standing behind, how it fits, and how the Driver's Jacket, Bookstore Jacket, Artist Shirts and Balloon Trousers wear on a September day off Whyte Avenue.
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Gran Sasso: Italian Knitwear from the Foot of the Apennines
Sant'Egidio alla Vibrata, 1952. The Di Stefano family has been knitting fully-fashioned in Abruzzo for seventy-four years. Here is what we look at when we buy Gran Sasso, and how the pieces are meant to sit.
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Why We Brought Merz b. Schwanen to Edmonton
Mr. Derk is Edmonton's first traditional menswear store to carry Merz b. Schwanen. The story behind the loopwheeled tees made in Albstadt, Germany since 1911.
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Stenströms: 125 Years of Swedish Shirtmaking at Mr. Derk
Swedish shirtmaking since 1899. Stenströms builds every shirt through 60 work steps using 23 individually cut parts. Royal warrant holders, family-owned across 125 years. We carry Active Stretch, Twill, Jersey, and knitwear from $299 CAD at Mr. Derk in Edmonton.