Style icons25 September 20264 min read
The suits of The Gentlemen: tweed, checks and flannel.
Guy Ritchie's series dresses the English aristocracy and its margins in tweed, checks and flannel. What these cloths say about a wardrobe, and how to choose them.
By Gilles Masson, Atelier Mesure, Paris 7ᵉ
A younger son inherits the family estate and discovers what lies beneath his land. The Gentlemen, created by Guy Ritchie for Netflix in 2024 and back for a second season in September 2026, rests entirely on this friction between the aristocracy and the underworld. The wardrobe, designed by costume designer Loulou Bontemps, tells the story before the dialogue does: each cloth places the man who wears it, somewhere between the country and the city. The Gentlemen is a work by Guy Ritchie distributed by Netflix; Atelier Mesure has no connection with the series, with Netflix, or with the houses that supplied its costumes.
Tweed, the uniform of the estate
At the start of the series, Eddie does not yet wear a suit. The costume designer has described his progression: crewnecks, fine coats, tweed jackets, then three-piece suits. Tweed is the garment of the man who lives on his land: a dense wool that stands up to the wind and ages without losing its hold. Herringbone and Donegal, flecked with small knots of colour, are its two most recognisable faces.
For town, tweed is chosen lighter and tighter, so that the jacket keeps a clean shoulder. The cut matters as much as the cloth: a tweed suit is built with more softness than an office suit, to let the material work. The tweeds already cut at the atelier from Loro Piana cloths, a house not credited for the series' costumes, show what the pattern becomes once worn.
Checks and Prince of Wales, the pattern that announces itself
In the 2019 film whose title and world the series takes up, costume designer Michael Wilkinson dressed Mickey Pearson in windowpane and Prince of Wales checks woven from wool, cashmere and silk. The taste for pattern has remained: a check is seen from afar, and sets a man in the room before he has spoken.
Everything is a matter of scale. A small Prince of Wales goes to the office; a large windowpane calls for confidence and a flawless cut, because the pattern betrays the slightest approximation: at the back, the shoulders and the pockets, the lines must match. You can browse the Prince of Wales checks cut from Loro Piana cloths, and the checks from Drago and Delfino. None of these houses is credited for the series' cloths: they are the fabrics the atelier works with.
Flannel, the move to town
In the second season, Eddie wears flannel trousers under a sleeveless Fair Isle jumper. This wool, soft and slightly brushed to the touch, more broadly bridges the country and the city: it keeps the warmth of tweed and the restraint of the office suit.
The three-piece suit calls for a waistcoat cut from the jacket's cloth and fitted closely, since it shows as soon as the jacket opens. The made-to-measure waistcoat is set to the rise of the trousers, so that no shirt appears between the two. As for the houses that weave these cloths, Italian, English or Scottish mills, each has its own hand: they are presented in the guide to fabrics and their origins.
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Key points
The series' wardrobe, seven marks.
- Tweed dresses the country: herringbone and Donegal are its two faces
- For town, choose a lighter, tighter tweed
- A small Prince of Wales goes to the office, a large check calls for confidence
- On a pattern, the lines match at the back, the shoulders and the pockets
- Flannel bridges the country suit and the town suit
- The three-piece waistcoat is cut from the jacket's cloth
- A cloth is chosen for its use before it is chosen for its house
No mill has been publicly credited for the series' cloths: what precedes is not a reconstruction, it is a reading of the patterns and of what they teach. Atelier Mesure has no connection with the series or with Netflix. The lesson remains, and it holds for any wardrobe: a cloth is chosen for the life one has in store for it, and a made-to-measure suit always begins there.
