A bespoke suit tailored perfectly to you provides unparalleled confidence for your wedding.

At Charles Campbell we guide you through the process of designing your suit so that it matches your personal style and the theme of your day perfectly.

Once that’s in hand, here’s a checklist of what else you need to remember on the big day.

Planning ahead

• Keep your accessories simple. You might want to take some colour inspiration from the day, though not too much. For a considered and co-ordinated look, you could use a complementing hue in either your tie, socks or pocket square and stop there.
• If you are having a buttonhole, keep it small & simple and take inspiration from the bride’s bouquet. If not, then add a pocket square.
• Choose some cufflinks if you are wearing a french cuff or double cuff. A tie bar or pin is a nice touch too.
• Get the right shoes for your suit. Wear your new shoes at least a week before the big day, to break them in and ensure they are comfortable.  Make sure they are well polished.
• Make sure your shirt is laundered and perfectly pressed, and consider collar stiffeners.
• Get a haircut a week before.
• Purchase gifts to thank your best man and other key members of your party. Cufflinks or a tie bar go down well.‍

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On the day

• Be mindful of the time and have an itinerary handy so you know exactly where you need to be and when.
• Allow plenty of time for a hot shower, a close shave or beard trim and grooming to look your best.
• Remember to eat a good breakfast and keep hydrated. Keep alcohol to a minimum until after the ceremony.
• Arrange to have a wedding gift or love token delivered to your bride before the ceremony to show how much you care and help them shake off any pre-wedding jitters.
• Give out your thank you gifts to your groom’s party.
• Remember the rings. Place them in your pocket to entrust to your best man some time before the ceremony.
• Avoid loading your pockets with your phone, keys, or mints to keep your suit looking its best. Get someone else to keep them for you, especially for the photos.
• One of your final responsibilities of the day will be to give a thank you toast, to simply thank and express your love to everyone who came. Be sure to thank parents, the wedding party, guests who travelled long distances to be there, and anyone key to making the day happen.

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We only work with the finest cloths to create your perfect suit, from worsted wools and tweeds to cottons and cashmeres from the finest textile mills in Yorkshire, Scotland and Italy.

We ascertain what cloth will be right for your suit by asking the right questions, such as where and when you will wear it, how formal it needs to be, the warmth you want, what else you will wear it with, and so on.

You can leave it all to us, but if you want to know more about selecting from the thousands of cloths available, here are some things to consider.‍

Weight ‍

One of the most important factors in comfort is the weight of the cloth:

• 7 - 9 oz (210 - 270 grams) - very light weight,  ideal for warmest temperatures and greatest breathability.
• 9.5 - 12 oz (285 - 360 grams) -  midweight, the best option for year-round suits. Comfortable for more than six months of the year so the most popular choice, especially for your first bespoke suit.
• 12 - 13 oz (360 - 390 grams) - heavier mid weight, still wearable for a good portion of the year and provides more comfort for Autumn and Winter.
• 14 - 16 oz (420 - 480 grams) - typically used for winter suits including heavier flannels and some  tweeds.
• 16 - 22 oz (480 - 660 grams) - tweeds, typically used for country sports, whether standing on a peg or estate tweeds if you need something extra hard wearing. ‍

Super numbers

The higher the number, the finer the cloth, but we also take into account how often you will be wearing your suit. Super 100s to 130s are a good choice.

Textures, patterns and surface detail

For a first bespoke suit for your wardrobe, plain cloths will be most versatile, but there are still plenty of cloths in the ‘plain’ spectrum with enough texture or subtle pattern to make your new suit satisfyingly different. ‍

Colour

For formal business suits, navy, charcoal or mid-grey are great options, being flattering for most skin tones and suited to a good range of colours of shirts, ties, pocket squares and shoes. Subtle colour can also be achieved in flecks or faint checks, or if you want to be more adventurous there are an array of bright windowpane checks.

We are delighted to launch our new website. Many thanks to wearegrip for providing us with a sleek new look for our website. You will find everything much easier to navigate whatever device you are using, whether you want to find out more about what we do, have a closer look at any products that catch your eye, contact us or link to our social media.

We hope you enjoy the stunning photography from Alex de Palma - Alex has really captured the essence of our bespoke offerings and showcased our cloths and suits against the backdrop of some amazing Ribble Valley countryside.

Huge thanks also to Rob Walmsley of Teacake Design for the art direction of the photoshoot and the fantastic design of our new brochure and brand refresh you see throughout the website. You will see grey is our new signature brand colour.

Thanks also to Sarah Varley at LetterPress Content for providing all the web and brochure copy that helps to tell our story.

We hope you enjoy the new website - get in touch if anything takes your fancy.

You can find out more about our photoshoot and new brochure here.

The thing about being well dressed is that it should look effortless, and that is what we are here for. Here are some of our favourite suit details that win every time.

1. A slightly softer padding to the shoulder - a nod to the sophistication and style of Italian tailoring that brings a contemporary and slightly less military look to the English style we love.
2. Vents in the jacket allow for both a tailored fit and freedom of movement - we like one vent for a jacket and two side vents for a suit.
3. A slightly slimmer sleeve brings a contemporary edge. Tapering to your exact build on both the jacket and the trousers is both modern and a signature of bespoke tailoring.
4. Unless you are selecting a dinner suit, a notch lapel and slant flap pockets are our favourites - you can always tuck the flaps in if you fancy a switch to jetted pockets for a change.
5. A 3-piece suit looks great and is more versatile as it can be worn with or without the waistcoat.
6. Details like a hand-finished buttonhole give a raised, luxury finish.
7. Don’t carry too much in your pockets so your suit can retain its shape, but we like an inside ticket pocket for keeping your phone or business cards handy.

Let’s get designing your perfect suit.

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We are spoilt for choice around here for awesome backdrops, so we picked just a couple of our favourite spots - Longridge Fell and Jeffrey Hill.

Along with The Freemasons at Wiswell - many thanks to Steven Smith for allowing us to use this fine establishment and its stunning location - and our own showroom, Alex and Rob used the heathers, heaths and rolling hillsides to capture and complement our clothing and cloths perfectly.

You will see the resulting imagery featured throughout our Charles Campbell brochure, which includes sections on our bespoke tailoring process, as well as inspiration for wedding attire and our offerings for country pursuits, along with some gentlemen’s style guides. We hope you enjoy it.

You can view our brochure here or contact us for a copy

Photography by Alex de Palma
Art Direction and Brochure Design: Teacake Design
Brochure Copy: Letterpress Content

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All the cloths we use are from the finest textile mills in Yorkshire, Scotland and Italy including worsted wools, tweeds, cottons and cashmeres. You can see and feel the difference immediately.

We match the cloth carefully to when you will wear the suit, finding the cloth that provides the right level of durability, warmth and comfort and well as style.

Wool is a good all-year option for suits. It is the most popular cloth choice due to its versatility and refined aesthetic. It offers a more luxurious look, especially with a cashmere blend, for work wear, as well as formal occasions.

As a natural material, wool is breathable so works well both in the heat of the day or the cool of the night. It is soft and recovers well from a day’s wear. We like the smoothness and high durability offered by worsted wool.

Hopsack is a great loose-weave worsted wool that is more textured, breathable and particularly good for blazers.

Nailhead, pick and pick, or a subtle herringbone add textured interest.

If you are looking for a slightly less formal suit for every day, tweed is a fantastic option. Quintessentially British and hard-wearing, it is wearable, durable and comes in beautiful natural shades.

Opting for a three-piece tweed suit is a great option as any perceived informality of the cloth is lifted by the waistcoat, and of course the exceptional cut.

Harris tweeds generally have one overall colour with many variegated yarns so a subtle shade can work for business wear, as can a Donegal tweed in grey with flecks of a secondary colour.

An 11 or 12 oz weight Huddersfield worsted cloth makes a perfect suit that will become a cornerstone for your wardrobe.

The grouse is a notoriously tricky target, flying low at around 60 miles an hour, so you will need the ultimate skill and concentration. We take the sport very seriously at Charles Campbell and know that the right clothing is important for more reasons than you might think. A key fixture in the British Countryside calendar, the 12th August is a highly anticipated sporting event and is as much a social event as a display of skill. Bespoke shooting attire will hit the mark on both counts.

With a set of bespoke shooting tweeds made for you - comprised traditionally of shooting vest, waistcoat, jacket and your choice of breeks, plus twos or plus fours - you’re getting the ultimate precision in luxury, style and comfort.

Your suit needs to keep you comfortable whatever the British weather throws at you, and for this reason the hard-wearing warmth of tweed is the traditional choice. You also need to keep to muted tones to avoid the disappointment of a startled grouse by an ill-timed flash of a bright lining or a white shirt. Tweeds take their inspiration from the greens, browns and heathers of the British countryside and these colours are perfect for shooting attire.

In a Charles Campbell bespoke shooting suit you’ll look the part and also feel the difference in every movement. Because every aspect of each garment is made for you, we make sure your clothing will never hamper your shot. We bring together the perfect fit, the right cloth choices and subtle technical details allowing greater movement in the shoulders and the back so you are ready for a fantastic shooting season.