Revisiting “Learned Hand’s Tailor”

This 2017 post was written by KB Beck, former manager of Historical & Special Collections, about a fashionable discovery in the Learned Hand papers. 

View the archived web page of the original post, which is part of the Harvard University Archive’s A-Sites: Archived Harvard Websites collection, or read below… 

April 17, 2017 

By KB Beck 

Billings Learned Hand (1872-1961): Distinguished alumnus of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. Chief Judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. One of the twentieth century’s most noted jurists …  

… and a secret fashionista to boot.  

The Harvard Law School Library’s Historical & Special Collections has the papers of Judge Hand. One of our most heavily used collections contains a trove of information about law, lawyers, and life in its hundreds of boxes encompassing some 120 feet of material. You might expect to encounter correspondence from famous lawyers, judges, and politicians; legal opinions; and records of Judge Hand’s professional and social activities: it’s all there. But tucked away in Box 57 are three folders of correspondence between him and the staff of Alfred Webb Miles & Co. Ltd., custom tailors doing business at 12 Brook Street near Savile Row and Hanover Square in the heart of London.  

Folder 39 reveals an engaged correspondence from a man who took his tailoring seriously. In these days of fast fashion and online shopping delivered overnight, it’s instructive to learn how men of a particular professional and social class bought their clothes. In response to a 1934 request from Judge Hand, Alfred Webb Miles & Co. Ltd. sent a booklet of styles and several fabric swatches suitable for “light summer woolen suits.”  

 

When placing his order in a letter dated May 21, 1934, the 62-year-old judge had, shall we say, a few requests:  

“The trousers are to be made with cuffs, a straight back, two hip pockets and a small front pocket on the right side of the band; suspender buttons on the outside, but loops for a belt. In the jacket, a ticket pocket inside the right hand side pocket, and two inside breast pockets, as well as one outside.”  

Sadly, the relationship soured soon thereafter. Hand wrote in a letter dated 1935 (not shown) that a recent suit had arrived with the chest and armholes cut too tightly. He directed the tailors to take note of his measurements on file and cut the next suit jacket with more room.  

It was not to be. In a letter dated June 1, 1936, Judge Hand ended his 25-year relationship with Alfred Webb Miles & Co. Ltd.:  

“… I particularly asked you this time to give me more room under the arms and to make the coat larger around the chest. Your cutter has apparently paid no attention whatever to these instructions. … There is of course no inducement to have any more made if my orders cannot be better observed.” 

While the parties exchanged a couple more cordial letters, it appears that Judge Hand never bought another suit from Alfred Webb Miles & Co. Ltd. Other folders in the collection show that he did business with London tailors Meyer & Mortimer from 1925-1938, and again from 1941-1951. 

This is the fun of archival research: you never know what the next unexpected detour will be. We hope you visit Historical & Special Collections or another archive, and see what hidden treasures you discover!