Bespoke suits
- Two-Piece Suit — The two-piece suit — jacket and trousers, no waistcoat — is the foundation of every professional wardrobe that takes itself seriously.
- Three-Piece Suit — The three-piece suit adds the waistcoat to the standard two-piece, completing the silhouette and raising the formality by a clear degree.
- Double-Breasted Suit — The double-breasted suit is not for the tentative.
- Dinner Suit — A dinner suit is the most formally prescribed garment in a man's wardrobe, and the one where the gap between a well-made bespoke version and a hired or off-the-rack alternative is most visible.
- Morning Coat — The morning coat is the correct formal daytime dress for weddings, official ceremonies, race meetings (Royal Enclosure standard), and a small number of other occasions that still observe the formal dress code.
- Safari Suit — The safari suit occupies a unique position in Indian formal dress — neither fully western nor fully Indian, it is a warm-weather adaptation of formal clothing that works exactly where Indian summers meet professional dress codes.
- Sports Jacket — The sports jacket is the most versatile garment a man can add to his wardrobe after the basic suit.
- Blazer — The blazer occupies a unique position in a wardrobe: more casual than a suit jacket but more formal than a sports coat, it works in contexts where neither a suit nor a casual shirt is quite right.
- Charcoal Suit — If a professional man were to own only one suit, it should be charcoal.
- Navy Suit — If charcoal is the foundation, navy is the colour that makes the wardrobe.
- Grey Suit — Grey suiting spans a remarkable range — from near-black charcoal to a pale silver.
- Pinstripe Suit — The pinstripe suit carries more historical weight than any other.
- Glen Plaid Suit — The Glen Urquhart plaid — or glen plaid, or Prince of Wales check — is one of the most distinguished and enduring patterns in menswear.
- Herringbone Suit — The herringbone weave — its V-shaped columns of interlocking twill giving the cloth a subtle directional texture — is one of the oldest and most respected patterns in suiting.
- Linen Suit — Linen is the oldest of all suiting cloths and, in a hot climate, arguably the most sensible.
- Flannel Suit — A bespoke flannel suit — the cool-weather classic of professional dress — made at The Black Lapel, Adyar, from the finest British and Italian flannel cloths..
- Peak Lapel Suit — The peak lapel is the lapel that points upward — its outer edge rising above the notch rather than cutting into it.
- Shawl Lapel Tuxedo — The shawl lapel is the defining feature of the most traditional dinner jacket.
Bespoke trousers
- Chinos — A chino is a cotton twill trouser, and it is the most-worn garment in most wardrobes that also contain a suit.
- Flat Front Trousers — The flat-front trouser has no pleats — the cloth is smooth from waistband to break, with a clean line that suits a slimmer contemporary silhouette.
- Pleated Trousers — The pleated trouser has been the victim of fashion.
- Gurkha Trousers — The Gurkha trouser is distinguished by its double-tab closure — two adjustable tabs at the front that replace the belt loop and buckle system — and its high waist, which gives the trouser a longer, cleaner line from the waistband.
- High-Waist Trousers — High-waist trousers — sitting above the natural waist rather than on the hip — are one of the most flattering and elegant of all trouser styles.
- Wide-Leg Trousers — The wide-leg trouser is having a well-deserved return to prominence, driven by a broader recognition that slim-cut trousers are a fashion-industry preference, not a sartorial truth.
- Dress Trousers — Dress trousers are formal trousers made to specific standards depending on the occasion.
- Linen Trousers — Linen trousers in a good European linen are the most practical and one of the most elegant trouser choices for Chennai's warm climate.
- Wool Trousers — Wool trousers are the foundation of professional dress.
Bespoke shirts
- Giza Cotton Shirt — Giza is the family of Egyptian extra-long-staple cottons grown in the Nile Delta, and it is the cotton most often named on the selvedge of a serious shirting cloth.
- Bespoke Dress Shirt — A well-made bespoke dress shirt is one of the most immediate improvements a man can make to his professional appearance.
- White Dress Shirt — The white dress shirt is the foundation of professional dress.
- Monogrammed Shirt — A monogram on a bespoke shirt is not decoration.
- Bespoke Business Shirt — The business shirt is the workhorse of the professional wardrobe.
- Spread Collar Shirt — Bespoke spread collar shirts in Thomas Mason poplin and twill.
- Cutaway Collar Shirt — The cutaway collar takes the spread of the spread collar to its logical extreme.
- Button-Down Collar Shirt — Bespoke button-down collar shirts in Oxford cloth and poplin.
- Tab Collar Shirt — The tab collar shirt is a specific and deliberate choice.
- French Cuff Shirt — When a French cuff is correct, which cufflinks suit which occasion, and how the cuff should sit against your jacket sleeve.
- Poplin Shirt — Poplin is a plain-weave cotton fabric woven with a fine ribbed texture created by using more threads in the horizontal direction than the vertical.
- Twill Shirt — Twill is a weave in which the weft thread passes over two or more warp threads in a pattern that creates a diagonal rib on the fabric surface.
- Oxford Cloth Shirt — Bespoke Oxford cloth shirts in classic white and blue — the casual formal shirt.
- Sea Island Cotton Shirt — Sea Island cotton is among the rarest natural fibres in commercial use.
- Striped Shirt — The striped dress shirt occupies a specific and useful place in the professional wardrobe.
Bespoke womenswear
- Women's Bespoke Suit — A bespoke women's suit from The Black Lapel is made to the same standard as everything else we produce: a pattern drafted from your specific measurements, cloth from our principal mills, two fittings before delivery.
- Power Suit — The women's power suit is a specific garment with a specific purpose: to communicate authority, seriousness and precision in a professional setting.
- Women's Bespoke Blazer — A bespoke women's blazer is the piece that connects the formal and casual parts of a professional wardrobe.
- Women's Trousers — Women's trousers are, arguably, the garment where the gap between ready-made and bespoke is most visible.
- Evening Jacket — The women's evening jacket occupies the space between the daytime suit and full eveningwear.
- Tailored Dress — The tailored dress is one of the simplest and most effective formal garments.
Bespoke outerwear
- Overcoat — A bespoke overcoat is one of the most enduring investments in a wardrobe.
- Topcoat — The topcoat is a lighter coat than the overcoat — typically in a medium-weight wool of 300–400 gsm — that functions as an outer layer for the cool months and for travel to temperate climates.
- Raglan Coat — The raglan coat takes its name from the first Baron Raglan, who commissioned a coat with a modified sleeve construction that accommodated a prosthetic arm after injury at Waterloo.
- Polo Coat — The polo coat — typically in camel hair or a fine camel-coloured wool, double-breasted with a self-belt — is one of the most elegant overcoats in the history of menswear.
- Travel Coat — A travel coat for the serious professional traveller has a specific set of requirements: it must be light enough to pack, structured enough to put on upon arrival without looking as though it has spent six hours in a bag, warm enough for cool climates, and well-made enough to look correct in a boardroom or a client dinner.
Bespoke accessories
- Silk Ties — A silk tie is the most expressive element of a formal outfit.
- Wool Ties — A wool tie occupies a different register from a silk tie — slightly more casual, more textured, more associated with the sports jacket and odd trouser than the formal business suit.
- Pocket Squares — A pocket square is a small gesture with a disproportionately large effect.
- Cufflinks — Cufflinks are one of the few male accessories that carry genuine formality.
- Belts & Braces — The belt and the brace serve the same mechanical purpose — holding the trouser at the waist — and represent meaningfully different choices in formal and professional dress.
Indian ethnic wear, made to order
- Sherwani — The sherwani is the pinnacle of Indian formal menswear.
- Bandhgala — The bandhgala — a short, close-necked jacket with a stand collar and a button closure from neck to hem — is the most important garment in Indian formal menswear for professional and semi-formal contexts.
- Nehru Jacket — The Nehru jacket — a short, mandarin-collared jacket that derives its name from India's first Prime Minister — sits at the intersection of Indian and Western dress in a way no other garment does.
- Bandi Waistcoat — The bandi — the Indian waistcoat, often also called a sadri in North Indian dress — is a sleeveless, close-fitting garment worn over a kurta and under a sherwani or left as the outermost layer over a kurta-churidar combination.
- Bespoke Kurta — The kurta is the foundation garment of Indian ethnic dress.
- Pathani Suit — The Pathani suit — a loose, wide-cut kurta worn over a loose salwar — is the most relaxed and comfortable of Indian formal garments.
- Achkan — The achkan is a long coat worn over the kurta and churidar, closely related to the sherwani but with a more tailored, structured construction that reflects its Mughal court origins.
- Jodhpuri Suit — The Jodhpuri suit — a Western-style jacket with a stand collar and Indian construction details, worn with matching Western-style trousers — is one of the most successful fusions of Indian and Western formal dress.
- Indo-Western Dressing — Indo-Western dressing is not a category of garment but a philosophy of dress — the deliberate combination of Indian and Western elements in a single outfit in a way that produces something coherent rather than confused.
- Churidar — The churidar is the traditional Indian trouser worn with kurtas, sherwanis and bandhgalas.
- Silk Kurta — A silk kurta is not simply a kurta in a different fabric.
- Cotton Kurta — Bespoke cotton kurtas in fine handloom, voile and khadi — the everyday Indian wardrobe, made at The Black Lapel, Adyar, Chennai..
Services
- Alterations — In-house alterations by our own tailors, on garments made here and on garments bought anywhere else..
- Corporate tailoring and uniforms — Uniforms, staff wardrobes and executive sets of ten garments or more, cut to each wearer in one cloth and colour and run as a project..
- Gift vouchers — A voucher for any value, redeemable against anything we make or sell..