The Hampden

The peacoat has a name: the Hampden.

It takes its name from the Handley Page Hampden, an RAF bomber that first flew in 1936 and served through the early years of the Second World War.

My dad flew in the Nimrod and the Shackleton during his time in the RAF. He's always been fascinated by early aviation and that's part of why I find myself drawn to it.

But there's so much to admire about the industry. The imagination to conceive an aircraft. The ingenuity to make it fly. The skills it took to bring them to life. The courage it took to fly them for the very first time.

Behind each name are designers, engineers and crews, each with their own part in the story. Some opened new routes and possibilities. Others served in circumstances few of us can imagine. Their achievements deserve to be remembered, along with what was asked of them.

So this is where the naming convention begins. Each Barnfield garment will take its name from an RAF aircraft or a connection to British aviation. A nod to my dad, and a small tribute to the people who made that history.

Sample three is underway.

Padano have signed off the artwork. Each button will be engraved BARNFIELD GREAT BRITAIN round the edge, tone on tone. The raw buttons went into production yesterday.

The order is in with Padano: a thousand buttons in natural black horn, 40 ligne, semi-polished with no varnish. The sewing holes on the shape I chose were smaller than on the other samples, so Padano are making it with larger ones. That makes it a new button, with its own item number.

The button samples from Padano have arrived and they're beautiful. The matte finish is really nice, and the engraving round the edge is crisp and accurate.

I'm working with the team at Padano on the buttons. I'm getting some samples through and I'm aiming for something with a flat edge that resembles the pound coins I remember from my childhood in the 80s.

I'm hoping to find a natural horn option and want to laser engrave it round the edge rather than on the face, again, like a pound coin.

Sample two is back and the list of feedback is long. A centimetre off the sleeve, a pleat of ease in the back, the top button five centimetres lower and the rows further apart. There's also tightness at the front of the shoulders from the shoulder pads, which needs sorting before anything else.

Prototype two has hit a wall at the factory.

The sleeve lining's too short and won't meet the storm cuff without pulling. Same deal with the lining around the vent and the team have had to replace 16 of the patterns 21 pieces.

I'm not sure where things have gone wrong but I need to figure it out before moving forward.

The factory in Bolton only works from card patterns. Digital, they tell me, is for the high street. So the pattern is in the post to be digitised, before being printed to card.

I still want the front and side panels lined in a second layer of melton. It'll create a second layer of air for warmth and if I reduce the gsm of the fabric, it should do it without weight. My pattern cutter calls it a coat upon a coat and I can tell she's dubious.

I need to see the idea through and if it doesn't work, I'll chalk it up to a lesson learned. I'm going to drop the melton layer off the back panel and replace that with a silk lining. I think that'll help with the drape and with getting it on and off.

I've found a new pattern cutter. She's spent years cutting coat patterns, and she's twenty minutes from the studio.