The Lawrence

Each jacket takes five fabrics, two interfacings, two sizes of Corozo button and a whole raft of other bits. The gabardine is already here, and the wool, the rib, the buttons and the thread were ordered last week. Everything comes to me first so I can go through it with a fine-tooth comb before it goes anywhere near the tailors.

At 9.24 this evening, order number 50 came in. That's 34 hours, 24 minutes and 16 seconds after early access opened, and four years after I started. I don't quite know what to say.

The Lawrence goes on sale on Saturday 29 April at 11am. There's enough gabardine for fifty jackets, so there will be fifty. Five hundred laser-etched Corozo buttons arrived from a local button maker in under three weeks.

Collected the final sample from Agnes in Leicester today. Seven prototypes, four years after the first sketch. It's ready.

The mill that weaves our gabardine has stopped taking orders, and the black is out of stock. I've spent close to two years on this cloth. Back on the phone.

Drove to Shipley this morning to collect 50 metres of British wool wadding from Genady at Kofibres. Next stop Harvey Quilting, where Tony and Neil will combine it with the printed lining. Meanwhile, Agnes in Leicester is stitching up the size samples.

Picked up the latest prototype today. The back now tapers in to follow the curve of the lower back, the body is an inch longer and the sleeves are half an inch longer. The bad news: the sew-in interfacing has already come away from the collar and pocket flaps. The hunt is on for an organic fusible.

The finished lining artwork landed in my inbox today, nearly two years after Tom and I first spoke. It's one map of Great Britain through the seasons, 1.5 metres wide and 2.5 metres long, from the Old Man of Storr to Stonehenge. Each jacket takes up to two metres of it, so no two linings will ever be the same.

Tom has had an idea that changes the whole lining. Instead of the illustrations floating on their own, he'll draw the outline of Britain in a bold line, the contours in a finer one, and set everything on the map. More work, but I think it's the right call.

Today I met Tony at Harvey Quilting in Nottingham. He has the machines to combine the printed organic cotton with British wool into one quilted lining, and Neil, who quilts alongside him, has 42 years in the trade. In the UK most factories specialise, so the Lawrence is going to be made by a lot of different hands.