Now that lockdown is extending it’s certainly hard to keep our collective peckers up. We were all so looking forward to freedom and frivolity, dancing together en masse; sadly we have to wait another month for that.

However, looking on the bright side you can spend this time treating yourself and  having something special made in anticipation of full reopening.

I’ve recently become fascinated by Spanish Teba jackets. You know the feeling when you suddenly discover something new and then notice it everywhere, a frequency illusion interestingly know as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.

Luckily, although Teba jackets were designed for shooting they have nothing whatsoever to do with the far-left guerrilla group and are in fact connected to Spanish Royalty.

The jacket is named after, Don Carlos Mitjans y Fitz-James Stuart, the XXI Count of Teba. He was a crack shot and a good friend of King Alfonso XIII of Spain. The story of the relaxed sporting jacket’s origin seems to branch out a bit at this point. The gist is that either the king’s Savile Row tailor created a suitable jacket for hunting, with the flexibility, pockets and panache required for the dandy shooting Count or that the Count’s Spanish tailor made a version for the King. Either way the beloved aristocratic jacket slipped into obscurity for a while when King Alfonso went in to voluntary exile to Rome in 1931.

King Alfonso XIII wearing a jacket with the lapel shape as seen on his Teba jackets

There’s a saying that the last generations casual wear becomes the next’s formal wear as the trend to more relaxed tailoring progresses. The Teba jacket is great proof of this. The unique flowing collar shape without a notch looks suitably elegant and as the British climate warms more people are adopting this casual jacket as suitable attire for day and relaxed business wear. Personally, I’ve been getting tremendous pleasure from my Teba and I’m sure you and your friends will too when we are no longer exiled from society.

We make bespoke Tebas in-house using any of our fabrics and also have a selection of plain cottons and linens should you wish to come and explore.
This Teba above is tailored in our new season herringbone design and features hand sewn button holes including the two distinctive collar ones as seen on the Count of Teba’s original.