There is a specific look that guys have when they go on vacation. Sometimes it’s the adoption of shorts and sandals, with pants nowhere in sight. Sometimes it’s the loud shirts that he feels he can’t wear anywhere else. The Hawaiian shirt is the quintessential example. But there are two that have stood out for years, and they have now come together. The Tommy Bahama x Original Madras Trading Company collaboration brings together two vacation outfitters for a capsule that is keeping men out of the office and on the water.
I discovered Original Madras Trading Company at the Chicago Collective show. It immediately stood out as something special, with bold colors and a hint of playfulness. My early summertime memories at the lake include a lot of Madras. To me, it is the quintessential and original cool (and cooling) fabric. The combination of summer, colors, and relaxed vibes felt like a perfect marriage of our brands. – Bradley O’Brien, Executive Vice President of Product Design & Development, Tommy Bahama.
More than just a pattern, it’s a process
It is easy to dismiss these shirts as the ultimate dad on vacation shirt. But they aren’t mass-produced like many of the Shein sets you will see on the younger crowd at the beach. These are crafted using a process that sets them apart from the rest.
Our master handloom weavers can weave one meter of cloth in three to five hours depending on the complexity of the pattern. This means on average, the cloth for a single shirt takes us eight hours to weave. The complexity of a cloth design comes from the size of the checks and stripes together with the number of yarn colors. – Prasan Shah, Founder of the Original Madras Trading Company
