Holiday insane

One of the first amazing, never-to-be-forgotten sensual experiences that I remember from my first ever visit to France was in a hotel room. No, no that's not the right was to start...

My recollection is of a room in a quite old hotel where the wallcovering was tapisserie, printed fabric which was mounted on a kind of squishy layer of wadding so that it had a bit of 'give' when you touched it. The same fabric was used for the curtains and the bedspread.

The generic name for the material is Toile de Jouy or Jouy Print, cotton or linen printed with designs of pastoral landscapes and figures for which the 18th-century factory of Jouy-en-Josas, near Versailles, was famous.

For me it has always remained so perfectly French.

Back in April while in Cannes for the Television Conference I passed a remnants store. On sale at a ridiculously low price was a single hemmed and eyeleted curtain which was left over from a set of two. (Don't ask me why the original customer only wanted one.)

Last week I took this piece of cloth to my super-talented Abu Dhabi tailor, Mr Awtar, from whom I collected the finished jacket pictured yesterday evening. It's the third time he has made a same-same copy of a cotton blazer by Gant (patch pockets, side pockets flapped, single vent, made not in New Haven but in Portugal). The other two were less of a challenge (Although the pink and orange linens were both blindingly bright) but this time there was the imperative of matching the pattern repeats, particularly across the centre back seam. Happy (if slightly insane) Sandlander.

If you find yourself walking behind an ambulatory piece of French hotel room wall, please say hello!