Hello Everyone!

My name is Fran Rebecca Walker, and you’ll see me around Dents social media keeping you up to date on our latest news and offers, so you will hopefully see many more blog posts from me! I wanted to let you all know that if we get up to 500 likes on our FB page, Dents will give 20% off all non-glove items from their website through an exclusive online discount code that will be posted on our Dents FB wall once we reach this target. It would be great to give you all this discount BEFORE Christmas time! For instance, who wouldn’t want a Dents bag or wallet for Christmas? So ask all your FB friends to like the Dents FB page and get involved! My personal faves, which are now scribbled down on my Christmas wish list are the Leather Crocodile Print bag in Cognac, £165.

and the Dents Large Leather Handbag in Teal £145

For my fiancé I really like the Men’s Faux Sheepskin Trapper Hat £26 . It will keep his ears nice and warm when he walks our dog during the Jan – March months that’s for sure!

And I’m going to have to buy my dad the Reversible Leather Belt also £26 in Navy and Tan or you can get it in Black and Brown as well! He needs a good belt like this for his golfing tournaments.

I only hope I can have the DENTS 20% discount before Xmas, so I can treat myself (and my family and friends)!

x Fran

wool lined two – tone peccary glove

by John Roberts

Dents is one of only a few glove manufacturers who are still able to create gloves using real peccary leather (a peccary is a mammal from South America that resembles a pig). The reason is that only a master cutter with unique skills and much experience can cut this wonderful leather. It also requires a hand machinist with dexterity and many years experience to sew it. Possibly, this is why peccary leather gloves are increasingly found in fewer and fewer of the world’s finest stores.

Peccary leather is unique in its strength and character. In time the leather will assume a golden bloom, and acquire its own distinctly unique colour.

Beware, there are many imitation peccaries around, but the soft, almost buttery feel of the real thing is impossible to duplicate!

Handsewn cashmere lined gloves in hairsheep leather

By John Roberts

1. Our leather buyer has almost 50 years experience in selecting only the softest and finest quality leathers for Dents hand made gloves.

2.  For over 230 years Dents has been designing and manufacturing leather gloves in England, for the world’s finest shops and department stores. The first pair was cut by Master Cutter, John Dent,  in the year 1777, in the city of Worcester. For the past 50 years, Dents gloves have been crafted in the old market town of Warminster, in the quintessential English county of Wiltshire.

3. Today, as in the past, Dents gloves are made using traditional methods handed down over the centuries. Little has changed from 1777 in the way we make gloves, apart from the introduction of electricity.

4.  Each pair is still bench cut, one at a time, relying on the skill and experience of the master cutter to shape the well fitting glove.

5.  Dents gloves are made with a completely separate glove lining to the outer leather shell, and the lining is then fitted into the glove, ensuring a much better fitting glove – this method of manufacture is called “glove in glove”, and is an added cost, but an essential part of the traditional glove maker’s craft.

6. There are 42  components to cut, assemble and sew together, to create one pair of Dents gloves.

7. In the manufacture of one pair of gloves, there are 32 separate operations to be performed by highly skilled craft people.

8. It takes time to make fine leather gloves – approximately 7 hours to cut and sew just one pair.

9. It takes up to six years to fully train a glove cutter, and four years to fully train a skilled glove sewer.

10. Today, when we use machinery, we use the same type of Singer sewing machines we have been using for over a hundred years, except that now they are driven by electricity, rather than by a foot pedal. The machines we use are no longer manufactured, and the skill of our mechanics is constantly tested in repairing and lengthening their useful life.

These gloves are made right here in our factory in Warminster, England, but what makes them so special?

• They’re individually hand cut and hand sewn, one pair at a time, as one would a bespoke Savile Row suit. It takes a minimum of three feet of leather to make one pair of gloves.
• There are at least 48 different components in one pair of gloves. It takes a quick eye, dexterity and much skill to sew this many small pieces of leather together. There are 32 different manufacturing operations involved, and the whole process takes between four to eight hours depending on the design and leather chosen.
• In our most expensive gloves, you will find “quirks”, small diamond shaped pieces of leather sewn into the base of the fingers to give an unrivalled feeling of comfort, and new meaning to the phrase “they fit like a glove”.
• They are bench cut, which means they are hand cut by a Master Glove Cutter, from a glove pattern, one pair at a time. Because they are made this way, using traditional skills, no two pairs of gloves can be exactly the same. The final shape and fit depends on many things, above all the experience, skill and hand stretching of the leather by the Cutter. The skilled stretching of the leather around the pattern ensures a good fitting glove.
• We make each glove lining as a separate glove to the outer leather glove shell. The result is a much better fitting glove. This is a more expensive way of manufacturing, but the difference is clear when you wear the gloves.

When one is so involved in the fashion business, it is sometimes easy to forget the wonderful heritage that has led us to the modern styles of today. This week BBC2 did an excellent feature programme on Dents which underlined the company’s extraordinary heritage as well as its current leadership in global trends.

The programme was shown as part of the BBC’s antique Flog It series, which regularly gets an audience of two million viewers each weekday. Presenter Paul Martin was clearly impressed when he learned that there were 32 different stages in making a Dents glove. The BBC camera crew was kept busy in the Dents main factory in Warminster where Dents’ Creative Director Deborah Mooreexplained a little about the different leathers used in gloving and showed samples of leathers, including the soft and stretchy leather from hairsheep and also the rarer peccary leather – a pair of gloves made from peccary leather can cost well over £200. The film included close-ups of the intricate handsewing that goes into some of Dents beautiful leather gloves and also covered the ironing and finishing processes.

It is a lovely film and is still available for viewing here.

The film crew didn’t go into the Dents museum – just as well really; with some of the wonderful old items there including gloves worn by Lord Nelson and even Elizabeth 1st, it might have been tempting to try and include those in the Flog It auctions!

Dents have been making leather gloves since 1777, and in that time we’ve learned a thing or two about making them fit.

Our peccary gloves are made by hand in our Warminster factory here in England. Each one is individually hand cut and hand stitched. Due to the special nature of the leather we only make two pairs a day, and making just one pair involves 32 different operations, taking a total of around 6 hours. These particular gloves are normally lined with Scottish cashmere which has been specially knitted for us. In fact, they are made as two separate gloves: a lining, and an outer glove. We then fit the lining into the outer glove to create an exceptional fit.

Many styles of Dents gloves contain components and examples of the glovemaker’s craft not often found today – for example quirks, which are small diamond shaped pieces of leather sewn at the base of the fingers, where they are attached to the hand of the glove to improve the fit, or hand felling which involves stitching the hem of glove to the lining as well as the back of glove, helping the glove keep its shape.

Dennis, our head leather cutter, has his own explanation for the fit. “It’s because of the ‘hidden fit’ – the amount of “stretch” the cutter puts into the leather before cutting. It allows the glove leather to stretch on your hand, but then due to this pre-stretching it retracts again keeping its shape and fit. It’s a skill that comes from years of experience. “

Whatever the reason for the fit, it’s part of a commitment to quality which runs through the whole of our Collection…