tailcoat

In our upcoming show, two of the costumes that I am building will be for footmen.
The footman will wear formal wear consisting of trousers, waistcoat and tailcoat. The designer had a photograph from the 1950's and I found what I think is the technical draft reference of the "Footman's Coatee" in the c.1917 "Climax" System for Cutting Gentlemen's garments by W.E. Leggat and T.W. Hodgkinson. I don't think the design of these coats changed much between 1920 and 1950, so it is a good place to start.
I like that they sign themselves "Faithfully Yours" in the endpapers.

I am going to use this text as a guideline. I am not going to try to reproduce the draft as written. I find these drafts very interesting and I have drafted them up in the past for the sake of trying them out and to see what the accepted style and shapes of the era were, but I have to do this under the time and budget pressure of work and so I will use my own method of drafting tailcoats and I will use the information in the original drafts to guide my eye.
I thought that this would also be an opportunity to document and share both the pattern making and the construction methods that we will use to make theses coats.
I am trying to get my scanner working so until then I will have to just photograph the book for you to see.
My apologies for the lack of quality photos!