Shot Weaving: The Art of Two-Tone Cloth

For the recent Paris press tour of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, Tom Holland wore a shot mohair suit made for him at Anderson & Sheppard and styled by Crystalle Cox. The photographs of him at Le Grand Rex are worth a second look for the cloth alone: in some frames the suit reads a warm gold, in others a deep green. The effect is what a shot cloth is made to do, and it is worth explaining how.

PARIS, FRANCE – JULY 08: Tom Holland attends “The Odyssey” Paris Premiere on July 08, 2026 in Paris, France. (Photo by Marc Piasecki/WireImage)

Shot weaving is among the simplest constructions on the loom. A woven cloth has two sets of threads: the warp, which is set up on the loom and runs the length of the finished cloth, and the weft, which is carried across between the warp threads by the shuttle. In most cloths the warp and weft are the same colour, or close enough that the eye reads a single tone. In a shot cloth they are deliberately woven in different colours, each thread keeping its own colour within the weave rather than the two being blended into one.

The effect on the finished cloth is that its apparent colour depends on how the light falls on it and where the eye is placed. When the light catches the warp threads on the surface, the cloth reads more of one colour; when it catches the weft, the second comes forward; at intermediate angles the two are seen together and the eye reads a mixed shade. It is not a striped cloth or a checked one — both colours remain visible across the face of the cloth at every point in the weave — but the impression is of a piece of cloth that carries more than one colour at once.

Design 6039 is woven as a balanced plain weave, in which equal amounts of warp and weft remain visible on the surface. Because neither thread dominates, the eye blends the two colours into a third that shifts gently as the light changes. It is a subtle effect rather than an iridescent one, and one that rewards movement rather than demanding attention.

The principle can be applied to almost any yarn, but it is most striking in mohair. Mohair is the fibre spun from the Angora goat: its staple is longer and straighter than sheep’s wool, and its surface is smoother. Where wool fibres have a scaled, matt surface that diffuses light softly, mohair fibres reflect the light more directly, giving the cloth a fine natural lustre. In a shot cloth this lustre sharpens the two-colour effect: the shift from warp colour to weft colour is more distinct in a mohair blend than in a pure worsted of similar weight, because each fibre catches the light more cleanly.

Mohair has other qualities that suit it to a summer suit worn through a long day. Its natural resilience keeps a jacket’s shoulder line clean and trousers’ creases sharper than a pure wool would, and it wears cooler for its weight than a worsted of the same ounce. It also creases less readily — a useful thing in a shot cloth, since a rumpled surface interferes with the shift of colour. For good reason, two-ply mohair came to be regarded as one of the original travel cloths, retaining its shape remarkably well after long hours of wear.

Shot-woven mohair cloths had their moment in the late 1950s and the 1960s. Dormeuil’s Tonik, introduced in that period, was among the best-known of them, and it dressed a generation of sharp suits worn on Savile Row and beyond. In those years shot mohair became closely identified with a sharper style of suiting.

The cloth went quiet, as fashions do, in the 1970s, when tailoring softened. For a long stretch it remained a specialist choice, ordered for a particular summer suit rather than kept in continuous use. In recent years it has come back into wider view: a few Yorkshire mills have re-woven the old designs, and the practical qualities of the cloth have come to be appreciated again. The bunches from Standeven and one or two others now carry these cloths.

Standeven’s Cape Town bunch is a contemporary example of the weave — a contrasting warp and weft in a two-ply mohair blend, in the tradition of the mid-century shot cloths. Cape Town pairs Australian merino wool with South African kid mohair — the fibre from the first shearing of the Angora goat, and the finest and softest the animal produces. That natural lustre is one of the reasons the shot-weaving effect is so distinctive in these cloths. The particular length chosen for the Paris suit is reference 6039: 70 per cent RWS wool and 30 per cent two-ply RMS mohair, at 12 ounces, woven in England. Twelve ounces is a useful weight for a summer suit that has to travel and be worn for long hours: substantial enough to hold a clean line, but not so heavy as to be uncomfortable in warm weather.

The suit itself was cut single-breasted, three-button high, with flap pockets, a ticket pocket and side vents, and worn with flat-front trousers. It is a plain, unfussy cut in which the cloth is the most distinctive element; the pockets and lines do not compete with the shift of colour.

A shot cloth, worn quietly in a still room, reads as a well-cut suit in a colour that is not quite easy to name. It is only as the wearer moves, or the light shifts, that the second colour comes forward. That is the character of shot mohair — quiet, particular, and best seen in movement. It remains one of the more interesting cloths a tailor works with.