Wearing Trafalgar's conversational Limited Edition Braces is, without question, a most discreet and elegant manner of expressing one’s dash, style, and sense of humor. Many of these hand-loomed silk braces have already established themselves as collectible and wearable works of art. In fact, there have been numerous gentlemen willing to purchase braces from early sold-out editions for several times their original worth.

Some notable and celebrated individuals wore the originals, including Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Benjamin Disraeli, and Oscar Wilde. Recent limited editions of these braces are enjoyed by a diverse and worldly group of aficionados - from royalty to rockstars, Supreme Court justices, film directors, sports heroes, diplomats, novelists, and adventurers. Pick a pair that suits your fancy. Wear them with your casual, business, or evening attire and enjoy the wonderful new dimension they bring to your life. But beware! If not already a devotee, you may soon find yourself collecting these timeless braces.

The intricate designs seen in these pages a rewoven using only the finest denier silk yarns. Yarns that are so very delicate, they could not be used on today’s high speed looms. In the early 1970’s, Marley Hodgson, the founder of Traalgar, discovered eight disassembled 200 year-old wooden looms in an abandoned European carriage house. Originally built like fine pianos, Hodgson had each loom re-built and refurbished over a two-year period. Today, one of Europe’s finest weavers is producing these brace fabrics in limited editions, in part, because even the most skilled crafts men can only weave five yards of narrow silk fabric a day.

The artistic and sometimes whimsical designs of the Limited Edition braces come from a variety of sources. Many have been generously loaned for reproduction by collectors, some of whom were members of the original “International Society of Brace Collectors”. Over twenty-five are faithful reproductions of pre-WWII New York City haberdasher, Calvin Curtis - who designed eccentric, often humorous braces for influential men of the period. He created America Hurrah for Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the early 1940’s.