A moth hole in the front of a favourite coat can look like the end of the garment. It rarely is. Fine reweaving – what we call invisible mending – has been used by tailors for longer than most people realise, and a well-executed repair is genuinely difficult to find again once it is finished.

The technique works by borrowing thread from the garment itself, usually from an internal seam allowance or hem, where a few missing threads will never be seen. Those threads are worked back across the hole one at a time, rebuilding the weave in the original pattern rather than patching over it. It is slow, close work, done under magnification, and a small hole in a fine wool or cashmere can take a skilled repairer the better part of an hour.

Not every fabric takes it equally well. Tightly woven wools, flannels and worsted suitings are the most forgiving, since their weave pattern is regular and easy to rebuild. Loosely woven or heavily textured fabrics, and anything with a printed or engineered pattern, are harder – sometimes impossible – to reweave invisibly, and a different repair approach is usually more honest than promising a result the fabric cannot give.

Size matters more than most people expect. A hole the size of a pinhead is a routine job. Anything larger than about a centimetre across starts to test the technique, and very large areas of damage are usually better rebuilt with a matched inset than rewoven thread by thread.

Our alterations team assess every repair before quoting, and will say plainly when reweaving is the right call and when it is not. A coat is worth mending well, or not mended that way at all.