Savile Row is back in style, so why are the streets so quiet?

Savile Row is back in fashion. Or, at least, the idea of ​​it. At the recent Alexander McQueen fall/winter 2023 co-ed show, creative director Sarah Burton described the customized collection almost going back to McQueen’s beginnings on Savile Row. He was referring to founder Lee McQueen’s teenage apprenticeship in the 1980s at Anderson & Sheppard and Gieves & Hawkes, where he learned cutting precision.

It was a mood that was echoed at Stella McCartney, a designer who also cut her teeth on Savile Row, in her opening look of a brown plaid three-piece suit, worn shirtless underneath. For the Balenciaga event, the invite is a complete pattern for a regular fit jacket. It was an attempt to reset a brand’s image that went from a logo of hoodies and trainers (and a controversial holiday gift-giving campaign) to the precise construction that was famous under its founder Cristbal Balenciaga.

But Savile Row itself can feel unloved. The old bank building that anchored the street was empty; the previous tenant, Abercrombie & Fitch, is moving in in 2021. 2 Savile Row is now occupied by art gallery Pilar Corrias; 5 Savile Row sat empty. If Savile Row is back in fashion, why isn’t anyone fighting over this address?

It is now 39 years since LVMH co-founder Bernard Arnault bought Christian Dior for one franc, kick-starting the era of the luxury conglomerate. Since then, no one has taken Savile Row tailoring with storytelling equal and turned them into a billion-dollar monolith of ready-to-wear, accessories, and fragrance.

Our idea of ​​Savile Row tailoring was founded over 220 years ago, when community magnate Beau Brummell asked his tailor to cut his jackets and trousers in clean lines. Her appearance contrasted with the fripperies of King George III’s court, setting a new fashion for sleek tailoring. This is where custom suits developed, which were popular until the 1970s.

Turn back 50 years, and if you want a suit, you have to have it made for you, said William Skinner, managing director of Dege & Skinner, a tailor founded in 1865 that now occupies 10 Savile Row. Skinner was the fifth generation of master tailors in his family. That changed with the advent of ready-to-wear. It was an existential threat Savile Row has faced ever since.

Over the years, some have tried to harmonize bespoke and ready-to-wear. In 2012, Savile Rows tailors were heralded as the anchor for London’s own men’s fashion week, organized by the British Fashion Council. That schedule no longer exists, and some of the tailors who did, such as Hardy Amies, have closed their doors. Gieves & Hawkes is seen as the flagship brand of the show, seeking to channel a bespoke lifestyle into ready-to-wear products. Last year, its then-owner, Trinity Group, went into administration. In November 2022, Gieves & Hawkes was purchased by the Frasers Group, owners of Sports Direct.

You can’t force-feed people, you have to draw them in

This stands in contrast to the global shift from formal to casual attire, exacerbated by the pandemic and work-from-home culture. It seems like the decline of Savile Rows is inevitable, a square peg in the fashion industry’s round hole.

This assumption is exacerbated by the megabrand status of the Paris couture house, equivalent to Savile Row tailors: Dior, Chanel, Balenciaga. Most of the terraced houses still standing branched out into ready-to-use buildings in the 1950s and 60s. Most now also design men’s clothing. They also expanded into higher margin categories early on. Coco Chanel launched her first perfume in 1921. Christian Dior debuted her first fragrance, Miss Dior, the same year she launched her New Look, and sold stockings and gloves from her first year in business.

Many Savile Row tailors are also diversifying into ready-to-wear and accessories, if it’s less profitable. But most remain firmly committed to delivering what their homes were founded to do: clothes made to measure.

You can’t force-feed people, says Campbell Carey, head cutter and creative director of Huntsman, which sits at 11 Savile Row. You have to attract them.

When I visited Carey in February, we spoke in the first-floor meeting room. Downstairs, new clients are fascinated in the ways of the house: telling stories of old customers, such as Gregory Peck, while being shown the various possible pieces of clothing. Meanwhile, in a workspace spanning more than three floors, a team of 11 cutters and 30 tailors is working at full speed. The company is at a disadvantage, with an operating profit of 3.4 million on sales of 18.5 million in 2021, according to Companies House filings. Revenue from her small ready-to-wear line, which Carey calls an accessible extension of her make-to-order ethos, has grown fivefold since 2019.

Huntsman acts like a tailor first, rather than pretending to be a fashion brand. You’re pleasing no one by falling into that trap, says Carey. Clients who have shopped with you for 20 years ask, What do you do? It’s not about this house. And the young men you should have gone with, Carey shook her head. It’s easy to get rid of.

Carey stated that much of his work corrected past tailoring mistakes, which did not focus on education. When I started in 1988, he says, it was me and a bunch of old folks in the cutting room near retirement. In the 80’s and 90’s the tailors of Savile Row got greedy with their resources, they didn’t think about future proofing their business. That means little attention to training the next generation.

I don’t want to be an old man hanging on to his domain of knowledge, he said, speaking proudly of the tailors he had trained as an apprentice. I want them to take control.

For new tailors, the wind is against them. The price of cloth rose through inflation, and also from import duties after Britain left the European Union. Rent on Savile Row is huge: in six-figure annual numbers. Tailors who set out on their own must make their mark elsewhere.

We live in a former country shop, says Ritchie Charlton, a fourth-generation seamstress, who trained on Savile Row but now lives in a village in Kent. Charlton most recently worked as a head tailor at Alexander McQueen, who owned a menswear store on Savile Row for most of the 2010s. There, he made custom suits for the likes of Eddie Redmayne and Bobby Gillespie.

Now established as a bespoke tailor in her own right, her client list remains classified. For supplies, he went to them. It suits me to work from here, he said.

Being a tailor in London as a one-man band is very difficult. Having our home as my tailoring studio-cum-shop, it keeps my overhead down, which also keeps down the cost of suits.

Charlton believes in getting every step right, including sewing the sleeves by hand. I know it makes very little difference if you look at one side with the machine shoulder, he says, but there’s something felt there. It has a real body and a kind of tension that you don’t get when put together by a machine.

Of course, fashion and sewing can have dialogue, if done respectfully. In January, British designer Grace Wales Bonner asked Charlton to cut the opening coat and closing jacket for her fall/winter 2023 show in Paris. I think what Wales Bonner is doing is really interesting, because the clothes have volume and grace, says Charlton. There’s nothing tense, it’s very fluid stuff.

Charlton himself had no desire to become a ready-to-wear designer. The focus is on bespoke clothing, and the clientele. I did it like I always do, he says, but obviously with a modern cut, and hopefully with a little flair.

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