A
cut above: first female master tailor opens shop on Savile Row
Kathryn
Sargent, who has dressed royalty, actors and politicians, opens
tailoring house in Mayfair, central London
Press Association
Wednesday 6 April
2016 15.36 BST
A tailor has made
history by becoming the first woman to open a tailoring house in
Savile Row.
Kathryn Sargent, who
has dressed royalty, actors, politicians and business leaders, opened
her premises in Mayfair, central London, on Wednesday.
The 41-year-old
master tailor, who is originally from Leeds, spent 15 years at Gieves
& Hawkes, rising through the ranks to head cutter before opening
her first store in Brook Street in 2012.
She said: “It
feels wonderful to be on Savile Row, and like a real sense of
achievement. It is just great to have your shop and your garments on
display for people to see.”
With a career
spanning 20 years in the west London district, Sargent said she was
delighted at the prospect of being an inspiration to other women.
“I am thrilled to
be making history, although for me being a woman is incidental, I am
a tailor first and foremost. There’s more and more women coming
through now and doing the training. Sixty-five percent of the
newly-qualified tailors last year were women. It is more diverse,”
she said.
“But Savile Row
has always been diverse. People from all over the world work in
Savile Row and clients are from all over the world as well. It is a
global destination for tailoring and it is the best in the world.”
Sargent said she
discovered her passion for the trade while studying at a fashion
college in Epsom, Surrey. She said the new store would showcase the
trade and her garments. “We will be cutting suits out in the window
and also we have done a display to explain the process of having a
suit made.
“I really wanted
to present all the elements of the craft so people can walk through
the story. It is a real visual display and I want people to come away
feeling energised by that and understanding a bit more about it.”
The store will open
for spring and summer as a seasonal residency and tailor for both
sexes. Bespoke two-piece suits made by Sargent cost from £4,200,
with made-to-measure suits from £1,500.
Savile
Row’s first female tailor, Kathryn Sargent, on smashing the
“windowpane check ceiling
Stephen Doig
10 APRIL 2016 •
10:10AM
“It’s taken a
lot of hard work to get here, you really have to earn your stripes on
this street. Or, should I say, pinstripes,” says Kathryn Sargent.
It’s an appropriate analogy; this week the 41-year-old from
Yorkshire made history as the first woman to open her own namesake
store on Savile Row. The fact that this is an area defined by a
patrician sense of heritage and tradition, where tailors’ shops
evoke the feel of a gentleman’s club, makes Sargent’s achievement
all the more remarkable.
Savile Row isn’t
famed for its acceptance of change. When tailor Tommy Nutter opened
his boutique in the 1960s he caused outcry by breaking with the
tradition of velvet curtains shielding the shop inside, and placing
mannequins wearing the clothes on display in the windows. When Ozwald
Boateng and Richard James came to Savile Row in the 1990s, their
defiant, apparently unseemly act of opening their stores on the
weekend caused many a colonel to choke on his kippers.
So how has the world
reacted to the first woman opening up shop on London’s most
traditional street? “Yes, it’s quite surreal," she admits.
“There’s an incredibly long history to Savile Row. But I have
been trained here and I’ve been part of this tailoring community my
whole working life. If I hadn’t had that background, opening a shop
with a woman’s name above the door might not have been as warmly
received as it has.”
It’s true that
women have always played an integral, if discreet, behind-the-scenes
role in Savile Row’s story; nipping, pinning, cutting and sculpting
the suits that have made this street the pinnacle of tailoring. “I
trained as an apprentice at Gieves & Hawkes for five years, and
had two amazing women who looked after me. One was a military tailor
who did all the lacing on military uniforms, the other was a finisher
who did all the lining and buttonholes, and they really ran the show.
They ruled the roost and showed me that there were strong women
within these teams, despite being outnumbered.”
Such formidable
presences helped give Sargent the confidence to shatter what she
terms the “windowpane check ceiling.”
“Have I felt like
a woman in a man’s world? Initially yes, but nowadays I realise
that I’m a woman in a diverse world,” she says diplomatically.
“Traditionally there’s been an expectation that if you went to
see your tailor, he’d be an older gentleman in a suit, but you soon
realise that what matters is being able to communicate with the
client and developing your expertise. Having said that, my father
wouldn’t ever let me measure him!”
The handsome,
panelled environs of her emporium at 22 Savile Row are a long way
from Leeds, where Sargent grew up, but it was another pioneering
Yorkshire woman who prompted her to attend fashion school at Epsom
college. “I always thought that Vivienne Westwood was wonderful, I
really wanted to follow in her footsteps,” she says.
Yet while Westwood’s
fashion identity is defined by a renegade sense of experimentalism,
for Sargent the draw was technique and tradition. “I was obsessed
with construction and would buy old Burberry suits in charity shops
just so I could take them apart and put them back together again, to
see how they were made,” she explains.
Years of training in
how to make the cut, so to speak, followed before Sargent started
picking up accolades for her work. In 2000 she won the esteemed
Golden Shears Award, a hallmark of excellence awarded to newcomers in
the industry. And two years ago she launched a bespoke tailoring
service in Mayfair, which proved so successful she felt the time was
right to launch into “the Row” with a standalone store.
“There really is
no quick fix in this line of work,” she says of an industry where
every stitch of the needle is measured, every cuff sleeve considered,
and apprentices can train for years before being deemed to have
reached a standard sufficient to be let loose on a customer’s
cloth. “There’s no one person on this street who knows
everything, you’re constantly learning.”
I cater to women who
have worked hard to get to where they are and need high performance
tailoring to help them look professional
Kathryn Sargent on
women now shopping on Savile Row
Sargent, herself
sharply attired in an impeccable black suit with crimson neck scarf,
believes part of her success is due to the fact that it’s no longer
just men who want to shop on Savile Row. “I work a great deal with
global business leaders and CEOs, and they are women as well as men.
I cater to women who have worked hard to get to where they are and
need high performance tailoring to help them look professional. My
clothes aren’t fashion pieces, they are there to do a job. A suit
can do a huge amount for a man or a woman.”
Top divorce
barrister Baroness Fiona Shackleton is know for buying her suits on
Savile Row but, of course, Sargent is far too discreet to name her
clients. Instead, she cites the Queen and the Prince of Wales as
prime examples of elegance and masters of the art of looking
appropriate, alongside Sean Connery’s Bond and Fred Astaire. “He’s
one of the most enigmatic suit wearers of all time,” she says of
the latter. “He showed how you can move in a suit, and of course he
had most of them made on the Row”.
For anyone else
seeking to join the esteemed ranks of gentlemanly outfitters on this
most revered street in men’s style, Sargent has only one piece of
advice: “Find out as much as you can, seek advice and be patient.
Don’t expect it to happen overnight.”
Watching her guide
clients through cloth swatches and sweep through the heavy curtains
to her fitting rooms, it’s clear that Sargent’s patience has most
certainly paid off.
SARGENT’S FIVE
SECRETS OF THE PERFECT SUIT
1. A suit has to sit
comfortably around the neck
"A good
tailored jacket should frame the face, if it doesn’t fit properly
there it won’t anywhere else."
2. Pay attention to
colour
"See what the
cloth does for your complexion. If you opt for a bold statement shade
or check, think about how it will fit in your wardrobe day to day."
3. Make sure you get
the right sleeve length
"Consider the
shirt you’re going to wear with it, whether a single or double
cuff, and allow for that in the length."
4. Avoid extreme
trends
"If you’re
having something made bespoke, it must have longevity."
5. Accessorise with
contemporary pieces
"The suit
itself should always err on the side of classic."
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