Tommy Nutter (17 April 1943 – 17 August 1992) was a British tailor, famous for
reinventing the Savile Row suit in the 1960s.
Born in
Barmouth, Meirionnydd to Christopher Nutter and Dorothy (formerly Banister), he
was raised in Edgware, Middlesex, where his father owned a cafe. After the
family moved to Kilburn, Nutter and his brother David attended Willesden
Technical College. Nutter initially studied plumbing,[1] and then architecture,
but he abandoned both aged 19 to study tailoring at the Tailor and Cutter
Academy.
In the
early 1960s, he joined traditional tailors Donaldson, Williamson & Ward.[3]
After seven years, in 1969, he joined up with Edward Sexton, to open Nutters of
Savile Row[4] at No 35a Savile Row. They were financially backed by Cilla Black
and her husband Bobby Willis, Managing Director of the Beatles' Apple Corps
Peter Brown, and lawyer James Vallance-White.
The
business was an immediate success, as Nutter combined traditional tailoring
skills with innovative design. He designed for the Hardy Amies range, and then
for the man himself. His clients included his investors, plus Sir Roy Strong,
Mick Jagger, Bianca Jagger and Elton John. Nutter was most proud that, for the
cover of the Beatles' album Abbey Road in 1969, he dressed three out of the
four: George Harrison chose to be photographed on the road-crossing in denim.
In the
1970s his bespoke business became less successful, but he branched out into
ready to wear clothing, marketed through Austin Reed. He also successfully expanded
into East Asia, establishing the Savile Row brand in Japan.[6] In 1976 Sexton
bought Nutter out of the business.Nutter went to work for Kilgour French and
Stanbury, managing his own workroom. Sexton continued to run Nutters of Savile
Row until 1983, when Nutter returned to the row with a ready to wear shop:
"Tommy Nutter, Savile Row". This new venture, which traded at No 19
Savile Row until Nutter's death, was backed by J&J Crombie Limited, who
continue to own the "Tommy Nutter" trademark. At this time, Sexton
set up a business in his own name.
In the
1980s, he described his suits as a "cross between the big-shouldered Miami
Vice look and the authentic Savile Row. He created the clothing of the Joker as
seen in the 1989 film Batman.
Nutter died
in 1992 at the Cromwell Hospital in London of complications from AIDS. In 2018,
House of Nutter: The Rebel Tailor of Savile Row, a biography of Nutter, with
reminiscences by his brother David, a New York celebrity photographer, was
published; it was written by Lance Richardson
NEWS,
PROFILES31ST JULY 2018
Tommy Nutter: Rebel With A Cause
Tommy
Nutter, the tailor who ripped up the rules of Savile Row, is remembered in a
new biography. Tom Corby reports
https://savilerow-style.com/news/tommy-nutter-rebel-cause/
Just over a
quarter of a century after his untimely death from Aids, the avant-garde Tommy
Nutter, like so many creatives of his generation, is still regarded as a
legend, remembered as the tailor who single-handedly reconciled the traditions of Savile Row
with the male peacock revolution of
1960s swinging London. His contribution to some of the most iconic styles and
pop imagery of the 20th century has become part of the history of his trade as
he wore down the division between tailoring and fashion. Friends say that a statue
ought to be put up of him, like that of Beau Brummel, the archetypal dandy who,
in the 18th century, set the bespoke style for generations.
Tommy spent
his formative years in Edgware, north London, where his father owned a café,
catering, in the main, to customers like truck drivers, gas fitters and
builders. He was destined to be a plumber but, over the years, emerged as a
blue collar boy made good in the class
crucible of the 60s; a time when the alchemy of taste, cool, and sheer force of
personality could transform lives in ways that would have seemed impossible in
years gone by. Tommy, a 6ft 2 inches tall young man with matinee idol looks,
arrived right on cue. It all started when, aged 19, he broke free from plumbing
to study tailoring at the Tailor and Cutter Academy. He then landed an
apprenticeship with Donaldson, Williamson and Ward, traditional Savile Row
tailors, with premises in Burlington Arcade. There, he absorbed the lore and
the rules of the English gentlemen’s classic wardrobe. His seven years with the
firm gave him a thorough knowledge of his craft, and a lifelong respect for its
hierarchy.
In 1969,
Tommy founded his own business, joining up with Edward Sexton, a young cutter
with brilliant technical skills. They were financially backed by Tommy’s close
friend, the singer Cilla Black, her husband Bobby Willis and others prepared to
take a risk. The venture was an immediate success although a writer in the
Daily Mirror snarked: “Thomas Nutter is opening what he calls a ‘thoroughly
square’ tailoring shop … in Savile Row next week. Well that will make a change.
I mean there can’t be more than a dozen there now. Mr Nutter, who is 26, is
weary of ‘all those Carnaby Street gimmicks’, and thinks that clothes, like
hair, are settling down to something more sober … What, then, of rumours that
Ringo Starr has ordered a pair of scarlet PVC trousers from Nutters?” Tommy
replied curtly: “They’ll be very square scarlet PVC trousers.”
Savile Row,
with its collection of Royal Warrants, had never seen anything like it when
Nutters opened at No. 35a, the story of which has been brought back to life by
Lance Richardson in his biography House of Nutter – The Rebel Tailor of Savile
Row. A year on, the Daily Mail was declaring it “a whizz bang success – the place for men’s clothes”, putting the
charismatic Tommy in the class of actor Terence Stamp, photographer Brian
Duffy, and hair dresser Vidal Sassoon, all the stylish young Londoners who had
shot themselves into the new aristocracy. Clients came in from the hipper
haunts of those named in Debrett’s, from the media, pop stars and even aspiring
teenage dandies from the East End, whose ambition was to own a Nutter suit,
drawn to Tommy not only because of his matchless sense of style, but also
because of his personality. He welcomed them all.
Like Hardy
Amies, a Savile Row dandy who dressed The Queen, Tommy produced lively,
contemporary tailoring, but with roots deeply embedded in the craftsmanship of
Savile Row. Amies named Tommy as “the most exciting tailor on Savile Row in
decades.” For three decades, Tommy kitted out the biggest stars on both sides
of the Atlantic. He was proud of the fact that, for the cover of the
Beatles’ Abbey Road album, three of them
wore Tommy Nutter bespoke. George Harrison chose
denim.
Other leading dandies of the period were also his clients, including Sir Roy
Strong, then director of the National Portrait Gallery, Mick Jagger and Elton
John. Andrew Lloyd Webber was also a client as well as a friend. He has
recalled: “There was a wonderful maroon coat I wore for Ascot – he was always
such fun, very much part of my early life when Jesus Christ Superstar was going
on – Tommy made clothes for Tim Rice too – we were all great mates.”
Mick Jagger
sported an eau-de-nil three-piece for his wedding to Bianca Perez-Mora Macias
in 1971. He was in another Nutter creation days later on his honeymoon in
Venice, fitted so snugly that it left no doubt as to which side he dressed.
Celebrity nuptials became something of a thing for Tommy. John Lennon wore
cream corduroy for his wedding to Yoko Ono on Gibraltar. For Elton John’s
marriage in 1984 Tommy made 20 suits, “two of each, in case of mishap”, as he
later recalled, “in a wide range of primary colours, including orange and very
bright yellow. With each outfit went the appropriate straw boater.”
John Reid,
Elton John’s manager, has said: “It was quite an event going to Nutters. You’d
write the whole day off. Maybe you’d have lunch and a couple of bottles of
champagne.” Tommy has said that when things became “edgy” with Elton he would
send out for a bottle of sherry “to smooth things along”. For Elton’s 36th
birthday, Tommy made a suit overlaid with 1,009,444 bugle beads, each one
painstakingly attached by hand. Tommy also applied his craft to dressing female
icons of swinging London, like the red velvet suit for Twiggy which became a
celebrated and much copied look when she was photographed wearing it in the
early 70s.
People were
attracted to Tommy not only because of his ineffable sense of style, but
because of his ironic personality. He was a humorist with a wide and
interesting circle of friends who were attracted by his enthusiasm, his gentle self-mocking personality and his
acerbic comments on the vagaries of others, always ending with the expression,
“But who am I to talk?” He was a witty correspondent and his letters to his
friends are treasured. In addition, he delighted in writing to the serious
newspapers on topics as far ranging as the correct buttoning of the suit on a
statue of John F Kennedy, to the scarcity of deckchairs in London’s Green Park.
Tommy died
of Aids in August 1992, aged 49. “The saddest thing of all,” he once wrote, “is
an in-between look.” No-one could ever have accused him of that. At his
memorial service in St George’s, Hanover Square, just up the road from Savile
Row, Cilla Black read an abridged excerpt from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales,
relating the story of “A true, a perfect gentle Knight … In dying in his
excellence and flower, when he is certain of his high good name; for then he
gives to friend, and self, no shame.”
The final
words should go to Nutters loyalist Elton John who said: “Tommy completely
glamorised Savile Row and made it accessible.” There’s no arguing with that…
Tommy Nutter, Savile Row Tailor, 49
Aug. 18,
1992
Tommy
Nutter, Savile Row Tailor, 49
Credit...The
New York Times Archives
August 18,
1992, Section D, Page 19
Tommy
Nutter, a Savile Row tailor who described his clothes as a "cross between
the big-shouldered 'Miami Vice' look and the authentic Savile Row," died
yesterday in the Cromwell Hospital in London. He was 49 years old.
He died
from complications from AIDS, said Peter Brown, a friend who lives in New York.
Mr. Nutter,
who was born in Wales, became an apprentice with Donaldson, Williamson &
Ward, traditional London tailors, in the early 1960's. After he started his own
busines on Savile Row in 1968, Mr. Nutter's clients included the Beatles, Mick
Jagger, Elton John, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Sir Hardie Amies, the fashion
designer who makes clothes for the Royal family.
Mr. Nutter
is survived by his mother, Dolly, of London and a brother, David, of New York.
Obituary: Tommy Nutter
MEREDITH
ETHERINGTON-SMITH
The
Independent
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-tommy-nutter-1541027.html
Tuesday, 18
August 1992
Thomas
Albert Nutter, tailor, born Barmouth Merioneth 17 April 1943, died London 17
August 1992.
TOMMY
NUTTER, the avant-garde Savile Row tailor, came to prominence in the late
Sixties as a man who singlehandedly reconciled the traditions of Savile Row, laid
down in the late 19th century, with the male peacock revolution of the Sixties
and the often extravagant demands of his clients, the leading dandies of
swinging London.
Born in
Wales in 1943, Nutter spent his formative years in Edgware, north London, where
his father was proprietor of a cafe catering to a clientele composed of
truckdrivers, gas-fitters and builders. The family moved to Kilburn and Tommy
and his brother David had a normal suburban childhood, punctuated by highly
enjoyable holidays at Butlin's holiday camps. He attended the Willesden
Technical College where, according to his brother, he studied plumbing.
In the
early Sixties, Nutter obtained a position with Donaldson, Williams & Ward,
traditional Savile Row tailors with premises in the Burlington Arcade. Here,
starting as an apprentice, he absorbed the lore and the rules of the English
gentleman's classical wardrobe. His seven years with the firm gave him a
thoroughgoing knowledge of his craft, and a lifelong respect for its rules.
In 1968,
Nutter left Donaldson Williams & Ward to found his own business, first at
35a Savile Row, later in its present handsome double-fronted premises at No 19.
He was backed by clients including Cilla Black and her husband Bobby Willis,
Peter Brown, then Managing Director of the Beatles' Apple Corps, also situated
in Savile Row, and by the lawyer James Vallance-White.
The
business was an immediate success for, like Sir Hardy Amies, a Savile Row dandy
of a previous generation, Tommy Nutter produced lively, contemporary tailoring
whose roots were deeply embedded in the craftsmanship and knowledge of Savile
Row. Indeed, he made suits for Amies as well as for newer residents of Savile
Row, and in particular the Beatles. He was proudest of the fact that, for the cover
of the Beatles' album Abbey Road (1969), he dressed three out of the four
(George Harrison elected to be photographed on the road-crossing in denims).
Other leading dandies of the period were also his clients, including Sir Roy
Strong (then Director of the National Portrait Gallery), Mick Jagger and Elton
John.
Nutter also
applied his craft to dressing female icons of swinging London society at the
time, including Cilla Black, a close friend, and Bianca Jagger, who was much
photographed at the time in a white dinner jacket with white satin facings.
Nutter also made a red velvet suit for Twiggy which became a celebrated and
much-copied look when she was photographed wearing it in the early Seventies.
In 1971 he
was elected to the Best-Dressed List in the United States, along with the Earl
of Snowdon and Hardy Amies. At the time, American Menswear magazine said of
Nutter that he was 'tradition spiced with daring'.
'He never
got things wrong about clothes,' said the restaurateur and bookshop-owner
Stuart Grimshaw, who was a client of Tommy Nutter's from the late Sixties. 'He
really knew what he was talking about. One would go in and say, 'What do I wear
to go on safari in Kenya?' and Tommy would make one an absolutely correct
safari suit, a proper one with all the pockets in exactly the right place.
'This
knowledge extended to such minutiae as the correct wearing of half or full
brogues or co-respondent shoes. He was an encyclopaedia of correct, classical
male style.'
Clients
from the hipper purlieus of the aristocracy, from the media, pop stars, and
even aspiring teenage dandies from the East End whose ambition, in the early
Seventies, was to own a Nutter suit, were drawn to Tommy Nutter not only
because of his ineffable sense of style, but also because of his peculiarly
ironic personality.
Andrew
Lloyd Webber was a client and friend. 'He made me a lot of things when one was
younger and trendier,' Lloyd Webber said. 'There was a wonderful maroon coat I
remember I wore for Ascot - he was always such fun, very much part of my early
life when Jesus Christ Superstar was going on - he made clothes for Tim Rice
too - we were all great mates'.
Nutter was
a gentle humorist who had a wide and interesting circle of friends attracted by
his enthusiasm, by his gentle, self-mocking personality and his acerbic
comments on the vagaries of others, always ending with the expression 'But who
am I to talk?' He was a prodigious and witty correspondent and his letters to
his many friends are treasured. In addition, he delighted in writing to the
serious newspapers on topics as far-ranging as the correct buttoning of the
suit on a statue of John F. Kennedy, to the scarcity of deckchairs in Green
Park. He was always very ready to spring to the defence if his beloved Savile
Row came under attack, as it so frequently did in the anarchic Sixties.
Nutter was
also a firm believer in the supremacy of the English suit and of English cloth;
during the Seventies and early Eighties he took part in huge international
fashion shows put on by Reid & Taylor, the Scottish firm of woollen and
worsted manufacturers.
With his
untimely death, from complications arising from Aids, London society loses a
witty and elegant dandy, whose hand-rolled lapels and insouciant manner masked
a serious and continuing purpose; to make sure that the craft and traditions of
Savile Row tailoring were preserved for, and valued by, his generation.
No comments:
Post a Comment