Saturday 30 September 2023
The female tailors of Savile Row
DISCOVER
EXTRAORDINARY
Cutting it: the female tailors shaking up Savile
Row
By Chloe
Street
28 February
2022
The world
of bespoke suit and shirt-making has traditionally been a man’s world, says
Chloe Street. But change is afoot, and these brilliant women are tearing up the
rulebook at the seams
Say the
words ‘bespoke suit fitting’ and the image conjured will likely be one of two
men: the male client, trying on his made-to-measure tailoring, and the other a
male tailor, pins and tape measure in hand.
But times
are a-changing, and not only are more and more women embracing the delights of
bespoke suiting, but there are increasing numbers of talented women joining the
industry, many of whom are specifically focused on catering for them.
“Women have
been present in the back rooms of the tailoring profession as finishers and
assistant tailors for centuries,” says Kathryn Sargent, who runs an eponymous
tailoring house on Brook Street near Savile Row. It’s “tradition, class systems
and protocol” she says that have kept them from the front of house.
Daisy
Knatchbull, founder of female-only tailoring specialists The Deck, thinks part
of the problem has been a lack of obvious routes and role models for women
wanting to enter the industry, “as well as unfortunate prejudices, sometimes
not always conscious.”
However,
not only are the barriers to entry being dismantled by a few pioneering women
leading the way, but the increasing appetite from female clients means there’s
increasing appetite for female tailors, as many women would rather be measured
and fitted by another woman. “I think bespoke tailoring has become more accessible,
more open to people, the myths have been debunked and people feel like
exploring, expressing and investing in themselves,” says Sargent.
Not only
does a bespoke suit have obvious appeal in terms of fit, but as we all become
more eco-conscious, they’re growing in popularity as a sustainable, timeless
investment that can be passed down for generations. “We’re seeing consumer
tastes move away from the ‘more is more’ 90’s lifestyle to more considered,
thought-through purchases,” says Phoebe Gormley, of Gormley & Gamble
tailors. And Knatchbull agrees that people are “consolidating their wardrobes
and looking to invest in longevity, versatility and durability. We have seen a
huge increase in sales post-lockdown as the more conscious consumer is choosing
to purchase high quality investment pieces such as a suit from The Deck.”
Feeling
tempted? These are the female tailoring maestros to know…
Daisy
Knatchbull, of The Deck
.jpg)
The Deck
Launched:
2019
The story:
Knatchbull worked on Savile Row in her twenties, where she was “lucky enough to
experience the empowering nature of a tailored suit young - something many
women have never had the chance to experience in their life,” she says. Then,
in 2016, she became the first woman to wear top hat and tails at Royal Ascot.
The positive reactions she received inspired her to set up her business, with a
mission to bring the magic of bespoke tailoring to more women. She is the first
women-only tailor to have a shop address actually on the street Savile Row.
The
service: She caters for a purely female client base, from ages 18 to 80, which
is fairly unique on Savile Row. “We wanted to give women the chance to be
focused on exclusively within tailoring and challenge the conception that being
fitted for a suit is an
intimidating process by offering an empathetic women-for-women service;
understanding their needs and emotional relationship with clothing,” she
explains. “There are very few places making for women compared to men, and
almost none for women only.”
The Deck
offer four signature suit styles – the ‘suits of The Deck’ – which between them
aim to offer something for every woman, regardless of shape or size. Each
design is made to a client’s measurements as well as their cloth, lining and
button preferences. They also offer waistcoats, skirts and dresses too with
more categories in the pipeline.
“The
process begins with us learning everything we can about the client - what she
does, where she goes, what she likes - and together we ensure we are creating something
that will last a lifetime in her wardrobe,” says Knatchbull. “Each suit tells a
unique story, written by each of the women that wear one.”
Why she
loves it: “For me the best part of my job is the moment a client tries on their
finished suit, particularly a woman who has struggled their whole life to find
trousers or a jacket that has ever fitted them because of their size, height or
shape,” says Knatchbull. “I’ve had many women burst into tears, and women who
cannot stop staring at themselves. It’s the most rewarding feeling. So I guess
proud of making women feel more confident, strong and empowered in themselves.
That’s what gets me out of bed each day!”
Kathryn
Sargent, of Kathryn Sargent
.jpg)
Kathryn
Sargent
Launched:
2012
The story:
Sargent started at Gieves & Hawkes in the mid 90s and rose to the position
of head cutter (the most senior role), becoming the first woman in the history
of Savile Row to do so. “I always dreamed of my own atelier so that was the
next logical move,” says Sargent, who became the first, and only, female Master
Tailor in the Savile Row area when she opened her year-long seasonal store on
Brook Street in 2016.
The
service: Sargent, who’s been in the business 25 years, has trained in all
aspects of tailoring and pattern cutting from the ground up in a traditional
bespoke tailoring house, which gives her an unparalleled know-how. “I think my
feminine qualities and being a very chatty person from Leeds has helped relax
clients,” she says. “By getting to know them I can really make something that
suits their lifestyle and body shape, making them them.”
Her clients
are 50-50 male to female and number everyone from professionals to brides and
grooms to be, NASA scientists, opera singers and famous athletes. She purposely
doesn’t have a house style, but instead focuses on pieces that suit the client.
“The beauty of bespoke tailoring is that it gives the wearer freedom to develop
their own signature look that is completely unique to them,” she explains. “A
beautifully tailored jacket frames your face in how the collar, shoulder line,
shape of the lapel all relate to each other.
The cut should be in the correct proportions and flattering so the
result appears effortless.”
Why she
loves it: “I fell in love with Savile Row and Mayfair the first time I walked
around, the sense of London history, it is the number one global destination
for the craft of true bespoke tailoring,” she says. “Now it’s my world, I have
many many friends throughout the area, it’s a little village, a community.” For
Sargent, the best part is “to be able to create every day, meet amazing clients
and, build the relationships I’ve built with clients, work with my amazing
team. I never know what the next
commission will be!”
Phoebe
Gormley, of Gormley & Gamble
Phoebe Gormley
Launched:
2014
The story:
Phoebe Gormley started making clothes when she was 14, and ended up falling in
love with cutting up her father’s old suits. She soon discovered Saville Row
where she did several internships before heading to university. “With one hour
of lectures per week I became bored enough to start writing a business plan,”
she says, “and on seeing the viability of one women’s wear only tailors in a
city with thousands of menswear tailors; I decided to take the gamble.” Gormley
invested the money that was meant for her final year’s tuition fees (hence the
gamble in the name) and opened G&G when she was 20, seven years ago.
“I stood
out like a sore thumb as a woman and someone under 25,” she remembers. “The
naivety of youth meant I didn’t know quite how much I would stick out until it
was too late to turn back! So, I powered on.” Within a year she’d taken on a
space just off Savile Row on Maddox Street, becoming the first women’s wear
only tailors in the area in its 200-year history.
The
service: Gormley caters to an entirely female client base and the majority of
what they request can be split into three parts. The first is classic workwear:
the second is occasion wear – “I adore making suit and separates for brides and
guests,” says Gormley, “whether that’s a cream silk tuxedo to wear to the
registry office or a perfect jacket to go over the already-found dress, there
is so much passion and excitement in occasion wear, it’s always fun,” – and the
final category is beautifully tailored pieces that aren’t suits.
“Womenswear
is often confined within the measly scope of sizes XS, S, M, L, XL, whereas
men’s has short, regular, long, classic fit, slim fit and extra slim, all of a
size 36,” she says. “So we make lots of silk shirts, cashmere blazers, the
perfect winter coat, for people who care about clothes that fit properly. I
also love working with silk and mixtures of patterns, textures and materials,
everything from Loro Piana wool/cashmeres to Liberty print silks, it’s all
possible in womenswear,” says Gormley, who dresses everyone from princesses to
schoolgirls, CEOs, brides and bright-eyed graduates.
Why she
loves it: For Gormley, its all about empowering women. “When a woman says
‘nothing fits me’ she blames her body. When a man says ‘nothing fits me’ he
thinks, ‘so I’ll have it made’. Your body isn’t wrong, it’s not too curvy, too
straight, too long or too short, your shoulders aren’t too big, your boobs
aren’t too big. Off-the-peg sizing is a joke, and you are a goddess,” she says.
I adore giving women a place to resolve this total failure of off-the-peg
sizing, partnering it with immaculate customer service, and hundreds of years
old heritage craftsmanship and British manufacturing, and making heirloom
pieces that last a lifetime, not just a season. It’s a total joy to do my job.”
Emma Willis
MBE, of Emma Willis
Emma Willis
Launched:
1999
The story:
Having worked for other menswear brands, Willis launched her own label in 1989,
focusing on bespoke shirts made in England from the finest materials. Initially
she sold her bespoke shirts in City offices before putting down roots on Jermyn
Street in St James in 1999.
All her
shirts are designed, cut, stitched and finished at Bearland House in the centre
of Gloucester – “British bespoke shirt making is rare as is having one’s own
manufacturing employing and training locally,” says Willis, who also
established a charity Style for Soldiers in 2008, which provides smart clothing
to injured service personnel.
The
service: Willis, who employs an all-female team of cutters, makes beautiful
bespoke shirts using the very best Swiss and Italian fabrics in quiet, elegant
designs and colours. Her clients are mainly men, and span everyone from film
producers to hedge fund managers, farmers and property dealers, but she has many
female customers too and a ready-to -wear collection on Net a Porter.
Why she
loves it: “Our shop is very social with our customers often meeting and
befriending one another,” she says. “I get visitors from all over the world and
post pandemic this has been even more enjoyable with the sense of relief to be
able to see each other again and meet new people.”
For Willis
though, the best part is the people she meets in her shop. “I never know who it
may be next and all those amazing contacts have enabled me to do with my
charity and other initiatives.”
Thursday 28 September 2023
BIOGRAPHY OF MICHAEL GAMBON / The Olivier award-winning actor, whose major film roles included Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series, has died
Michael Gambon, star of Harry Potter and The
Singing Detective, dies aged 82
The Olivier award-winning actor, whose major film
roles included Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series, has died
Chris
Wiegand
Thu 28 Sep
2023 12.39 BST
Sir Michael
Gambon, whose extraordinary acting career took him from Laurence Olivier’s
nascent National Theatre to screen roles in The Singing Detective and the Harry
Potter films, has died at the age of 82.
A statement
on behalf of his wife, Lady Gambon, and son, Fergus, issued by publicist Clair
Dobbs, said: “We are devastated to announce the loss of Sir Michael Gambon.
Beloved husband and father, Michael died peacefully in hospital with his wife
Anne and son Fergus at his bedside, following a bout of pneumonia. Michael was
82. We ask that you respect our privacy at this painful time and thank you for
your messages of support and love.”
Memorably
called “The Great Gambon” by Ralph Richardson, and admired by generations of
fellow actors, he excelled in plays by Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett and Alan
Ayckbourn. “I owe an enormous amount to Michael,” said Ayckbourn on Thursday.
“He was a remarkable stage performer. It was a privilege to watch him at work
on my stuff. You couldn’t really term it acting – more an act of spontaneous
combustion.”
It was
Ayckbourn who directed him in 1987 in Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge,
which won Gambon an Olivier award for his performance as the conflicted
Brooklyn longshoreman Eddie Carbone. Gambon also starred in Ayckbourn’s
ambitious trilogy The Norman Conquests. Other key roles included the eponymous
scientist in Brecht’s The Life of Galileo at the National Theatre in 1980, and
as the restaurateur returning to visit a former lover in David Hare’s Skylight,
which earned him a Tony award nomination on Broadway in the mid-90s.
Gambon’s
Harry Potter co-star Fiona Shaw told BBC Radio 4 that he was “a brilliant,
magnificent trickster” who “varied his career remarkably and never judged what
he was doing, he just played”. Dame Eileen Atkins told the BBC that “he just
had to walk on stage and he commanded the whole audience immediately”.
Among those
paying tribute on social media was Jason Isaacs, who said: “I learned what
acting could be from Michael in The Singing Detective – complex, vulnerable and
utterly human.” David Baddiel said that the first time he had seen “any Theatre
with a capital T” was Life of Galileo at the National and that Gambon’s 1980
performance remains “the best stage acting I’ve ever seen”. The actor Peter
Egan described Gambon as “one of the funniest men on the planet and a great
actor”.
After
Gambon enjoyed an arthouse film success with Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the
Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989), he proceeded to take roles in major
movies such as Sleepy Hollow, The Insider and Gosford Park. Then, with a
flowing beard and tassel hat, he portrayed Harry Potter’s professor Albus
Dumbledore in several blockbusters, taking over the role from Richard Harris
after his death in 2002. He lent his rich voice to many films, including as
Uncle Pastuzo in both Paddington movies and as the narrator of the Coen
brothers’ Hail, Caesar!
With an
imposing frame and rueful features, Gambon described himself as looking like
the manager of a department store and a “big, interesting old bugger” while
Ayckbourn once called him a “wonderful, limitless machine, like a Lamborghini”.
Adored by audiences, with a powerful presence that could add weight to the
lightest of material, Gambon shielded his privacy and reluctantly gave
interviews. In 2004 he told the Observer: “I just plod on and try to keep my
mouth shut.”
Gambon left
school aged 15 and, unlike many of his contemporaries, did not receive any
formal training at drama school, instead gaining experience through performing
in amateur productions. He was born in Dublin in 1940; his father moved to
London and was a reserve policeman during the second world war. Gambon was
taken over to England by his mother to join him at the end of the war. They
later moved to Kent, where at the age of 16 he began an engineering
apprenticeship in the Vickers-Armstrongs factory. He began to work in amateur
theatre as a set builder, then ended up on stage instead in bit parts at the
Unity theatre and the Tower theatre in London.
He bluffed
his way into his first professional roles by fibbing about his experience,
making his debut in Dublin in a small role in Othello. Aged 22, he had his West
End debut as an understudy in The Bed-Sitting Room. He also took an acting
course at the Royal Court run by George Devine and William Gaskill.
Gambon said
that he had never seen a Shakespeare production before he acted in one himself.
He had minor Shakespeare roles at the National Theatre and auditioned for the
company by performing the role of Richard III – recently and iconically played
by Laurence Olivier – in front of Olivier himself. He appeared in Othello at
the National with Olivier and in Hamlet starring Peter O’Toole. Then, on the
advice of Olivier, Gambon left the National to join the Birmingham Repertory
theatre in order to be given larger roles, which included the title part in
Othello. Aged 30, he played Macbeth in a production in Billingham that he
described as being set in outer space. In the early 80s, he was at the Royal
Shakespeare Company performing in Adrian Noble’s productions of King Lear and
Antony and Cleopatra, sometimes both in the same day, the latter staged at a
breakneck pace. In 2005, Nicholas Hytner directed him as Falstaff in Henry IV,
Parts 1 and 2 at the National Theatre.
On
television, he had massive hits with series about two very different sleuths.
The first was Dennis Potter’s musical noir The Singing Detective, which cast
him as a mystery novelist hospitalised with psoriatic arthritis. The second was
a set of Maigret thrillers, playing Belgian author Georges Simenon’s eponymous
Parisian policeman. He also played an angel alongside Simon Callow in a TV
version of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America.
After
appearing in the Samuel Beckett plays Endgame, Eh Joe, Krapp’s Last Tape and
All That Fall, Gambon began to withdraw from stage work. In 2014, he said he
was having difficulty remembering his lines: “I feel sad about it. I love the
theatre but I can’t see myself playing massive parts again.” In 2009, illness
led to his withdrawal from starring in Alan Bennett’s The Habit of Art at the
National Theatre, just weeks before opening night, replaced by Richard
Griffiths.
Harold
Pinter’s plays had brought Gambon some of his best roles, including Jerry in
the love triangle of Betrayal and the elegant Hirst in No Man’s Land. After he
had stopped performing on stage, his rich, unmistakeable voice could at least
be heard in Jamie Lloyd’s production of Mountain Language in the all-star
Pinter at the Pinter season in the West End in 2018.
Wednesday 27 September 2023
Tuesday 26 September 2023
The Emily in Paris fantasy tour
Forget the Emily in Paris fantasy tour, it’s not a
patch on the life I live here
Pamela
Druckerman
Best-selling American author says the new
Netflix-endorsed city break doesn’t show the best features of her adopted home
– free preschool, university and healthcare
Sun 24 Sep
2023 00.00 EDT
The news
flashed up like a red béret: Netflix has endorsed a real-life Emily in
Paris-themed trip to the French capital, based on its hit TV show. The
four-night visit includes a masterclass on “the art of flirting” (taught by a
woman meant to resemble Emily’s cruel-but-sexy boss); a lesson on baking pain
au chocolat; optional runs along the Seine, like Emily takes in the series; and
many evening apéros.
There is no
shortage of Emily-themed activities in Paris. The tourist office publishes its
own guide to destinations from the show, and there are dozens of unofficial
tours (several warn participants not to attempt their three-hour walks wearing
stilettos). Last autumn I attended an American’s Emily-themed bar mitzvah here;
the party T-shirt had stars of David inserted into the cross-hatches of the
Eiffel Tower.
But
Netflix’s official “Paris by Emily” tour (the first one is scheduled for next
April) reaches a new level of TV-meets-world surreality: the makers of a TV
show about an American fantasy of Paris are trying to deliver that imagined
version of the city to real-life visitors. It’s as if Lewis Carroll sponsored
guided tours of Wonderland, or George Lucas offered to take you into space.
(The tour’s starting rate of £2,928 per person, not including airfare, suggests
organisers have the means to remove any unwanted sights.)
It’s hard
to track all the vectors of meta-weirdness. The inaugural tour guide or
“Emileader”, Ines Tazi, is a French-Moroccan Instagram sensation who has
appeared on Netflix reality TV shows. (“I love creating bridges between online
and offline, fiction and reality,” she says.) Whereas the fictional Emily posts
Paris-themed selfies, the tour operator – a company called Dharma – promises a
trip that’s “designed to be iconic from every angle, ensuring you don’t just
live your best life – you have the pics to prove it”.
At first
glance, the Emily tour seems like another case of media companies trying to
upsell their fanciest subscribers, just as the rich have come to expect
exclusive, highly curated activities where they mingle with each other. Tour
participants can pay extra for a hair and makeup service, or to create their
own perfume. Netflix is American, so they’ll presumably have to arrange any
extramarital affairs on their own.
But I think
the desire to be subsumed in an escapist TV show is a product of our current
cultural moment, too. Americans have dreamed of Paris ever since Benjamin
Franklin marvelled over the city’s stylish inhabitants in the 18th century, and
wrote that he “was once very near making love to my friend’s wife”. But the
Paris fantasy has taken on special resonance in the face of terrifying climate
change; vast and growing political cleavages; eroding rights for American
women; and the possibility of future pandemics.
In a recent
IFOP poll for the website Bonjour New York of 1,113 Americans aged 18 and over,
36% said they’d like to live in France, up from 20% in 2005. There may be an
Emily effect: among those who had watched the series, 54% said they would live
or work in France if they could, compared with 25% of those who had not.
Among
Americans in Paris like me, identifying errors on the show – from the oversized
apartments to the French people speaking English to each other – has become a
kind of sport. But the show’s fans fact check in reverse: they consider the
scripted version of Paris to be the gold standard, and reality a poor
second-best. Tourists have written scathing reviews of a bakery featured in the
series, because its real-life croissants didn’t provide the Emily’s
transcendent experience. “We’re just a neighbourhood boulangerie, we’re not
selling dreams,” one employee said.
Emily fans
seem to crave a place – even an imagined one – without disappointments, where
bad things rarely happen. In the IFOP poll, about half of viewers insisted
Paris has no rats or homeless people and 76% said they believed “most French
people dress elegantly in their every-day lives”. Lily Collins, who plays
Emily, admitted that, after all the prancing on cobblestones in heels, she had
to get orthopaedic inserts.
The series
wants it both ways. When Collins appeared on the French talk show C à vous last
year, an interviewer said the show was a “postcard” that ignores the city’s
reality. “We own every aspect of the show being fantasy based, and also based
in a realism, showing Paris in many different ways,” Collins replied.
The French
want it both ways, too. They groan about the cliches, but they like the
attention and the tourist spending, and French Vogue put Collins on its cover.
(In another boomerang, Collins said she’s starting to dress more like the
character she plays on the show.) And to be fair, it’s sometimes hard to know
where the Parisian stereotypes end and real life begins. A woman in the French
fashion industry recently told me that she once spent an evening trying to keep
her boss’s mistress away from his wife at an office party, just like on the
show.
Perhaps
boosted by the series, the past few months in Paris felt like a full-scale
American invasion. Even at cafes far from the Emily loop, I often heard more
English than French. Visits to the Paris region were up 27% in the first four
months of 2023 on the same period last year (they’re still 2.5% below 2019
levels). Americans and Britons comprise the biggest groups of foreign visitors.
With
Emily’s fourth season approaching I’d suggest another kind of escapist
speciality tour: one that introduces foreigners to France’s free preschools;
its practically free universities; and its universal healthcare. Real-life
Paris is trying to address climate change by installing kilometres of bike
lanes and making Europe’s biggest expansion of its public transit system, with
68 new metro stations in the suburbs.
Instead of
honing the seduction skills of anxious Americans, the social services tour
would show them an encouraging, alternative model for how to run a country.
Perhaps I’ll set it up. I wonder how much I could charge.
Pamela
Druckerman, an American writer based in Paris, is the author of five books
including French Children Don’t Throw Food
The American Obsession with “Frenchness”
Since the diplomatic “missions” of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams to the court of Louis XVI, Lafayette … and the Marshall Plan, the cultural attraction of the U.S. for France has been continuous …
Lilian Williams appears in this tradition but connected with the Ancien Régime – Rococo – Marie Antoinette revival that pictures as “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” and “Marie Antoinette” helped increase …
Her Chateau de Morsan in Normandy , her New York apartment and her House in Provence deserved the attention of different issues of The World of Interiors. ( Setember 1990; June 1992 and April 1994 )
Voilá … Yours Jeeves .
AMERICAN ESPRIT
A fresh vision and a love for French culture inspired Lillian and Ted Williams, classicists and home restorers, to return an abandoned folie in Normandy, France, to the condition that made the structure a "jewel in a wheat field" during the halcyon days before the French Revolution. The Chateau de Morson, built in 1750 for the Marquis de Morson, is one of the few remaining folies in France. The gentlemen’s getaways were frequently a target for revolutionaries seeking to destroy any lingering symbols of the aristocracy. The folies not ruined by political action have been ravaged by the elements, Lillian Williams notes: "This house was not built to survive 200 years, it was built as a whim." The Chateau de Morson is unusual not only for its survival in the face of adversity, but also for its location in the Normandy countryside–most folies were found on the outskirts of Paris and Bordeaux, perfect locations for city-dwelling gentlemen to escape for an afternoon’s dangerous liaison.
When the Williamses entered the abandoned dwelling in Normandy for the first time, they saw a dramatic parlor with 14-foot ceilings and graceful glass doors overlooking fields of wheat. Struck by the beauty, they instantly decided to purchase the nobleman’s playhouse. "It took us 20 seconds to buy and 10 years to restore it. If we hadn’t bought it, it would have fallen down," Lillian says.
As Americans in France, the Williamses join the ranks of legendary interior designer Elsie de Wolfe and novelist Edith Wharton as Francophile owners of folies. What is taken for granted as a French ruin by many natives is rediscovered as a treasure with the fresh, appreciative eyes of Americans, Lillian observes. "I think the Americans have made their impact," she says. In the American style, the couple also brings the do-it-yourself ethic to the Continent. "We used more of our imagination and less of others’," Lillian explains. The walls are hand-painted and fabrics are selected based on her studies of ceramics and extensive knowledge of 18th-century art and textiles, which she uses to design fabric and wallpaper for the likes of Manuel Canovas. A large amount of the repair and refurbishment work on the manor was completed by Ted Williams.
Following the original intent of the frolicsome folie, Williams has decorated with a collection of game tables.
Other items include hunting horns and dueling swords. "I’m opposed to dueling, but I like to think these were used to protect the honor of a lady" she says. The game tables serve many purposes today, just as they did in the home’s first heyday The cabriole-leg pieces serve as dining and recreation areas for the Williamses throughout the house in 18th-century style. "Living in this house is like living in the 18th century," Lillian notes.( in Homes and gardens: design, architecture, style )
The American Obsession with "Frenchness" 3. Three Newport Mansions.
Friday 22 September 2023
Thursday 21 September 2023
Goodwood Revival 2023 | Friday Day 1
https://www.goodwood.com/motorsport/goodwood-revival/
The first Revival took place 50 years after the
9th Duke of Richmond and Gordon opened the motor racing track in 1948, driving
around the circuit in a Bristol 400, then Britain's state-of-the-art sporting
saloon. Most people dress in period clothes. It is one of the world's most
popular motor race meetings and the only United Kingdom event which recreates
the 1950s and 1960s era of motorsport.
There was some opposition to the re-introduction
of racing at the circuit, but a numerically strong lobby in the form of the
Goodwood Supporters Association helped eventually to gain approval.
Revival meeting
The revival race meeting is a showcase for
wheel-to-wheel racing around a classic circuit, untouched by more modern
developments, and relives the glory days of Goodwood Circuit, which ranked
alongside Silverstone as Britain's leading racing venue throughout its active
years. Between 1948 and 1966 Goodwood hosted contemporary racing of all kinds,
including Formula One, the Goodwood Nine Hours race, and the Tourist Trophy
sports car race.
The meeting includes Grand Prix cars from the
1950s and 1960s, sports and GT cars, as well as historic saloon cars and
little-seen Formula Juniors. Many of these important historic racing cars are
driven by famous names from motor sport past and present. Famous drivers who
have taken part include Sir Stirling Moss, John Surtees, Kenny Bräck, Sir Jack
Brabham, Phil Hill, Derek Bell, David Coulthard, Damon Hill, Gerhard Berger,
Martin Brundle, Tom Kristensen, Bobby Rahal, Johnny Herbert, Wayne Gardner, Giacomo
Agostini, Jean Alesi, Barry Sheene and Peter Brock, as well as celebrities such
as Chris Rea, Debbie McGee and Rowan Atkinson (as Mr. Bean in 2009).
