LIFESTYLE
Why Edward Sexton was the most important tailor of the
20th century
Following the news of the Savile Row legend passing,
ES Magazine editor Ben Cobb pays tribute to his friend
LEON REHMAN
BEN COBB,
EDITOR OF ES MAGAZINE
27 JULY
2023
https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/edward-sexton-ben-cobb-tailor-savile-row-b1097110.html
Yesterday
started the same as most days: a strong coffee and the panic of what to wear. I
had a hardcore day of meetings and calls ahead of me. I needed to feel in
control. I reached into my wardrobe and pulled out one of my bespoke Edward
Sexton jackets. Boom! I was instantly ready for whatever the day wanted to
throw at me.
Everything,
that is, apart from the news that Edward Sexton — the most important tailor of
the 20th century, and my friend — had passed away aged 80. For those unfamiliar
with Edward Sexton (shame on you) here’s a quick catch-up.
Born in
Dagenham in 1942, young Edward left school and became a commis waiter at The
Waldorf Hotel but, more interested in the elegantly dressed clientele, he
pivoted into the sartorial world as an apprentice tailor. He began making a
name for himself as a skilled cutter and by 1967 he was working at Donaldson,
Williams and Ward, a fusty Savile Row establishment. It was here Edward met
well-connected salesman Tommy Nutter; bored of buttoned-up business suits, the
two started a side hustle creating outré outfits for private clients. Their
signature look? Big shoulders, cinched-in waists, super wide lapels and even
wider trousers.
“I was very
influenced by the 30s and 40s,” Edward told me, “and I always loved Fred
Astaire’s looks.” With funding from Cilla Black and Beatles manager Peter
Brown, Edward and Tommy opened the doors to Nutters of Savile Row on
Valentine’s Day 1969. The Row’s old guard didn’t know what hit them as Swinging
London swarmed into Number 35a. Goodbye pinstripes; hello peacocks! That suit
Mick Jagger got married in? Edward made that. Bianca’s too. Those far-out Elton
John suits that inspired Harry Styles? Edward made those. And Harry’s. He
dressed John and Yoko, Paul McCartney, Twiggy and Bowie. Jarvis Cocker. Bobby
Gillespie… from a basement backroom, Edward systematically revolutionised
menswear stitch by stitch, decade by decade.
The first
suit Edward made for me was a three-piece based on one I’d seen Ringo Starr
wearing in an old Nutters ad. The fitting at Edward’s studio — then located in
Knightsbridge — was not the gentlemanly experience I was expecting: it felt
more like being roughed up in an alley, as he tugged and ripped at the lapel,
swearing like a sailor and jabbing away with a piece of chalk. Edward didn’t
care if you were a rock star or a cabbie. He wasn’t into egos, vanity or
arse-kissing. He didn’t need to be: he was the best in the business and he knew
it. And by the time you tried on one of his creations, you knew it too.
I’m so
pleased we got to share some special moments over the years. When Edward was 76
years old, I put him on the cover of the fashion magazine Perfect. He turned up
on set, immaculate as always and shoot-ready. As he stood in front of the
camera I could see him mouthing something to himself. Later I asked him what he
was saying. “Sex and champagne, sex and champagne,” he replied; apparently
Bowie had taught him this photogenic trick. (Give it a go, it sure beats saying
“Cheeese”.)
At the
recent opening of his new Savile Row flagship, I saw his Perfect cover
displayed on the counter. That made me happy. I also had the honour of
presenting Edward with the “Visionary” award at last year’s Walpole Luxury
Awards. It was a beautiful evening with his wife and grandson there, and the
Sexton team. I could tell he was moved, not that he’d ever let on. I wore the
three-piece dinner suit he had made me for my wedding; “Still looks good on
you,” he nodded with approval.
As he
clutched his award, I asked if he could retire now; his reply is unprintable
here but, suffice to say, Edward worked right up until the end. Standing
side-by-side for our final photocall that night, I heard him mumbling Bowie’s
mantra under his breath. Sex and champagne forever, Edward.
Obituary
Edward Sexton obituary
Savile Row tailor for more than 50 years whose
celebrity clients included David Hockney, Mick Jagger, Harry Styles and Rick
Astley
Veronica
Horwell
Mon 7 Aug
2023 17.38 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2023/aug/07/edward-sexton-obituary
The
customers of Edward Sexton, who has died aged 80, knew exactly what they wanted
– and would get – from him over 54 years of tailoring: a long-bodied suit, with
extravagant but never vulgar lapels, that illusioned away defects in the
shoulders but did not beef them up, was springy down the spine and made the
most of a youthful waist, if available.
Sexton
trousers waxed and waned in width according to the times, but never absurdly –
you would not want to alter by a centimetre the perfect proportions of the suit
pants that the Beatles John, Ringo and Paul wore for their impromptu
album-cover photo striding over the Abbey Road zebra crossing in 1969.
That was
the year the Sexton suit came into its own on its rightful premises, which were
not among the young-male-gear boutiques down Kings Road. He had enjoyed the
wild fun to be had in those, and appreciated the inventiveness of their
garments, but not their hit-and-miss fit, and barely tacked together iffy
fabrics. That offended Sexton. Tailoring was his vocation, and it meant to him
the millimetric measuring, cutting and hand-sewing of Savile Row.
So he went
into partnership with the salesman and designer Tommy Nutter, and with finance
from Cilla Black and the Beatles management man Peter Brown, who was Nutter’s
lover, they rented No 35a Savile Row, opening on Valentine’s Day, 1969.
Nutter had
the more memorable surname (hence the new business’s signboard – Nutter’s of
Savile Row), a wider social circle, unbounded charm and a gift for
publicity-generating mischief. Sexton and Nutter in gleeful cooperation brought
the cool boutiques’ attitude to Savile Row.
Their
firm’s welcoming front door had empty champagne bottles hanging on red ribbons
to use as a knocker, and potential customers needed no discreet personal or
family introductions to gain admission to the premises. There was a proper
glass shop window displaying actual garments, always wild. Inside, clothes were
draped over dustbins, slung over chairs. There might be stuffed rats in
tuxedos, or mad games. Nutter’s was a party for customers eager to spend money
earned mostly in creative industries on sexy outfits crafted with traditional
skills.
The skills
and the eye – an inner vision of ideal shapes – were Sexton’s. He and Nutter
shared a nostalgia for the almost feminine curves of 1930s and early 40s
tailoring – double-breasted cuts, voluptuous lapels – which Sexton incorporated
into his core form. This looked glamorous though never languid on men moving
with their music on stage, whatever their age and shape: Elton John, Eric
Clapton and Paul McCartney spreading over half a century, Jarvis Cocker
narrower than ever on his recent return, Rick Astley bounding in dusty pink
across this summer’s Glastonbury. There was always room to rock in a Sexton
suit’s knees and thighs. David Hockney wears Sexton, too, the suits
complementing the artworks.
The Sexton
cut also worked well on women. Mid-60s Paris-originated “trouser suits” for
women had been designed flat on paper, like pastiches of masculinity for models
with no subcutaneous fat. But Sexton’s undulating line flattered a wide female
range – Twiggy, Yoko Ono, Annie Lennox. Sexton created Mick Jagger’s pale
three-piece for his 1971 marriage to Bianca, and many even better suits for her
after.
His recent
sorbet-coloured suits for Harry Styles updated all streams of fluidity. Sexton
was always pleased that he let women shop and work in Savile Row, and had
arranged an internship there for McCartney’s fashion student daughter Stella so
she could prove her seriousness about needle and cloth. Later, when she took
over Chloé in Paris, she invited him there to help her tailor, but in delicate
female textiles.
Inside
Savile Row: life as a master tailor Guardian
The Row had
been in his life a long time. Born in Dagenham, then in Essex, the fourth of
six children of Isabelle (nee Pitt), an office cleaner, and William Sexton, a
public health inspector, Edward was brought up in Elephant and Castle,
south-east London, and went to English Martyrs school in Southwark. By 12,
however, he was already odd-jobbing for his uncle’s tailoring workshop, longing
for the day he would move up from wearing shorts to grey flannel trousers,
which he could reshape drainpipe tight like the revived hourglass Edwardian
silhouette adopted by the teddy boys.
He worked
part-time with a small West End tailor, then post-school as a waiter at the
Waldorf hotel, where he tasted a little of a life of style. His father advised
him to learn a skill and become his own master, so he found a job through
Tailor and Cutter magazine as a bespoke trimmer, finishing suits at Harry Hall
in Regent Street while studying at Barrett Street technical college; he then
moved to the celebrity tailor Cyril Castle.
Then he
cracked his ambition, an apprenticeship at Kilgour, French & Stanbury, in
Savile Row, where he learned to cut from Fred Stanbury himself. Sexton was
neat, spry and natty in his carefully collected bespoke wardrobe, with a
pre-estuarine Cockney accent that brought him up against immovable snobbery on
the Row. He learned not to care. The voice stayed as it was, gravelled by time.
He kept a touch of punk about his hair.
At 24, he
was appointed cutter at Donaldson, Williams & Ward, where he met the
front-of-house Nutter in the firm’s Burlington Arcade showroom; Sexton already
had his own private clients and workroom in Soho. Their bold Row venture, the
first new firm there in a century, lasted until Sexton, with a sober sense of
business, bought out the hedonistic Nutter and became managing director in
1976.
Due to
redevelopment on the Row in the early 1990s, he moved first to shared premises,
and then to a workshop in Beauchamp Place, Knightsbridge, where he accrued all
the clients he could possibly outfit. The Pollen Estate, which owns part of
Savile Row, and wanted to invest in its original craft identity, enticed Sexton
back in 2020, to a handsome store a few doors and a social revolution away from
Nutters. He said on his triumphant return: “I don’t think I’ve ever really
‘worked’ a day in my life because it’s been such a joy … It’s not a job, it’s a
passion.”
He married
Joan Carter in 1963. She and their children, Angela, Paul and Philip, survive
him.
Edward Sexton, tailor and cutter, born 9
November 1942; died 23 July 2023
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