JEEVES ( António Sérgio Rosa de Carvalho ) visits TOMMY PAGE , Amsterdam, wearing a tweed suit made by Tommy Page Mantique

 

In the past I introduced Tommy Page in Amsterdam in this ‘blog’: "TOMMY PAGE vintage mantique in Amsterdam. "

https://tweedlandthegentlemansclub.blogspot.com/2015/06/tommy-page-vintage-mantique-in-amsterdam.html

Visiting Tommy Page is a truly unique experience. Tommy was born in Amsterdam, but his father was British. After a background as a designer in Fashion/Clothing his interests were directed to a vast and passionate study and knowledge of the entire British heritage of Men's Clothing. That's why Tommy besides being able to provide the acquisition of archetypes of Hacking Jackets, Norfolks, etc. represented by mythical labels like Harry Hall, Pytchley, Dunn & Co, Bladen Supasax or Daks, presents in the décor of his store a real and stimulating ‘arsenal’of inspiration through exemplary specimens which constitute  true sources of stimulating archetypes of study and reference.

These unique examples are study pieces and are not for sale, but to make up for this, Tommy offers an authentic and  true tailoring service with multiple possibilities of unique fabric choices of the best British mills  and various models of jackets and  suits that meet the measurements and choices of his customers.

So Tommy provided me with a suit made of a windowpane with the signature of the famous HARDY MINNIS.

The rest of the features and details of the suit in question, can be observed by the experienced eyes of the visitors of this 'blog', through the images I publish.

Greetings from JEEVES ( António Sérgio Rosa de Carvalho )

HARDY MINNIS. Cloth ( SEE BELOW )

 

HARDY MINNIS

https://www.hfwltd.com/hardy-minnis.html

 

Now

Hardy Minnis provides iconic British made fabrics to top-class tailors who value time-honoured ways and a knowledgeable, reliable service. We hold a Royal Warrant, granted by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and are proud of our British manufacturing heritage.

 

 Best known for the Finest Worsted Suitings and Classic Country Tweeds, Hardy Minnis produces iconic British cloths with timeless appeal and is renowned worldwide for collections such as Alsport, Fresco and QZ.

 

 Combining innovation in our designs, and tradition in our outlook, the Hardy Minnis brand is the epitome of British elegance with global appeal.

 

 Then

Hardy Minnis was established in the late 1960’s by the merger of two famous Woollen Merchants, John G Hardy and J&J Minnis. The two companies were well known in their own right and had, over the years, become two of the most respected cloth merchants in the trade.

 

 Mr. John G Hardy founded his company in the 1890’s. An intrepid explorer and something of an eccentric, he scoured small mills around the UK for Tweeds and Country cloths. Legend has it he was one of the first cloth merchants to visit the Scottish Highlands and Hebrides, and to introduce Shetland and Harris Tweeds to the tailors of the world. He was allegedly so protective of his sources that on his return trips to London, he’d smuggle the new found fabric swatches under his top hat!

 

 As his reputation grew, the popularity of signature cloths such as Alsport caught the attention of the Royal Family and in 1929 the Duke of York who would later become King George VI, used a John G. Hardy cloth for the Regimental Tweed of the Brigade of Guards. When King Edward VIII was the Prince of Wales, he acquired from John G. Hardy the black & white district check that would later bear his name. Since the 1930’s the company has been privileged to hold Official Warrants for the supply of cloth to the Royal Household.

 

  J&J Minnis had an even earlier pedigree having been established in 1874 in London’s West End. Brothers James and John Minnis built up a company which is acknowledged as one of the oldest and most respected names in the cloth merchanting business world-wide.

 

 Savile Row was well established as the world’s most prestigious street for gentlemen’s clothing when J&J Minnis took up residence at Number 16, in 1902. The company soon developed a reputation for its luxury fabrics and fine designs and became the primary cloth resource for its esteemed neighbours along ‘The Row’. J&J Minnis is also widely credited with being the first British cloth merchant to introduce Savile Row quality fabrics into the Japanese market.

 

 The two companies merged in 1969 and J&J Minnis inherited the Royal Warrant, which is now granted jointly to Hardy Minnis.

 

A Gentleman's Guide To British Country Style | Old Money Style

 

Dennis Seevers' House: travel back in time to Georgian Spitalfields | Hidden London

 

Dennis Severs' House

 

Dennis Severs' House is a historical tourist attraction at 18 Folgate Street in Spitalfields, within the East End of Central London, England. Created by Dennis Severs, who owned and lived in the house from 1979 to 1999, it is intended as a "historical imagination" of what life would have been like inside for a family of Huguenot silk weavers. It is a Grade II listed Georgian terraced house. From 1979 to 1999 it was lived in by Dennis Severs, who gradually recreated the rooms as a time capsule in the style of former centuries. Severs' friend Dan Cruickshank said: "It was never meant to be an accurate historical creation of a specific moment – it was an evocation of a world. It was essentially a theatre set.”

 

In 2021, a large trove of audio tapes were found, and were condensed to create a new Dennis Severs' Tour, conducted by an actor. The house's Latin motto is Aut Visum Aut Non!: "You either see it or you don't."

 

The house

The house is on the south side of Folgate Street and dates from approximately 1724. It is one of a terrace of houses (No.s 6–18) built of brown brick with red-brick dressings, over four storeys and with a basement. The listing for the house, compiled in 1950, describes No. 18 as having a painted facade, and with first-floor window frames enriched with a trellis pattern. By 1979 the house was very run-down; it was saved by the Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust, an architectural preservation charity.

 

History

 

One of the bedrooms

Dennis Severs (16 November 1948, California, US – 27 December 1999, London) was drawn to London by what he called "English light", and bought the dilapidated property in Folgate Street from the Spitalfields Trust in 1979. This area of the East End of London, next to Spitalfields Market, had become very run-down, and artists had started to move in. Bohemian visual artists Gilbert & George added to the flavour of the neighbourhood; resident there since the late 1960s, they also refurbished a similar house. In addition, the historian and writer Raphael Samuel lived in the area. The group of people Severs was a part of, who began renovating houses in Spitalfields in the 1980s, is sometimes referred to as the Neo-Georgians.

 

Severs started on a programme to refurbish the ten rooms of his house, each in a different historic style, mainly from the 18th and 19th centuries. The rooms are arranged as if they are in use and the occupants have only just left. The rooms contain objects either of the period, or made by Severs. An authentic-looking 17th-century swag over a fireplace was made of varnished walnuts. A four-poster bed, that Severs slept in, was made of pallets and polystyrene. There are displays of items such as half-eaten bread, and different smells and background sounds for each room. The Victorian poverty and squalor room had smells described as disgusting, but real.

 

Woven through the house is the story of the fictional Jervis family (a name anglicised from Gervais), originally immigrant Huguenot silk weavers, who lived at the house from 1725 to 1919. Each room evokes incidental moments in the lives of these imaginary inhabitants. Peter Ackroyd, author of London: the biography, wrote:

 

The journey through the house becomes a journey through time; with its small rooms and hidden corridors, its whispered asides and sudden revelations, it resembles a pilgrimage through life itself.

 

Cultural studies researcher Hedvig Mårdh writes that Dennis Severs' House is "admittedly difficult to categorize" and that it combines scenography and artwork. The art form practised by Severs has been described as "a type of theatre unique and rare"; in Severs' obituary, Gavin Stamp defined the house as "a three-dimensional historical novel, written in brick and candlelight". Severs himself offered the term "still-life drama", which today is used in a number of notes that guide silent visitors around the house. He wrote, to describe his endeavour:

 

I worked inside out to create what turned out to be a collection of atmospheres: moods that harbour the light and the spirit of various ages.

 

Writer and illustrator Brian Selznick used the house as an inspiration for his 2015 novel The Marvels. The book concludes with a short history and photographs of Dennis Severs. Many of the characters' names and story lines are similar to what can be found in the museum.

 

The writer Jeanette Winterson, who also restored a derelict house nearby to live in, observed, "Fashions come and go, but there are permanencies, vulnerable but not forgotten, that Dennis sought to communicate". Painter David Hockney described the house as one of the world's greatest works of opera.

 

The house was bought by the Spitalfields Trust shortly before Severs, long HIV-positive, died of cancer two days after Christmas 1999. Severs wrote before his death "I have recently come to accept what I refused to accept for so long: that the house is only ephemeral. That no one can put a preservation order on atmosphere." Nonetheless, the house was preserved, and open to the public, who are asked during their visit to respect the intent of the creator and participate in an imaginary journey to another time.

 

Television

Severs appeared as himself on an episode of Tell The Truth on Channel 4, dated 9 November 1984, discussing the house. Severs and the house also appeared in the 1985 BBC documentary Ours to Keep: Incomers.

Dennis Severs' House - 18 Folgate Street ...Wonder House ... Historical Time Capsule ...

Dennis Severs' House, 18 Folgate Street is a Georgian terraced house in Spitalfields, London, England. From 1979 to 1999 it was lived in by Dennis Severs, who gradually recreated the rooms as a time capsule in the style of former centuries. It is now open to the public.



Dennis Severs' House is a time capsule attraction in which visitors are immersed in a unique form of theatre. The ten rooms of this original Hugeuenot house have been decked out to recreate snapshots of life in Spitalfields between 1724 and 1914. An escorted tour through the compelling 'still-life drama', as American creator Dennis Severs put it, takes you through the cellar, kitchen, dining room, smoking room and upstairs to the bedrooms. With hearth and candles burning, smells lingering and objects scattered apparently haphazardly, it feels as though the inhabitants had deserted the rooms only moments before. The Dennis Severs House tour is unsuitable for children as tours are conducted in silence.



Once upon a time, David Milne used to arrange all the old things from his parents’ house in the attic of their home to create his own world of play. David is pictured here in the attic of Dennis Severs’ House in Folgate St where today, as curator of the house, it is his job to arrange things – both in the general sense of maintaining every aspect of the property and also in the specific sense of arranging all the myriad objects that fill these crowded rooms.
Yet the success of David’s arrangements renders his labour invisible, since when you come upon the artifacts occupying these rooms, everything appears to have occurred naturally in the course of the daily life of the fictional inhabitants. But very little is accidental in this house of mysteries, because everything has been arranged to tell a story, and making those arrangements is David’s tour de force and his life’s passion too.
“I think I have a good understanding of what the life of a servant must have been like, except I am the servant to an imaginary family,” David confided to me after years of cleaning and polishing. Widening his eyes significantly as he revealed his qualification, “though I am a very taxing master – because everything has to be right.” and underlining the statement with such a stern glance that I almost felt pity for him, suffering such an exacting scrupulous employer.
I recognised the glance from when David instructed me to hold silence upon my arrival at the house, when I came to visit during a public opening. It was a look of such gravity that it ensured silence reigned throughout the property, no-one dared utter a word in the face of such an authoritative visage. Yet this hauteur only serves to emphasise the unexpected radiance of his smile when you greet him off duty, because the evocation of fantasy at 18 Folgate St is a serious business and David understands his dignified responsibility to set a certain tone whilst at work. It is an onerous duty that magistrates, members of the clergy, footmen and the guards at Buckingham Palace will recognise, and one which David has perfected to an art.
David discovered 18 Folgate St in his early twenties when was exploring London by following the medieval street plan and he came upon Norton Folgate while walking up through Shoreditch. He peered through the lattice-work of the dining window and spied the baroque interior. “Spitalfields at that time was dark and faded, as if the eighteenth century inhabitants had simply locked their doors and gone, and because I had seen into one of the houses, my imagination created the stories in all the others.” he told me, recalling the moment with delight.
With characteristic rigor, David decided that he would never pay to visit the house, because he knew at once that his involvement had to be more than a tour. Fortuitously, years later, he was invited to a party in the East End and found himself back outside 18 Folgate St. As he explained to me, “I came into this house, walked up to the first floor where Dennis Severs was sitting in the Smoking Room holding court with his circle of friends, and I asked him, ‘Whose house is it?’ and he said, ‘It’s mine!’ And from that moment we were friends, speaking on the telephone every day until two weeks before his death. I never came to this house to strip it down, I never asked questions, I never asked ‘Why?’ I just accepted it as his beautiful creation.”
David lives in a tiny modern flat built upon the roof of a Victorian stucco mansion block in Earls Court, that he has furnished with seventeenth century furniture and lit entirely by candlelight – like a cabinet of curiosities – existing in a manner that is completely in tune with the ambience of Folgate St. “When you live with candlelight, you learn how to use it.” David told me, “You don’t arrange your candles evenly in the room and all at the same height, as people commonly do. You place them strategically. For example, in the kitchen here, there is a low candle on the table where the cook was studying a recipe book. I like to place things together in the manner of ‘still life’ and I love the light of seventeenth century paintings, you see it everywhere in this house.”
I realised how unusual it was for David to sit and talk, because his job consists primarily of housework, revealed by the long apron that is his professional uniform. All four storeys, staircases and rooms, are cleaned twice a week, the silver, brass and copper are polished every fortnight, floors and furniture are waxed annually, bed and table linen are laundered and starched regularly, and dusting is a continuous activity. Additionally, the food is prepared daily, with the master’s breakfast cooked every morning, and tea and coffee freshly brewed. It takes all day, while the house is closed, to prepare it to open for visitors, because even maintaining imaginary inhabitants in the patina to which they have become accustomed takes a lot of work.
As with Mick Pedroli, house manager, David Milne’s involvement in the house is personal, rooted in his friendship with Dennis Severs, which ultimately led to his lifelong commitment to the vision which the house manifests. ”I used to come and stay regularly, and Dennis and I used to play together, cooking meals and taking photographs. I spent twelve Christmases in this house. When Dennis died, I decided to step up and take on the house because it needed people who understand it. Now I am waiting for the right person to walk through the door, one day, who can do my job.” said David, getting lost in thought, gazing fondly around the artfully dilapidated Dickensian attic where he stayed when he first came to visit for weekends at Dennis Severs’ extraordinary house so many years ago, “It’s a story that’s never-ending.”
(from the blog: "Spitalfields Life Daily" ...July 24, 2010
by the gentle author )

VIDEO below / Dennis Severs' House (museum): 18 Folgate Street, Spitalfields, London.

Dennis Severs' House in Folgate Street is a "still-life drama" created by the previous owner as an "historical imagination" of what life would have been like inside for a family of Huguenot silk weavers. It is a Grade II listed Georgian terraced house in Spitalfields, London, England. From 1979 to 1999 it was lived in by Dennis Severs, who gradually recreated the rooms as a time capsule in the style of former centuries. It is now open to the public.

The house is on the south side of Folgate Street, and dates from approximately 1724. It is one of a terrace of houses (Nos 6-18) built of brown brick with red brick dressings, over four storeys and with a basement. The listing for the house, compiled in 1950, describes No 18 as having a painted facade, and that the first floor [window] frames are enriched with a trellis pattern.

Dennis Severs (16 November 1948, Escondido, California – 27 December 1999, London) was drawn to London by what he called "English light", and made his home in the dilapidated property in Folgate Street in 1979. This area of the East End of London, next to Spitalfields Market, had become very run-down, and artists had started to move in. Bohemian visual artists Gilbert & George added to the flavour of the neighbourhood; resident there since the late 1960s, they also refurbished a similar house, as later did writer Jeanette Winterson.

Severs started on a programme to refurbish the ten rooms of the house, each in a different historic style, mainly from the 18th and 19th centuries. The rooms are arranged as if they are in use and the occupants have only just left—the Marie Celeste approach. There are therefore displays of items such as half-eaten bread, and different smells and background sounds for each room. Severs called this "still life drama" and wrote:

“          I worked inside out to create what turned out to be a collection of atmospheres: moods that harbour the light and the spirit of various ages.            ”

Woven through the house is the story of the fictive Jervis family (a name anglicised from Gervais), originally Huguenot (French Protestant immigrants) silk weavers who lived at the house from 1725 to 1919. Each room evokes incidental moments in the lives of these imaginary inhabitants. Writer Peter Ackroyd, author of London: the biography, wrote:

“         

The journey through the house becomes a journey through time; with its small rooms and hidden corridors, its whispered asides and sudden revelations, it resembles a pilgrimage through life itself.[4]            ”

Jeanette Winterson, resident in the neighbourhood, observed, "Fashions come and go, but there are permanencies, vulnerable but not forgotten, that Dennis sought to communicate".[5] Painter David Hockney described the house as one of the world's greatest works of opera.

Severs bequeathed the house to the Spitalfields Trust shortly before his death. It is now open to the public, who are asked during their visit to respect the intent of the creator and participate in an imaginary journey to another time.

The motto of the house is Aut Visum Aut Non!: 'You either see it or you don't'.

Emily in Paris star Lily Collins to play Audrey Hepburn in film about Breakfast at Tiffany’s / Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's and the Dawn of the Modern Woman is a non-fiction book by Sam Wasson

 

Emily in Paris star Lily Collins to play Audrey Hepburn in film about Breakfast at Tiffany’s

 

Collins ‘honoured and ecstatic’ to play Hepburn, in film charting the dramatic making of the 1961 romantic comedy

 

Sian Cain

Mon 23 Feb 2026 23.58 GMT

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/feb/24/lily-collins-to-play-audrey-hepburn-film-about-breakfast-at-tiffanys#:~:text=Lily%20Collins%2C%20the%20star%20of,romantic%20comedy%20Breakfast%20at%20Tiffany's.

 

Lily Collins, the star of Netflix hit Emily in Paris, has been cast to play Audrey Hepburn in a new film about the making of her 1961 romantic comedy Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

 

The as-yet-untitled film will be based on Sam Wasson’s nonfiction book Fifth Avenue, 5 AM: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the Dawn of the Modern Woman, with a script written by Alena Smith, creator of the Apple TV series Dickinson. No director has been announced yet.

 

Collins, the daughter of musician Phil Collins, shared her excitement in a statement on Instagram.

 

“It’s with almost 10 years of development and a lifetime of admiration and adoration for Audrey that I’m finally able share this,” she wrote. “Honoured and ecstatic don’t begin to express how I feel … ”

 

Breakfast at Tiffany’s was initially a novella by Truman Capote, published in 1958. Set in the 1940s, the story is narrated by a struggling writer who moves into a new apartment in New York and befriends his glamorous neighbour Holly Golightly, an “American geisha” who gets by socialising with wealthy men.

 

The 1961 film was a very loose adaptation of Capote’s book, transposing the story to 1960 and turning the novella’s unnamed gay narrator into a straight man who falls in love with Golightly.

 

 

Capote wanted Marilyn Monroe to play Golightly and lobbied the studio, Paramount, to hire her, but Monroe was under contract with Twentieth Century Fox at the time. She was reportedly advised to pass because the character would be bad for her image, with her acting coach, Paula Strasberg, saying: “Marilyn Monroe will not play a lady of the evening.”

 

Shirley MacLaine and Kim Novak both turned the role down, and Hepburn was cast against Capote’s wishes. “Paramount double-crossed me in every way and cast Audrey,” he later complained. “It was the most miscast film I’ve ever seen.”

 

Ahead of the film’s release, Paramount’s publicity department desperately attempted to reframe Golightly as being as far from a sex worker as could be. “Since Miss Audrey Hepburn has never played any part that has suggested she was anything but pure, polite and possibly a princess, a hard look at Miss Golightly is in order,” one press release read. Another read: “The star is Audrey Hepburn, not Tawdry Hepburn.”

 

Breakfast at Tiffany’s received critical acclaim, making US$14m at the global box office – around $152m today – and winning two Academy Awards: best score for composer Henry Mancini and best song for Moon River, performed by Hepburn in the film.

 

The upcoming movie starring Collins will be the “first complete account of the making of the film” and will cover drama from preproduction to on-set disasters, such as when one crew member was reportedly nearly electrocuted during the film’s famous opening sequence outside the flagship Tiffany & Co store on Fifth Avenue.

 

Casting for other characters in the film, including Capote and Breakfast at Tiffany’s director Blake Edwards, have yet to be announced.

 

Hepburn has previously been played by Jennifer Love Hewitt in the 2000 TV movie The Audrey Hepburn Story. Rooney Mara was briefly attached to a Hepburn biopic directed by Luca Guadagnino, but it was called off in 2023.

Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's and the Dawn of the Modern Woman.

Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's and the Dawn of the Modern Woman is a non-fiction book by Sam Wasson that chronicles the making of the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany's and its profound impact on 20th-century culture. The book explores how the film, led by Audrey Hepburn, transformed the image of the "bad girl" into a modern heroine and paved the way for social changes regarding fashion, sex, and female independence.

 

Book Overview

Central Theme: Wasson examines how the film served as a bridge between the conservative Eisenhower era and the modern 1960s, turning the "not-so-virginal" Holly Golightly into a cultural icon of autonomy.

Production Insights: The book details the challenges of adapting Truman Capote's novella, which featured a lead character who was a call girl, into a Hollywood-approved romantic comedy during a time of strict censorship.

Iconic Figures: The narrative features a cast of real-life characters, including author Truman Capote, director Blake Edwards, costume designer Edith Head, fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy, and composer Henry Mancini.

Key Revelations: According to the New York Public Library Shop, Capote originally wanted Marilyn Monroe for the lead role, and the film's famous happy ending was just one of two versions shot.

Cultural Impact and Legacy

Fashion: The book highlights how the "little black dress" designed by Givenchy became a symbol of self-sufficiency and mysterious power, moving away from the "pastel" aesthetic of the 1950s.

Social Change: Reviewers on Goodreads note that the film was a landmark for depicting a woman having sex without being "punished" by the narrative's end, a radical departure for the time.

Modern Influence: Wasson argues that modern cultural touchstones like Sex and the City owe their existence to the path cleared by Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Upcoming Film: As of February 2026, a movie based on Sam Wasson's book is in development.

Cast: Lily Collins is set to star as Audrey Hepburn and will also serve as a producer.

Production Team: The screenplay is being written by Alena Smith (creator of Dickinson), with production by Imagine Entertainment.