Inside the House of Britain’s Most Unusual Noble | Leighton House

HORNETS AGAIN AND AGAIN ... FOREVER

There's a chap who virtually dresses me at a shop called Hornets. It's a second-hand Gent's clothing shop in Kensington Church Walk. Full of Saville Row suits and weird and wonderful military dress jackets. The shoes have been resoled so many times I've propbably paid five times as much in repairs as I did originally. They're from Hornets; they're Carvillle. The company strapline is "The shop for the amorous man", which is slightly creepy. Clothes are a mechanism of communication - people are adept at reading clothes, and you can manipulate that. Wear a bicorn hat or a hussars jacket to a party and everyone will pay attention.; My style icon Toad from The Wind in the Willows.By Sam Bompas



Hornets


2 & 4 Kensington Church Walk , London W8 4NB


36b Kensington Church Street , London W8 4BX

Adieu Bill.

 

We heard from friends the very sad news of the death of "Bill Hornets" (William Wilde).

Bill had dinner once in our house when he was visiting Tommy Page in Amsterdam.

 Bill The Guv'nor was an important figure and character in London daily life.

He played a very important role in the Vintage London scene offering the highest quality of clothing for men. He has always refused the concept and phenomenon of Vintage saying always that he was a Secondhand clothes dealer and seller.

He was the proud owner of three fabulous little shops in Kensington.

He always remains in our memory and will never be forgotten by us.

Adieu Bill. May your soul rest in peace and that you will find the light that you always aspired with your continuous search for quality.

Sérgio and Trudie.

 

"Bill Hornets" (William Wilde) was a well-known figure in Kensington's vintage scene, noted for his three stores on Kensington Church Street and Church Walk, specializing in classic men's style.

While an Instagram post in April 2025 by Hornets Kensington announced the sad death of a team member named Chris Bannon (signed by #billhornets), Bill Wilde himself was still actively linked to the business in a Standard article from September 2025.

In Memoriam: To Bill with our warmest regards and the best memories of London Sérgio (JEEVES) & Trudie / The Hornets in Kensington Offers London Men Style, Not Fashion

In Memoriam: To Bill with our warmest regards and the best memories of London

Sérgio (JEEVES) & Trudie

This interview was first published in The Wall Street Journal…

https://hornetskensington.wordpress.com/

 Known in the vintage-clothes business as “Bill Hornets,” William Hornets Wilde is one of those English gentlemen whom visitors to London imagine the city must be filled with. It isn’t, of course, which is what makes Mr. Wilde and his shops so special.

 He owns three stores in the Kensington area: two for vintage suits, hats and shoes, and a third for seasonal wear—whether that’s tweeds for the shooting season, tails for Ascot or any other esoteric formal-outing requirements.

 Although Mr. Wilde won’t mention names (“I never recognize anybody,” he said), his extensive inventory has made loyal customers out of designers like Ralph Laure and Tom Ford.

 Mostly, though, Mr. Wilde caters to country gentlemen, aristocrats, royal cousins, university students—patrons who prefer to avoid the expense and formality of Jermyn Street and the fickleness of the fashion industry.

 Anyone in the market for say, a bespoke 1960s Anderson & Sheppard kid mohair suit, a vintage alligator-skin suitcase or a ’30s chocolate-brown smoking jacket are well advised to drop in.

 Mr. Wilde, who was also a TV actor in the ’60s and ’70s (now best remembered for his part in “Blood Beast Terror” from the British film studio Hammer), maintains a network of buyers throughout southern England who forage for treasures at estate sales and flea markets.

In-store, Mr. Wilde helps customers with questions of sartorial refinement, promoting his modus operandi (proudly displayed on the Hornets website: “Not Fashion. Style.”

 One should never follow fashion for fashion’s sake. With classic style you stand out from the crowd, with fashion you become one of the crowd.

 The best pair of shoes I own are brown brogues from George Cleverley.

 The great figures of style are the Duke of Windsor, Cary Grant, the present Prince of Wales.

 I prefer French cuffs and straight collars.

 A bow tie can be worn in day time with a jacket or three-piece suit.

The lady on your arm can be extravagant and colorful. You have to be quietly masculine. At Ascot, a morning suit is very simple, but a lady can be fairly outrageous with her hat. A man has to be simple in his dress.

 I wish men wouldn’t tie a hangman’s knot in their scarves, nor wear beanie hats, trainers or colorful silk waistcoats with morning suits. There are more offenses, but they are too terrible to mention.

 My favorite suit was a three-piece chalk-stripe Huntsman. It fit me so beautifully, as if I were poured into it. The pants were cut very high, military style. The waistcoat had small lapels. As I am tall and was slim in those days, it looked fantastic.

 My favorite style of men’s dress is English country clothing: shooting jackets, tweed suits, moleskins and cords.

 My favorite warm weather vacation is on the English Riviera: Dorset, Devon and Cornwall.

 I prefer a dry martini shaken, not stirred, at the St. James Hotel in London.

 The single piece of clothing I’ve had the longest is a ’30s double- breasted tan-colored leather motoring coat.

 My favorite album of all time is Billie Holiday “Lady in Satin.”

 I’ve just got into Agatha Christie’s “Murder on the Orient Express.”

 In the morning I love half a cold game bird from the night before, black coffee and the Times. Then I read and send some emails.

 My favorite hotel is the Grande Bretagne in Athens. Many happy memories.

 —Edited from an interview by Edward Helmore

Laurence Fellows (1885–1964) was a pioneering illustrator whose work in the 1930s and 1940s was crucial in defining modern male fashion illustration, particularly through his contributions to Apparel Arts (the precursor to GQ) and Esquire.

 

Laurence Fellows (1885–1964) was a pioneering illustrator whose work in the 1930s and 1940s was crucial in defining modern male fashion illustration, particularly through his contributions to Apparel Arts (the precursor to GQ) and Esquire. His illustrations were essential for shifting men's fashion away from simplistic advertising toward a sophisticated, detailed, and aspirational aesthetic that portrayed men as stylish, affluent, and at ease.

 

Importance of Fellows' Work:

Detailed Fabric and Texture Representation: Fellows was renowned for his ability to expertly depict the weight, texture, and drape of fabrics, including flannels, worsteds, tweeds, and linens, making the clothing the "star" of the image.

Creating "Casual Elegance": His art captured a specific, relaxed masculinity, showing men in comfortable, well-tailored clothes that were both refined and unstudied, setting a standard for "casual elegance".

Influencing Lifestyle Imagery: Instead of using underfed models, Fellows portrayed mature, dapper men in realistic, opulent settings—such as hosting parties, traveling, or at clubs—making the depicted lifestyle and fashion aspirational and accessible to readers.

Bridging Style and Fashion: During a time when many men had limited wardrobes, Fellows' work helped transform the focus from fast-changing trends to lasting personal style, highlighting the importance of well-fitting, classic pieces.

Enduring Legacy: His contributions were so significant that his 1930s illustrations remain a key reference for vintage menswear, with his work influencing contemporary interest in suits, tweed, and tailored looks. He was posthumously inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in 2009.

Fellows' work was particularly vital because of the limited supply of male fashion artists at the time, making his distinct style a dominant force in shaping how men's fashion was visualized and marketed during that era.

Laurence Fellows

This is the only photograph I was able to find in my search in the Internet ...namely a group Photo of Young American Artists ( Wikipedia).The "blow up" of Laurence Fellows was made by the "blogger" Maxminimus, in Maxminimus.blogspot.
Young American Artists of the Modern School, L. to R. Jo Davidson, Edward Steichen, Arthur B. Carles, John Marin; back: Marsden Hartley, Laurence Fellows, c. 1911, Bates College Museum of Art


(1885 - 1964)
From the Gay Nineties up through the 1920s, American humor magazines played a greater social role than is generally appreciated. Their candor in recording the current events in a satirical weekly or monthly forum presented the contemporary American attitudes, prejudices, and mores in the guise of humor that was not found in the more sober mainstream periodicals. Publications such as Truth, Life, Puck, Leslie's, and Judge showcased the talents of such major illustrators as Charles Dana Gibson, James Montgomery Flagg, Orson Lowell, T.S. Sullivant, Peter Newell, Art Young, and many others who mirrored the country's foibles in their enthusiastic ridicule.

Joining the group in the early teens was an ultra sophisticated young artist named Laurence Fellows. A native of Pennsylvania, Fellows had received his training at the Philadelphia Academy of Art, with several follow-up years studying in England and in France at the Academie Julien under J.P. Laurens.

Upon his return to the United States, Fellows' fresh point of view, particularly reflecting a French/Vogue influence, found him a ready audience. His style was distinguished by a thin outline, flat tonality or color, with the emphasis on shapes rather than details. Just as quickly, however, he acquired many imitators. Before John Held, Jr., for instance, had invented his "flapper," he was clearly adapting much from Fellows' mannered drawing style into his own submitted gags. Other new converts were Hal Burroughs, Bertram Hartman, and Ralph Barton, who would each run with it in their own way. Fellows particularly liked to play with off-balanced compositions, even in the more conservative arena of illustration for advertising.

One of his early commercial clients was Kelly-Springfield Tires, which gave him the opportunity to combine his elegant draftsmanship with the clever, humorous copy depreciating the competition, thus often violating the rule against "negative" advertising. But Fellows' drawing and the copy had an edge of good humor that attracted a national following and the successful campaign lasted for many years.

In the thirties, Fellows gradually shifted his emphasis to fashion art, including both men and women, finding clients in Vanity Fair, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, The American Magazine, and McClure's. He also became a regular contributor to Apparel Arts magazine.

With only a limited number of men's fashion artists available, Fellows was most in demand for the male-focused subjects, particularly by the newly launched Esquire magazine in the thirties, where he was regularly featured in full-color spreads for many years.

Although Fellows considered himself a commercial illustrator, he was also a painter who exhibited periodically, later concentrating on abstractions. In reviewing his entire career, however, it is his early work, when he found a fresh viewpoint in a sophisticated spoof of the social upper crust, that makes us admire his audacity and leaves us with a smile of appreciation.

Walt Reed


"Fellows was born in Ardmore, Pennsylvania in 1885. He was trained in illustration at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art, and honed his trademark “continental” style studying in England and France. But the real story begins when he returned to the States in the early 1910s and burst on the scene as an eager and talented young artist.
Fellows found work contributing to satirical magazines like Life and Leslie’s, and his European-influenced style was fresh and new, reflecting the sleekness and stylization that led to Art Deco. His work was so fresh, in fact, that he found many of his better-known contemporaries, including John Held, Jr. and Ralph Barton, were adapting his stylistic elements for their own use.
Fellows’ style during this period was very mannered and graphic, with thin black outlines enclosing flat expanses of tone and compositions that emphasized graphic weight and balance over fussy illustrative detail. His bread and butter throughout the 1920s was his work for the Kelly-Springfield Tire company. He brought an idea to the Kelly advertising manager for a series of magazine ads featuring “smart cars and smart types of people.” It was the beginning of an assignment that lasted for nearly a decade. The ads are still smart and fashionable today (and becoming collectible, by the way).
But it was in the 1930s that Fellows found the niche that would shape the lives of dandies for the next 80 years: fashion illustration. Though he contributed to Vanity Fair, McClure’s, and The American Magazine, among other publications, it was men’s fashion where he was most in demand, and Apparel Arts, aimed at the tailoring trade, and Esquire were his showcases.
Fellows’ technique as a fashion illustrator was more painterly and detailed than his earlier commercial work. The man could draw fabric, plain and simple. His fabric had weight, heft, drape, texture, and sheen. His flannels, worsteds, tweeds, and linens, his barathea and velvet and twill were all fabulous.
He also defined a very specific, very masculine world. Unlike today’s fashion magazines, Apparel Arts didn’t dictate fashion trends by using underfed models in unwearable suits. It showed what was already being worn by the well-heeled, trend-setting folk. Fellows’ genius as an illustrator lay in his ability to depict them in their everyday activities. Whether they were traveling the world, hosting dinner parties, hunting grouse, or just lounging around the penthouse or club, Fellows somehow made their rarified universe accessible. Ordinary folks could look at the illustrations and say, “I could wear that.”
Rather than looking overdressed and stuffy, or merely human shapes on which to hang clothes, Fellows’ subjects are men for whom dressing splendidly comes naturally. They’re having a good time, smiling, and enjoying themselves in their relaxed, party-filled sphere, and all of them are illustrations of casual, well-tailored elegance.
Laurence Fellows died in 1964, and in 2009 was named to the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame. His immortality in the world of men’s fashion is assured simply because he had the ability to illustrate real men in their real lives and make those lives ones we all want to live." — BILL THOMPSON in Dandyisme.net

8 Times Timeless Quality