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HRH The Duke of Edinburgh visited the company’s Larkhall
factory in Scotland in recognition of its role in exporting goods worldwide.
(Larkhall was built in 1948 to Simpson’s specifications and
was opened by Harold Wilson who later became Prime Minister of the United
Kingdom. The factory since closed in the early 2000s. DAKS was granted the
Royal Warrant of Appointment by HRH The Duke of Edinburgh in 1956. Her Majesty
The Queen and HRH The Prince of Wales granted the company with Royal Warrants
in 1962 and 1982 respectively.
The company developed a House Check in 1976 by Johnny Mengers,
the Group Managing Director of the time and last family chairman. Representing
the most luxurious fabrics and richest colours of camel and vicuna, and the
check has since become iconic for the brand.
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DAKS is a heritage British luxury fashion house, founded in
1894 by Simeon Simpson. The S Simpson brand became famous for its high quality
ready-to-wear tailoring and later the patented self-supporting trouser design
known as the DAKS trouser in the 1930s - the first self-supporting trouser in
the world when the use of braces and belts were more common. Also renowned for
its quality tailoring and iconic house check, the brand continues to produce
high quality clothing with three Royal Warrants, selling in over 30 countries
in more than 2000 shops, with strong recognition in the Far East it has become
the number one non-domestic label in Korea. The label currently shows its
menswear collections in Milan and womenswear collections at London Fashion
Week. Since 1991, the company was acquired and has become a subsidiary of Japan
listed company SANKYO SEIKO CO., LTD.(TYO:8018)
In 1894 Simeon Simpson, aged 16, rented a room on Middlesex
Street, East London, with the intention of setting up a business in bespoke
tailoring, focused on high standard craftsmanship. Several innovations of
technology at the time were being introduced with machinery capable of making
buttonholes and electric powered saws to cut many layers of fabric at once –
Simpson saw the potential for such equipment for producing garments in higher
quantities while still upholding quality tailoring techniques, aiming to
improve ready-to-wear standards as no male or female professionals considered
ready-to-wear for suitable attire at the time. Simpson’s methods proved
successful in speeding up the process and he set up several factories within
London, which soon required expansion in its early years through popularity of
the label.
Alexander Simpson, his second son, joined the business aged 15 in 1917, and by 1929 had planned
and opened a larger factory in Stoke Newington where production could be
centralised, this again had to be enlarged a few years later.
20th century – DAKS and Simpsons Piccadilly
With the continued growth of the company Alexander Simpson
began to take more control of the business, and in 1935 DAKS gained further
fame for the S Simpson brand as an innovation in the tailoring world of the first
self-supporting trouser. He went about to invent a way to support his trousers
that wouldn’t need braces as these interrupted his swing whilst playing golf
and caused his shirt to become untucked. The DAKS trouser was invented – it had
a channel within the waistband at the back wherein an elasticated strip was
attached at the sides with tabs attached to one of two buttons for adjustment.
On the inside of the waistband were sewn-on rubber pads that gripped the shirt
and stopped it from becoming loose. This happened in a world where to buy a
pair of trousers of high quality one would have to have a bespoke pair made by
a tailor, and thus this new design allowed the ease of ready-to-wear trousers.
Simpson was so sure of his new design that he had 100,000 pairs made before
being introduced to the public at a high price of 30 shillings in a time when a
whole bespoke suit would cost 50 shillings. The trousers were available in many
colours and fabrics that weren’t generally associated with menswear. They
became so popular that the trousers were incorporated into suits and soon after
a DAKS womenswear line was released, using the patented waistband for skirting.
The inception of the DAKS name was aiming to be something
short, snappy and eye catching and is an arrangement of initials from the two
men involved in its development – ‘AS’ for Alexander Simpson and ‘DK’ for his business
associate Dudley Beck (his surname’s last letter was used so as to make a
better sounding name than using a B hence why the name is capitalised. The
advertising agent involved for the promotion of these new trousers, Sir William
Crawford of WS Crawford Ltd thought up the idea to market them as ‘Dad’s
Slacks’ as it had connotations of reliability and comfort whilst also sounding
similar to the name DAKS.
At the turn of the 21st century when the company was
acquired by Japanese group Sankyo Seiko Co. Limited in 1991, the S Simpson name
was dropped and DAKS became the new brand name.
The ease-of-wear of the trousers and how they allowed
movement, as intended from Simpson’s invention, led to DAKS being popular in
sporting wear – kitting tennis, golf, motor racing, and football players, and
even for the British Olympic team in 1960. The quality of S Simpson tailoring
was such that the company was commissioned by the British Government at the
time of the Second World War to produce military uniforms for Officers in the
Army, Navy, Royal Airforce and Women’s Services even despite the
semi-destruction of the Stoke Newington factory due to bomb damage and loss of
electricity[10] – with about seven million garments made for military services
being produced.
After the war when DAKS clothes were announced to start
selling to the public again queues of people would form down Piccadilly, to
which Simpson tailors would measure them in line and present suitable pairs of
trousers to them when they got into the Simpsons of Piccadilly store.
Simeon Simpson’s son Alexander Simpson, who was then owner
of the company, decided he wanted to find a ‘window’ for Simpson clothes in the
heart of London. He founded Simpsons of Piccadilly when the Geological Museum
had closed and the site to be auctioned. The new building was designed by
architect Joseph Emberton as a new and revolutionary retail establishment, the
shop front windows exhibited the first curved glass display in Great Britain
and the largest in the world at the time, these were designed so that no
reflection would be cast to obscure the displays inside. The outstanding
feature of the shop’s interior was the travertine staircase that ran up through
the centre of the store lit by a continuous window up the height of the
building. The current lighting structure suspended through the staircase centre
is the original from the 1930s as the building has since become a listed
building.
The store opened in April 1936 by Sir Malcolm Campbell, the
world famous motor-racing driver. and was famed for its visual merchandising
and window displays by László Moholy-Nagy, a former director from the Bauhaus
school. Opening the store was a highlight of Alexander Simpson’s vision, he
died the following year of leukaemia aged just 34.
Simpsons continued to trade successfully in the Simpsons
Piccadilly building for several decades more, helping officers and civilians
during World War II, and in later years branched out to sell other clothing by
designer labels such as Armani and Christian Dior. Since 1999 Simpsons stopped
trading at the Piccadilly store and moved the renamed DAKS to a new flagship
store and London offices to Old Bond Street, whilst moving to another new store
on Jermyn Street which was recently refurbished in 2012 to focus on selling
classic menswear. The original store was sold to bookseller Waterstone’s and
now serves as their flagship store.
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| The new flagship store on Old Bond Street |
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