Anderson and Sheppard to open new shop in London’s Clifford Street
20/10/2011
Anderson and Sheppard, one of the most important names in British tailoring, has taken a lease of new premises on Clifford Street from the Pollen Estate.
Kitchen La Frenais Morgan and Drivers Jonas Deloitte acted on behalf of the Pollen Estate and Pilcher Hershman acted for Anderson and Sheppard.
Anderson & Sheppard will use the premises to sell ready to wear classic casual clothes including jackets, shirts, knitwear, ties, belts and accessories all made to the highest specification and sourced wherever possible from the UK. Hats, cufflinks, gloves and other small goods will also be sourced from across the world.
Anderson and Sheppard has served style icons over the years such as Fred Astaire, Gary Cooper and Douglas Fairbanks Junior. Today amongst their customers are the Prince of Wales, Ralph Fiennes, Brian Ferry, A.A. Gill and many more of the worlds most famous and elegant men.
The shop will complement the tailor’s bespoke only operation located close by in Old Burlington Street.
The century old firm was a strategic choice for the Pollen Estate which also owns significant proportion of the properties in Savile Row. The Anderson and Sheppard addition to Clifford Street together with the recent letting to Drakes at 3 Clifford Street compliments Savile Row and strengthens the important link with Bond Street.
The new store totals approximately 2,000 sq ft and has been acquired on a 10 year lease at £130,000 per annum.
2010 © Porterfield
"Yesterday was an Anderson & Sheppard day working with Anda, Audie and Emily on the No 17 Clifford Street project. Can’t even begin to tell you how rewarding – not to mention achingly funny – it is to be working with such a bright team of people on what is essentially the perfect auxiliary pieces for the man who orders bespoke suits. Of course the rest of Savile Row is buzzing like wasps in a jam jar about No 17. Considering the present troubles – Abercrombie threatening to take No 3 Savile Row, No 9 being vacant and Kilgour up for sale – you’d think now is the time for the Row to unite and fight. The fact that one of the Row’s great names is opening a new shop is surely good for all not just one.
We heard desperate news from a French visitor to No 17 yesterday that Old England is closing. This was devastating news not least because Old England hosted my Savile Row book launch in Paris. It is a glorious business and Paris will be poorer without it. Paris’s historic businesses are more precarious than London’s. But it is a salutary lesson to us all that the craftsmen on Savile Row, Jermyn Street and St James’s Street must be protected. Savile Row and The Perfect Gentleman are both essentially love letters to the craftsmen and women who make London such an unique city."
James Sherwood.
Anderson & Sheppard were founded in 1906 at №30 Savile Row. They were defined by mentor and cutter Frederick Scholte, developing a house style which became known as the "London cut". A high small armhole with a generous upper sleeve permits the jacket to remain close to the neck while freeing the arm to move with comfort. Customers have included Fred Astaire, Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, Cecil Beaton, Laurence Olivier, Noël Coward, Ralph Fiennes, Manolo Blahnik and Prince Charles. In 2004, Tom Ford became a customer of the firm, commissioning suits that would later appear in a 10 page ‘W’ magazine photo shoot. A founding member of the Savile Row Bespoke Association, Anderson & Sheppard moved off Savile Row to 32 Old Burlington Street in March 2005.
now Ozwald Boateng
( ...) A section on the A&S shop contains interesting photographs of its former premises at 30 Savile Row, which didn’t look much different in the early 2000s from their 1930s picture in Apparel Arts. In 2005, drastically elevated rents drove A&S out of its old address; Ozwald Boateng moved in. These pictures give a rare look into the era when A&S were famously secretive, its lair closed to inquisitive reporters and writers, and indeed it looks distinctly spare and un-designed, with bolts of cloth heaped on rows of tables. The ineffable magic, the reader presumes, emanated from the cutting rooms. The writers note that the elegant new shop on Old Burlington Street, with its couches and fireplace, recalls a “gentlemen’s club,” and most of us who will never set foot in a West End club can’t disagree. Indeed, the writers don’t mention that the new shop was designed to look like an idealized version of a tailor’s shop by Jérôme Faillant-Dumas’ L.O.V.E. Editions, a reimagining of a tailor’s shop for a generation and class that needs to visualize its myths.
Any brand coming out with a book has something to sell, something its product can’t communicate or can’t communicate loudly enough. Sometimes it signifies a sea change, such as with the recent Rubinacci book that accompanied that tailor’s push into retail expansion. In the case of Anderson & Sheppard, even as we read David Kamp’s paean to A&S’ remaining “a single bespoke tailor’s shop” “different from its bespoke brethren” in not diluting itself with “ready-to-wear or made-to-measure,” licenses or “satellite locations,” we can also read in Thursday’s news that A&S has announced it will open a second shop on Clifford Street in Mayfair selling ready-to-wear jackets, furnishings and accessories. We can at least hope that it helps support the survival of the bespoke side of the business.( ... )
-Réginald-Jérôme de Mans in "A Suitable Wardrobe"
January 27, 2011
Interview – Anda Rowland, Anderson & Sheppard
Author: Sabina Rosander in Cision Blog
Founded in 1906, Anderson & Sheppard is a prominent Savile Row bespoke tailor. In its English Heritage-listed rooms at 32 Old Burlington Street, Ralph Lauren, Tom Ford and the late Alexander McQueen have all learnt from the company’s head cutter of the company.
Anda Rowland became the tailor’s vice chairman in 2004, having started her career in cosmetics marketing, working for brands such as Estée Lauder and Parfums Christian Dior in Paris. Anda joined the board of the Savile Row Bespoke Association in 2006.
Cision: Anderson & Sheppard (A&S) was purchased by your father in the 1970s. What are your earliest memories of the company?
Anda: Visiting with my parents when I was about 10 years old. The shop had been fitted out in the 1920s and nothing had changed since then. Women and children were asked to wait in the front shop and there was a bench and chairs near the front door. It was very much an all male environment and the atmosphere and staff were very serious. The large majority of clients were referred by other clients and the company’s policy was not to speak to the press.
You left your job at Parfums Christian Dior in Paris in 2004 to take over the day-to-day operations at A&S. What were the reasons behind your decision?
The firm’s long lease at 30 Savile Row came to an end in 2005 and we had signed a new lease at smaller premises at 32 Old Burlington Street, about 300 metres away. The firm’s history and image were very much bound to the Savile Row shop and workrooms and we needed to create a new environment in Old Burlington Street that would reflect our heritage and values. The new premises were in a bad state and were effectively just a shell. Having worked in cosmetics for 10 years, I had a good grounding in luxury goods marketing and was excited by the challenge of working with one of the most authentic tailoring houses in the world.
How would you describe the development of the business over the past few decades?
The making of the garments has not changed much – we still cut every piece of cloth on the premises and all of our tailors are based in the UK, most nearby. Our client base has changed. It is more international and clients do their own research and do not just rely on recommendations from friends and family. We also see more young clients in their late 20s and 30s. The atmosphere at 32 Old Burlington Street is very welcoming and we have also opened our workrooms to our clients so that they can see how and what we make. The firm has opened up to allow clients to be more involved with all the choices available.
Who are your most famous clients, past and present?
We prefer not to speak about our clients but are lucky enough to have some very kind clients who mention us from time to time including HRH Prince Charles, Bryan Ferry and Manolo Blahnik.
Well known past clients include: Fred Astaire, Gary Cooper, Cole Porter, Noel Coward, Marlene Dietrich, Laurence Olivier, Francis Bacon and Duke Ellington.
The late Alexander McQueen first trained at A&S when he was 16 and Ralph Lauren and Tom Ford have come to observe the head cutter and managing director of the company. What would you say you learnt from each other?
Alexander McQueen was an apprentice coat maker and was with the firm for 2 years. He was a very quick learner. Tom Ford had new ideas on proportions and new uses for certain classic cloths which everyone enjoyed seeing. We have a number of clients involved in the fashion industry as they have a passion for making and quality and know how hard it is to find really exceptionally made clothing.
Before your arrival, A&S was without a web site or viable computer network. What made you feel that there was a need to be visible online, and how did you implement it?
We all knew that despite the firm’s policy in the past, PR was important for our continued success. As Savile Row is such a powerful name, we needed to make sure that we had a strong online presence in order to benefit from any publicity as Savile Row tends to be the search term that people use first. They search for company names after having run a Savile Row search. Our website is very visual and we were lucky enough to be able to ask a photographer client who understands our work to take the images. They are responsible for the success of our site. We launched the site in 2005 and will update it in the next month.
A&S Blog THE NOTEBOOK was launched late August 2010. What are you aiming to achieve by launching a blog and who is your target audience?
The Notebook emphasizes our values and underlines the fact that our garments are made on the premises by trained and skilled staff. It shows that we are not just a brand and shop front but a purely bespoke tailors. There are 25 apprentices on Savile Row – we employ 7 of them and we feel that it is important to show that we believe in our craft and the future of the business.
How have your marketing strategies of the past changed and how do you see them developing in the future?
We never had a strategy before 2005. We will maintain our current strategy of communicating via targeted PR and online. We have also been working on a book in collaboration with some of our clients which will be published this June.
How do you interact with PRs at the moment and what type of relations would you like to build?
We work with an agency who understand what we do and that it is not related to fashion. As we only produce bespoke garments, they know that we cannot send things out to photoshoots as we need to fit the person wearing the suit and that takes time. We have a program over the next few months that is targeted towards the launch of our book and towards client endorsements in selected publications.
Do A&S place advertisements in print or online media? If so, where?
No, we do not advertise as we feel that our budget is better spent on PR and online.
Will there be any A&S apprentices taking part in the Golden Shears this year? And will there be a blog post to look out for?
Yes! We are thrilled to have an apprentice participating. The competition’s final is in March and we will run a blog countdown from the beginning of February.
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