Mark Anthony Richard
Powell (born London November 11, 1960) is a British fashion designer
whose emphasis on bespoke tailoring has gained a celebrity clientele
with custom from actors George Clooney, Daniel Radcliffe and Martin
Freeman, rock stars and style icons Bryan Ferry, Mick Jagger and Paul
Weller and supermodel Naomi Campbell.
Powell's dandyism,
keen sense of fashion history and mix of references from the
Edwardian era to the present day has been recognised as contributing
to the resuscitation of "great British bespoke .
Powell - who has
produced collections for Marks & Spencer and collaborated with
fashion brands Mulberry, PPQ and Michiko Koshino - is associated with
London's Soho area, having operated from the locale for more than 25
years; his latest venture is the shop Mark Powell Bespoke in Marshall
Street, London, W1.
Powell started his
fashion career at King's Road retro boutique Robot in the late 1970s
and developed an interest in made-to-measure when commissioning
garments from the Robot outlet in Floral Street, Covent Garden.
In 1984 Powell
opened his first shop, Powell & Co, in Soho's Archer Street,
stocking suits and menswear in the style of the sharp East End
characters of his childhood. This was the first manifestation of what
was later to become known as "gangster chic"; among
Powell's clients were the incarcerated Krays.
By the early 90s,
when he was operating from a top-floor studio in D'Arblay Street
Powell had a customer base including Jagger, Ferry, Vic Reeves, who
sported Powell's neo-Edwardian suits for his TV appearances, and
George Michael, who wore a Mark Powell suit for his performance at
The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert.
Powell's suits have
been worn by Mel B of The Spice Girls, for the group's meeting with
Prince Charles in 1997, Naomi Campbell, notably for her court
appearances, and Keira Knightley.
In 2000 Powell was
installed at a studio in Brewer Street where visitors for fittings
included the DJ/actor Goldie, the Earl Of Stockton Daniel MacMillan
and singer-songwriter Kevin Rowland, who commissioned Powell outfits
for the 2003 live reunion of his group Dexys Midnight Runners.
In this period -
when his work was noted for its "attention to detail" -
Powell also created collections for Marks & Spencer's Autograph
range and his clothing has featured in such films as Absolute
Beginners, Shopping and Gangster No. 1.
Powell's shop opened
at 2 Marshall Street in June 2010.
Powell has
participated in several Department of Trade & Industry-organised
international fashion shows, and staged four of his own during London
Fashion Weeks.
A three-piece Powell
suit is part of the Victoria & Albert Museum's permanent
collection and was featured in the museum's 1997 Cutting Edge
exhibition.
Powell also
contributed garments to the British Fashion Council's 21st Century
Dandy exhibition of 2003 and appeared in the accompanying book.
Powell's work was
also covered in Eric Musgrave's book about tailoring, Sharp Suits.
Mark Powell: An
artist with a needle and thread
Renowned for his
classically inspired tailoring, Mark Powell’s clothes have attained
iconic status via a successful combination of bold, experimental cuts
and historically-informed styling.
Established in 1985,
Powell is now one of London’s most influential bespoke tailors and
a one-off in the world of international haute couture. He’s a man
who has maintained an independent, unique vision for more than three
decades, a sartorial vision that remains focused on the marriage of
street style and flare to the traditions of Savile Row.
His is a high style
and, to borrow a quote from American man of letters Gay Talese,
Powell is an “artist with a needle and thread”. It’s the sharp
end of menswear, realised with old world panache.
And if style is the
perfection of a point of view, then Powell’s continues to be sought
as players from the worlds of film, television, music and sport come
knocking, including George Clooney, Harrison Ford, Mick and Bianca
Jagger, David Bowie, George Michael, Bryan Ferry, Naomi Campbell, Tom
Jones, Jonathan Ross, Vic Reeves, Usher, Frank Lampard, Goldie,
Morrissey, Kevin Rowland, Keith Flint from The Prodigy, The Killers,
film director Joe Wright, Keira Knightley, Phil Daniels, Jonathan
Rhys Meyers, Sean Bean and, more recently, Sir Bradley Wiggins,
Martin Freeman and Paul Weller.
Magazines and
journals such as Esquire, Arena, GQ, L’Uomo Vogue and The
Huffington Post and books such as The Look, The New English Dandy and
Savile Row: The Master Tailors of British Bespoke by James Sherwood
and Tom Ford have documented Powell’s rise to the position of
pre-eminent London stylist, and if imitation is the sincerest form of
flattery, then it’s a fact of which Powell is only too aware.
“There are others
who try to copy what I do,” he says, “but they don’t know how
to get the right balance between exaggeration, subtlety and styles.
It all comes down to detailing, while keeping a dandy edge. I’m
firstly about style, and then I’m about the craft of tailoring.”
As an uncompromising
stylist, modernist and educator, he’s a man to whom details will
always matter.
Renowned for his
classically inspired tailoring, Mark Powell’s clothes have attained
iconic status via a successful combination of bold, experimental cuts
and historically-informed styling.
Established in 1985,
Powell is now one of London’s most influential bespoke tailors and
a one-off in the world of international haute couture. He’s a man
who has maintained an independent, unique vision for more than three
decades, a sartorial vision that remains focused on the marriage of
street style and flare to the traditions of Savile Row.
His is a high style
and, to borrow a quote from American man of letters Gay Talese,
Powell is an “artist with a needle and thread”. It’s the sharp
end of menswear, realised with old world panache.
And if style is the
perfection of a point of view, then Powell’s continues to be sought
as players from the worlds of film, television, music and sport come
knocking, including George Clooney, Harrison Ford, Mick and Bianca
Jagger, David Bowie, George Michael, Bryan Ferry, Naomi Campbell, Tom
Jones, Jonathan Ross, Vic Reeves, Usher, Frank Lampard, Goldie,
Morrissey, Kevin Rowland, Keith Flint from The Prodigy, The Killers,
film director Joe Wright, Keira Knightley, Phil Daniels, Jonathan
Rhys Meyers, Sean Bean and, more recently, Sir Bradley Wiggins,
Martin Freeman and Paul Weller.
Magazines and
journals such as Esquire, Arena, GQ, L’Uomo Vogue and The
Huffington Post and books such as The Look, The New English Dandy and
Savile Row: The Master Tailors of British Bespoke by James Sherwood
and Tom Ford have documented Powell’s rise to the position of
pre-eminent London stylist, and if imitation is the sincerest form of
flattery, then it’s a fact of which Powell is only too aware.
“There are others
who try to copy what I do,” he says, “but they don’t know how
to get the right balance between exaggeration, subtlety and styles.
It all comes down to detailing, while keeping a dandy edge. I’m
firstly about style, and then I’m about the craft of tailoring.”
As an uncompromising
stylist, modernist and educator, he’s a man to whom details will
always matter.
Mark Powell Bespoke
Tailoring
2 Marshall Street,
Soho,
London
W1F 9BA
shivaun@markpowellbespoke.co.uk
020 7287 5498
The
mod squad... meet the tailor to Bradley Wiggins, Paul Weller and
Martin Freeman
Cyclist Bradley
Wiggins, singer Paul Weller and actor Martin Freeman have one thing
in common — their tailor. Nick Curtis talks to Mark Powell about
the return of the Brit look
4 years ago
The mod squad...
meet the tailor to Bradley Wiggins, Paul Weller and Martin Freeman
As tailor to Bradley
Wiggins, Martin Freeman and the Modfather himself, Paul Weller, Mark
Powell is the suitmaker for the new Mod revolution. Powell, 52, made
the dapper outfits that Freeman wore to the New Zealand, New York and
Tokyo premieres of The Hobbit, and the gorgeous double-breasted
velvet number that Wiggins carried off with such aplomb at the Sports
Personality of the Year Award.
“Martin is very
pernickety, a perfectionist who knows exactly how he wants things
made and has a very strong look,” says Powell, his growly East End
geezer’s accent unsoftened by decades in Soho. “Paul is that way
too. Bradley is lovely to dress because he’s tall and slim and he
looks very smart, but also a bit edgy. With his shape you can put
more of a waist and more of a skirt into a jacket and make it more
elegant. A subtle boot-cut looks better on a long, slim leg. But he
don’t make much fuss: he didn’t even want to try on the blue suit
to check it looked okay, but I made him.”
Wiggins sought out
Powell 18 months ago — “I barely knew who he was back then,”
says the tailor — after hearing an online sartorial show called The
Modcast, on which Powell mentioned that he dressed Weller. Four years
ago Weller asked Powell to make him some double-breasted grey
pinstripe suits based on a 1967 fashion spread in a magazine called
Rave, which in turn were a homage to the outfits for the film Bonnie
and Clyde. Around this time, Powell also started making clothes for
Freeman, including a short-jacketed, slim-trousered pinstripe based
on a suit worn by Miles Davis circa 1962.
This was just after
Powell had opened a shop offering dandyish bespoke suits from £2,700,
made-to-measure from £1,300 and ready-to-wear from £800 just off
Carnaby Street, where the Vince Man shop and the tailor John Stephen
dressed the first mods in the late 1950s. And where shops like The
Face (and, until recently, Merc London, now online) sell two-tone
tonic suits and bullseye T-shirts to the faithful.
Today, with mod
favourites John Smedley and Ben Sherman showing at the second ever
London Collections: Men this week, alongside Liam Gallagher’s take
on the movement’s casualwear through his Pretty Green label, it
seems Powell is surfing a zeitgeist-y wave. There are even
mod-influenced music acts like Jake Bugg and The Strypes picking up
cues from Weller and the Who. Arguably, the mod values of seriousness
and sobriety (the early mods were pill-poppers rather than boozers)
sit well with our straitened times.
“Mr Weller, Mr
Wiggins and Mr Freeman are all basically following the philosophy of
the early mods,” says Powell. “Everyone was wearing suits back
then [in the late 1950s], so what the mods did was add more detailing
and styling but in an understated way. They were influenced by
Italian tailoring and by the Ivy League, preppy look, knitwear and
bow ties. But it was never a generic look, it was always changing,
always evolving. These three guys are putting more of a contemporary
spin on it.”
Powell thinks there
may also be an element of urban aspiration to mod: he is from
Romford, Weller from Woking, Freeman from Aldershot, Wiggins from
Kilburn, and they are all now “men about town”.
Indeed, the mod look
— derived, fittingly enough, from the word “modernist” — has
been through several incarnations, the smart-suited, clean-cut style
of aspirational working-class lads who listened to US jazz and soul
shading later into the ska-loving, pre-racist skinhead look, with its
Harrington jackets and Ben Sherman shirts. Then it was, in Powell’s
words, “f***ed up” by the Who’s 1979 film Quadrophenia, which
dramatised the mod vs rocker battles of the 1960s and established the
cliché of mods as scooter-riding, parka-wearing clones. He points
out that the flamboyant late-1960s looks of Terence Stamp, Twiggy’s
manager Justin de Villeneuve and Lord Lichfield were every bit as
“mod” as Pete Townshend in his Union Jack suit or Phil Daniels on
a Lambretta.
POWELL thinks the
new flowering of a personalised, stylish version of the look is “a
reaction to the homogenisation of clothes. If you walk down Savile
Row, everyone’s doing the same one-button, slim-fit cut — that
hedge-fund manager style. And people have slowly got bored with
over-branded clothing. They want to express their individuality.”
Powell’s own
influences are too eclectic to be tied to a single genre of fashion.
At this point I should probably declare an interest: he made me a
shadow-striped, gauntlet-cuffed suit for my wedding 13 years ago, and
both suit and marriage are still going strong. He’s made clothes
for Bowie and Bryan Ferry too, for the films Absolute Beginners,
Shopping and Gangster No 1, designed an Autograph range for Marks &
Spencer in 2007 and dressed Naomi Campbell for several public
appearances, including in court.
His own look is a
blend of Edwardian gent, riverboat gambler and East End gangster:
when I first knew him he had crayon drawings by Ronnie Kray, a
client, on his wall.
Powell was born in
the East End and raised in Romford — his father worked in textiles
and his mother for the theatrical costumier Charles Fox. Even at a
young age he was taking oddments of cloth from his dad to a tailor.
He learned to measure and cut properly in the 1970s at the outfitters
Washington Tremlett on Conduit Street. He opened his first shop on
Archer Street in 1985, selling “unworn suits from the 1940s, 1950s
and 1960s that I’d found in a warehouse” and began his tailoring
business from there.
He has daughters
aged 22 and 15 and a 19-year-old son, and since the break-up of his
marriage five or six years ago has lived in Soho, first in Frith
Street, latterly in Wardour Street. “It was the place I knew I’d
never feel lonely, and I love it,” he says.” The only trouble is
you do become insular and don’t leave the place much, because
everything is here. Even walking to Mayfair or Covent Garden is a big
thing.”
A past Evening
Standard article about modern rakes saw Powell talking happily about
the joys of gambling, drugs, underground drinking dens and lapdancing
clubs. “I’ll always be a bit of a hellraiser, but I’ve calmed
down with age,” he says blithely. He is single and shares his flat
with his son Max, who hopes this year to apprentice himself to one of
Powell’s friends in Savile Row as a cutter. “I’ve tried to
persuade him not to become a personality tailor, and to concentrate
on being a good cutter,” says the proud dad. “But he wants to be
the next Mark Powell. Or whoever.”
No comments:
Post a Comment