Brexit,
Covid and a World Gone Casual: Can Savile Row’s Legendary Tailoring Survive the
Moment?
The cradle
of Western menswear is experiencing seismic changes.
By ALEKS
CVETKOVIC
If you
had taken a walk down Savile Row last fall, you’d have found yourself on a
glitzy London shopping street, supercars lined up on either side and
well-dressed city slickers strolling between stores with suit bags fit to
burst. Skip forward 12 months, and all that has gone. As the UK slowly emerges
from its lockdown slumber, the Row feels more like a sleepy side street than
one of the world’s most famous retail destinations.
Savile Row
has been the lodestar of bespoke tailoring for over two centuries; the street’s
oldest firm, Henry Poole, opened its doors in 1806. Today, more than 15
world-class tailoring firms work inside whitewashed Georgian townhouses to
create exceptional men’s clothing by hand. Most bespoke suits here cost between
$5,000 and $6,000, require an average of three fittings and take around 80
hours of handwork over roughly three months to complete, passing through up to
five different specialist craftspeople on the way. It’s a time-honored process
and the definition of old school. To step inside your chosen tailor’s shop is
to begin a personal relationship with people who are on hand to create
one-of-a-kind clothes that will last a lifetime.
The past
year and a half, though, has presented Savile Row with unique challenges. For
starters, even before the smart-shirt-and-pajama-pants uniform of recent
months, the suit’s place in the world was growing less and less certain, as
office dress codes have relaxed, most notably in finance and law. Soft Italian
tailoring, with its lightweight construction and carefree informality, also
poses a threat to the Row’s traditional battle armor, which usually has more
padding in the shoulders and chest, making it rather more formal. Alongside
these cultural shifts, 2019 was marked by questions surrounding the impact of
Brexit on Britain’s luxury industry—and its repercussions on tailors’ ability
to stay competitive and attract Europeans.
Despite
these hazards, things were looking up: Many on the Row reported sales growth in
the first months of 2020. Then Covid-19 hit and they were forced to close up
shop completely for three months, a turn of events that has disconnected the
tailors from their international clients, who can constitute up to 80 percent
of business, putting serious pressure on cash reserves.
“International
travel, particularly to the USA, has played a vital role in the continued
success of Savile Row since the 1960s,” says William Skinner, the managing
director of Dege & Skinner and chairman of the Savile Row Bespoke
Association, the tailors’ official trade body. “For the key bespoke houses, the
clientele is approximately 40 percent American, 30 percent European, 20 percent
British, and other areas such as the Middle East and Asia account for around 10
percent. Now there’s nervousness about when the US border will reopen and our
regular trunk shows can resume.” With travel restrictions likely to be in place
for the rest of the year—at press time, most foreign visitors were required to
self-isolate for 14 days upon entering the UK—Savile Row is now faced with a
simple yet daunting prospect: adapt quickly or die.
In the
first instance, many tailors started to communicate with overseas clients on
videoconference calls, sending out fabric samples to drum up interest and some
even shipping test or sample garments for clients to try on at home, but these
solutions are unlikely to make up for the serious drop in revenue plaguing most
houses. Cad & the Dandy is one of the Row’s newest and largest firms,
cofounded in 2008 by James Sleater and Ian Meiers, and it’s among the hardest
hit. “I’m expecting us to be 50 percent down this year,” says Sleater. “We’re looking
at losing approximately £1.75 million [around $2.25 million] worth of sales for
the three months of lockdown alone.”
It’s a
similar picture at other tailors. Stalwart Henry Poole, inventor of the tuxedo,
by the way, relies on overseas trunk shows for almost 70 percent of its
business—and 40 percent of those trunk shows take place in the US. A few doors
over, 20 percent of Richard Anderson’s business is American, and you’ll hear
similarly concerning geographic breakdowns from tailors up and down the street.
The
question then becomes, how does Savile Row reach its clients at a time when
travel is tricky at best and impossible at worst? The obvious answer is to
digitize, but opinions differ on whether companies like these, which rely on
client interactions that can feel as intimate as doctor exams, could thrive
online. “We’ve been taking advantage of technology wherever possible,” says
Skinner. “Some customers like these innovations. Others still prefer the more
traditional approach. Certainly, it’s been a genuine challenge to maintain the
standards expected of Savile Row bespoke tailoring without being hands-on.”
Back at Cad
& the Dandy, which, as a relatively recent addition to the Row, is often
viewed as a disrupter, Sleater is taking a different approach. The house
already sells accessories and some shirts online but now plans to launch a
sizable collection of off-the-peg wardrobe staples—made using bespoke
techniques in the firm’s own workshop—toward the end of the year. “We were just
starting to think about making some ready-to-wear pieces before lockdown, but
now we’re accelerating our ready-to-wear collection,” says Sleater. “It will be
made up of pieces you’d tend not to [buy] bespoke, like overshirts or safari
jackets. I’m also looking at ways to step up what we can do digitally, whether
that’s webcams in our workrooms or more virtual fittings. The rest of 2020 is
all about showing that we’re more versatile than most people realize.”
Retail
consultant Ray Clacher understands the realities better than most. During his
time as commercial director of Gieves & Hawkes, he took it from a tailoring
house with around $25 million in domestic turnover in the early 2000s to a
diversified global brand with annual revenue of more than $125 million by 2012,
when he became managing director and further developed its strategy involving
ready-to-wear, e-commerce and international expansion. “Often, I think Savile
Row doesn’t realize what it has,” Clacher says. “The Row can be quite insular,
and some firms fear trying something different—or just don’t know how to digitize
and showcase what they can do online.”
But it
would be remiss to write off the tailors as reactionary. Bespoke tailoring is a
niche product for a niche audience, and many tailors are innovating in their
own fashion. Huntsman, one of Britain’s most famous houses, has built a robust
US business with a pied-à-terre and permanent bespoke cutter in New York,
allowing the firm to service its clients there even when other tailors can’t
travel to the city. After experimenting with two bespoke offerings—one made
entirely in-house, the other partly outsourced overseas—Huntsman in July
decided to drop the all-Row service, unless a client is willing to pay a
substantial premium. A jacket will now start at $3,950. “Consumers are still
looking for that bespoke piece but conscious of spending,” says Huntsman owner
Pierre Lagrange. The company is also offering a made-to-order option with
in-person or video consultations and the promise of delivery in three to four
weeks.
Outsourcing
certain stages of bespoke production in return for a lower price proved popular
with both new and existing clients, a clear indication that today’s customer
doesn’t obsess over every single stitch of his new suit being made at a
specific address. The Savile Row Bespoke Association, on the other hand,
decrees that its members must make suits within a 100-yard radius of the street
itself. But to remain competitive, more tailors may have to adapt to
outsourcing, as have some prestigious shops in other parts of town. Edward
Sexton and Whitcomb & Shaftesbury, for two, offer bespoke clothing that
relies on workshops in China and India for certain tasks, both with success
similar to Huntsman’s, attracting a younger client while maintaining quality.
Sexton’s Offshore Bespoke now accounts for 50 percent of its orders, for
example.
All these
challenges are compounded by most firms’ steep overheads. Bespoke suits are not
cheap to make (world-class raw materials and the wages of highly skilled local
workers add up), and while rents on Savile Row are reasonable by Mayfair
standards, a ground-floor commercial unit still costs an annual $90,000 to
$260,000 to rent. The Pollen Estate is the street’s majority landlord (most of
central London’s property is held in chunks by private estates, a system
inherited from the 16th and 17th centuries), and it’s been working closely with
the Bespoke Association for the past two years to increase foot traffic. But
here, too, lockdown has set things back: As of midsummer, there were 10
ground-floor vacancies, and some of the street’s thoroughbred tailors,
including Chester Barrie, had shuttered pending liquidation or permanent
closure.
“Our
ambition is to ensure as many of our tenants as possible can work through to
the other side of Covid-19,” says Julian Stocks, the Pollen Estate’s property
director. “We’re closely working with the tailors to give them some breathing
space.” The estate has moved quickly to put in place a welcome mixture of rent
reductions and deferrals, but this short- term relief doesn’t resolve a
long-term, and potentially more damaging, issue: Many of Savile Row’s
street-level properties are restricted to clothing retail or manufacture by the
government (a regulation, ironically, designed to preserve the Row’s
character). The unintended consequence of banning complementary businesses,
such as watch shops or art galleries, and even bars and restaurants, is an
absence of the kind of vibrancy that might draw new customers.
That said,
there is new blood. The Pollen Estate has taken the bold step to collaborate
with men’s stylist and writer Tom Stubbs, who’s taken up residence at No. 31
Savile Row with a brief to introduce new brands to the street. In many ways, he’s
the ideal candidate. His trademark summer look is a double-breasted bespoke
suit, worn open, over a tank top: a more contemporary styling of tailoring.
He’s also masterminding the Instagram page @therowstance to capture the
street’s most colorful personalities out and about, myth-busting the stereotype
that Savile Row is staffed only by crusty characters in chalk stripes.
Moreover, he has succeeded in cajoling dynamic bespoke tailoring duo Joshua
Dobrik and Kimberley Lawton onto the street for a six-month residency. Dobrik
& Lawton are based in edgy northeast London and known for using their
Savile Row training to make couture suits that feel more red carpet than
boardroom-ready. Theirs is a radically different aesthetic to old- school
Savile Row, but that’s the point.
Alongside
Stubbs’s efforts, other young brands are lending the street fresh energy. Chief
among these is Drake’s, the quirky British haberdasher that’s known for its
irreverent aesthetic and casual approach to tailoring and that opened a new
flagship on Savile Row last fall. It’s not a bespoke tailor, but Drake’s is
nonetheless making the kind of relaxed, slouchy jackets and pants that are in
right now, and helping to bring a younger generation of snappy dressers onto
the street. The same applies to Hackett, which opened a palatial store at No.
14 Savile Row last November, and Thom Sweeney, which is soon to open its new
four-story townhouse one block over on Old Burlington Street. This expansive
space will host bespoke tailoring, made-to-measure and a modern ready-to-wear
collection under one roof.
Between
them, these new players are changing the street from a tailoring hub into a
“full-look” shopping destination, with everything from navy blazers to luxe
cotton T-shirts. To many fashionistas observing the street from afar, it’s real
progress. Creative consultant Jason Basmajian was creative director at Gieves
& Hawkes from 2013 to 2016, and worked alongside Clacher to modernize the
brand. Also of Brioni and Cerruti 1881 fame, Basmajian is convinced that Savile
Row needs to broaden its horizons. “My role was to view Gieves through an
international lens,” he explains. “We took a Savile Row identity and gave it a
global feel, made it a little more comfortable and contemporary. We understood
that there was a bigger world out there, and we wanted Gieves to be more than a
tailor’s shop. To see some brands on the street doing this now is really
exciting.”
In some
corners, there are rumors of more radical thinking still. “Craft industries
have always had to evolve to stay relevant. Tailors used to sew every stitch by
hand before the invention of the sewing machine,” says Dominic
Sebag-Montefiore, creative director at Edward Sexton. “Designer brands are
starting to invest in fashion tech like 3-D printing and body scanning, but
surely there’s no better place than Savile Row—where we’re experts in garment
fit and construction—to be pioneering these technologies. I’d love to explore
how we can make 3-D modeling and AI work for bespoke tailoring.”
While not
quite so maverick, even some of the old guard are daring to mix things up in
their own way. Henry Poole is trying out a new “super-lightweight” design that
takes the heft out of its conventional suit. “We’re already seeing that our
clients are thinking about their wardrobes differently,” says managing director
Simon Cundey. “Post-Covid, I expect most of our clients will go the way that
San Francisco has gone for us. We’ll make less business suits because
highfliers no longer need to wear them, but the same highfliers will invest in
relaxed, lightweight tailoring to dress up in and wear about town instead. Men
will always want to dress elegantly to go to dinner or see friends.”
Perhaps all
is not lost, then. Savile Row has some huge challenges to negotiate through
2020 and beyond, but its community of tailors remain optimistic, and many are
working hard to navigate their way through this new, rocky landscape. “Savile
Row’s collective nature is its strength,” says Sleater. “That’s the thing we
have that separates us from other world-class tailors in Paris or new entrants
in Hong Kong. We need to work together now to ensure we’ll still all be here in
a year’s time. This street has survived two World Wars and the Great
Depression, so we plan to be around for a good while yet.”
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