Tuesday, 3 March 2026
THE WALKER SLATER STORY
THE
WALKER SLATER STORY
https://www.walkerslater.com/our-story
Walker
Slater was founded in 1989 in the Scottish Highlands before later settling in
Edinburgh’s Old Town, which is where its headquarters are today. Despite now
being over 30 years old, the company has not deviated from its mission, which
is to champion the heritage and sustainability of tweed and woollen fabrics
through contemporary and elegant clothing.
Established
by Frances Slater and Paul Walker, who helms the brand as creative director,
the company started out with humble beginnings of supplying remote communities
with hard-wearing classic clothing to combat the harsh elements. It quickly
transcended its roots in the Highlands by moving south and opening outposts in
Edinburgh, Glasgow and London. Within each store, quaint and charming interiors
and passionate staff harmoniously cultivate Walker Slater’s own, unique world
and provide customers with an authentic taste of Scotland.
Ready-to-wear
tailoring is the central part of the offering (made-to-measure is offered,
also), with a range of flattering suit styles that appeal to a wide demographic
and range of social settings, such as for weddings and business. To sit
alongside it, there’s a comprehensive offering of lifestyle garments – from
outerwear, shirts, knitwear, denim and silk accessories – for both men and
women. Overall, quality reigns supreme, and with Walker’s timeless approach to
understated design and deeply-rooted appreciation for fabrics that are
sustainably made, its creations are crafted to last.
As a
result of the fortune of being from Scotland, the palettes of Walker Slater’s
collections are inspired by its natural beauty. From the age-old towns and
cities with their rustic charm, to the most remote moors and lochs that make
even the most intrepid traveller lost for words, the earthy landscapes that
reflect off still waters, warm cityscapes, and infinite nuances between them
can be seen each season.
A
fundamental area of the business is working in close proximity with its range
of suppliers and mills, most notably the world-renowned Harris Tweed Hebrides.
Over the last three decades, Walker Slater has worked season on season with
Harris Tweed to create a myriad exclusive fabrics. In addition to that, it also
supports and promotes the lesser-known mills in The Borders, as well as
specialist mills in Italy and beyond.
In 2017,
Walker Slater launched a new line called Messrs, which aimed to appeal to a
younger, more dynamic audience and it has been a roaring success. It does this
through slimmer cuts and eclectic fabrics that are a refreshing and more
youthful alternative to the traditional garments the mainline Walker Slater
brand produces.
Over the
years, Walker Slater has had the privilege of collaborating with, and creating
garments for, a range of major sporting teams and organisations. Naturally,
none fill the company with more pride than Scotland’s national football and
rugby teams. In 2014, it worked directly with the Ryder Cup, which was hosted
at the exceptional Gleneagles Hotel, and designed a dedicated collection with
an exclusive Harris Tweed cloth. In addition, Walker Slater has also designed
uniforms for a host of esteemed hotels across the United Kingdom and European
Union.
With
plans for expansion overseas in the next few years, most notably in Japan where
there’s immense appreciation for traditional craft and textiles, Walker Slater
will continue to do what it’s always done: create exceptional value for money
items that are authentic and pure, and above all, represent Scotland on a
global scale.
Paul Walker: The Walker Slater founder and designer .
Walker Slater
For the artist, artisan, and aristocrat in all of us; a heritage from the loom. Tweed and other natural fibre clothing for all occasions.
Sunday, 1 March 2026
JEEVES ( António Sérgio Rosa de Carvalho ) visits TOMMY PAGE , Amsterdam, wearing a tweed suit made by Tommy Page Mantique
In the past I
introduced Tommy Page in Amsterdam in this ‘blog’: "TOMMY PAGE vintage
mantique in Amsterdam. "
Visiting Tommy
Page is a truly unique experience. Tommy was born in Amsterdam, but his father
was British. After a background as a designer in Fashion/Clothing his interests
were directed to a vast and passionate study and knowledge of the entire
British heritage of Men's Clothing. That's why Tommy besides being able to
provide the acquisition of archetypes of Hacking Jackets, Norfolks, etc.
represented by mythical labels like Harry Hall, Pytchley, Dunn & Co, Bladen
Supasax or Daks, presents in the décor of his store a real and stimulating ‘arsenal’of
inspiration through exemplary specimens which constitute true
sources of stimulating archetypes of study and reference.
These unique
examples are study pieces and are not for sale, but to make up for this, Tommy
offers an authentic and true tailoring
service with multiple possibilities of unique fabric choices of the best
British mills and various models of
jackets and suits that meet the
measurements and choices of his customers.
So Tommy provided
me with a suit made of a windowpane with the signature of the famous HARDY
MINNIS.
The rest of the
features and details of the suit in question, can be observed by the
experienced eyes of the visitors of this 'blog', through the images I publish.
Greetings from
JEEVES ( António Sérgio Rosa de Carvalho )
HARDY MINNIS. Cloth ( SEE BELOW )
HARDY MINNIS
https://www.hfwltd.com/hardy-minnis.html
Now
Hardy
Minnis provides iconic British made fabrics to top-class tailors who value
time-honoured ways and a knowledgeable, reliable service. We hold a Royal
Warrant, granted by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and are proud of our British
manufacturing heritage.
Best known for the Finest Worsted Suitings and
Classic Country Tweeds, Hardy Minnis produces iconic British cloths with
timeless appeal and is renowned worldwide for collections such as Alsport,
Fresco and QZ.
Combining innovation in our designs, and
tradition in our outlook, the Hardy Minnis brand is the epitome of British
elegance with global appeal.
Then
Hardy
Minnis was established in the late 1960’s by the merger of two famous Woollen
Merchants, John G Hardy and J&J Minnis. The two companies were well known
in their own right and had, over the years, become two of the most respected
cloth merchants in the trade.
Mr. John G Hardy founded his company in the
1890’s. An intrepid explorer and something of an eccentric, he scoured small mills
around the UK for Tweeds and Country cloths. Legend has it he was one of the
first cloth merchants to visit the Scottish Highlands and Hebrides, and to
introduce Shetland and Harris Tweeds to the tailors of the world. He was
allegedly so protective of his sources that on his return trips to London, he’d
smuggle the new found fabric swatches under his top hat!
As his reputation grew, the popularity of
signature cloths such as Alsport caught the attention of the Royal Family and
in 1929 the Duke of York who would later become King George VI, used a John G.
Hardy cloth for the Regimental Tweed of the Brigade of Guards. When King Edward
VIII was the Prince of Wales, he acquired from John G. Hardy the black &
white district check that would later bear his name. Since the 1930’s the
company has been privileged to hold Official Warrants for the supply of cloth
to the Royal Household.
J&J
Minnis had an even earlier pedigree having been established in 1874 in London’s
West End. Brothers James and John Minnis built up a company which is
acknowledged as one of the oldest and most respected names in the cloth
merchanting business world-wide.
Savile Row was well established as the world’s
most prestigious street for gentlemen’s clothing when J&J Minnis took up
residence at Number 16, in 1902. The company soon developed a reputation for
its luxury fabrics and fine designs and became the primary cloth resource for
its esteemed neighbours along ‘The Row’. J&J Minnis is also widely credited
with being the first British cloth merchant to introduce Savile Row quality
fabrics into the Japanese market.
The two companies merged in 1969 and J&J
Minnis inherited the Royal Warrant, which is now granted jointly to Hardy
Minnis.
Saturday, 28 February 2026
Thursday, 26 February 2026
Dennis Severs' House
Dennis
Severs' House is a historical tourist attraction at 18 Folgate Street in
Spitalfields, within the East End of Central London, England. Created by Dennis
Severs, who owned and lived in the house from 1979 to 1999, it is intended as a
"historical imagination" of what life would have been like inside for
a family of Huguenot silk weavers. It is a Grade II listed Georgian terraced
house. From 1979 to 1999 it was lived in by Dennis Severs, who gradually
recreated the rooms as a time capsule in the style of former centuries. Severs'
friend Dan Cruickshank said: "It was never meant to be an accurate
historical creation of a specific moment – it was an evocation of a world. It
was essentially a theatre set.”
In 2021,
a large trove of audio tapes were found, and were condensed to create a new
Dennis Severs' Tour, conducted by an actor. The house's Latin motto is Aut
Visum Aut Non!: "You either see it or you don't."
The house
The house
is on the south side of Folgate Street and dates from approximately 1724. It is
one of a terrace of houses (No.s 6–18) built of brown brick with red-brick
dressings, over four storeys and with a basement. The listing for the house,
compiled in 1950, describes No. 18 as having a painted facade, and with
first-floor window frames enriched with a trellis pattern. By 1979 the house
was very run-down; it was saved by the Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust,
an architectural preservation charity.
History
One of
the bedrooms
Dennis
Severs (16 November 1948, California, US – 27 December 1999, London) was drawn
to London by what he called "English light", and bought the
dilapidated property in Folgate Street from the Spitalfields Trust in 1979.
This area of the East End of London, next to Spitalfields Market, had become
very run-down, and artists had started to move in. Bohemian visual artists
Gilbert & George added to the flavour of the neighbourhood; resident there
since the late 1960s, they also refurbished a similar house. In addition, the
historian and writer Raphael Samuel lived in the area. The group of people
Severs was a part of, who began renovating houses in Spitalfields in the 1980s,
is sometimes referred to as the Neo-Georgians.
Severs
started on a programme to refurbish the ten rooms of his house, each in a
different historic style, mainly from the 18th and 19th centuries. The rooms
are arranged as if they are in use and the occupants have only just left. The
rooms contain objects either of the period, or made by Severs. An
authentic-looking 17th-century swag over a fireplace was made of varnished
walnuts. A four-poster bed, that Severs slept in, was made of pallets and
polystyrene. There are displays of items such as half-eaten bread, and
different smells and background sounds for each room. The Victorian poverty and
squalor room had smells described as disgusting, but real.
Woven
through the house is the story of the fictional Jervis family (a name
anglicised from Gervais), originally immigrant Huguenot silk weavers, who lived
at the house from 1725 to 1919. Each room evokes incidental moments in the
lives of these imaginary inhabitants. Peter Ackroyd, author of London: the
biography, wrote:
The
journey through the house becomes a journey through time; with its small rooms
and hidden corridors, its whispered asides and sudden revelations, it resembles
a pilgrimage through life itself.
Cultural
studies researcher Hedvig Mårdh writes that Dennis Severs' House is
"admittedly difficult to categorize" and that it combines scenography
and artwork. The art form practised by Severs has been described as "a
type of theatre unique and rare"; in Severs' obituary, Gavin Stamp defined
the house as "a three-dimensional historical novel, written in brick and
candlelight". Severs himself offered the term "still-life
drama", which today is used in a number of notes that guide silent
visitors around the house. He wrote, to describe his endeavour:
I worked
inside out to create what turned out to be a collection of atmospheres: moods
that harbour the light and the spirit of various ages.
Writer
and illustrator Brian Selznick used the house as an inspiration for his 2015
novel The Marvels. The book concludes with a short history and photographs of
Dennis Severs. Many of the characters' names and story lines are similar to
what can be found in the museum.
The
writer Jeanette Winterson, who also restored a derelict house nearby to live
in, observed, "Fashions come and go, but there are permanencies,
vulnerable but not forgotten, that Dennis sought to communicate". Painter
David Hockney described the house as one of the world's greatest works of
opera.
The house
was bought by the Spitalfields Trust shortly before Severs, long HIV-positive,
died of cancer two days after Christmas 1999. Severs wrote before his death
"I have recently come to accept what I refused to accept for so long: that
the house is only ephemeral. That no one can put a preservation order on
atmosphere." Nonetheless, the house was preserved, and open to the public,
who are asked during their visit to respect the intent of the creator and
participate in an imaginary journey to another time.
Television
Severs
appeared as himself on an episode of Tell The Truth on Channel 4, dated 9
November 1984, discussing the house. Severs and the house also appeared in the
1985 BBC documentary Ours to Keep: Incomers.
Dennis Severs' House - 18 Folgate Street ...Wonder House ... Historical Time Capsule ...
Dennis Severs' House, 18 Folgate Street is a Georgian terraced house in Spitalfields, London, England. From 1979 to 1999 it was lived in by Dennis Severs, who gradually recreated the rooms as a time capsule in the style of former centuries. It is now open to the public.
Dennis Severs' House is a time capsule attraction in which visitors are immersed in a unique form of theatre. The ten rooms of this original Hugeuenot house have been decked out to recreate snapshots of life in Spitalfields between 1724 and 1914. An escorted tour through the compelling 'still-life drama', as American creator Dennis Severs put it, takes you through the cellar, kitchen, dining room, smoking room and upstairs to the bedrooms. With hearth and candles burning, smells lingering and objects scattered apparently haphazardly, it feels as though the inhabitants had deserted the rooms only moments before. The Dennis Severs House tour is unsuitable for children as tours are conducted in silence.
Once upon a time, David Milne used to arrange all the old things from his parents’ house in the attic of their home to create his own world of play. David is pictured here in the attic of Dennis Severs’ House in Folgate St where today, as curator of the house, it is his job to arrange things – both in the general sense of maintaining every aspect of the property and also in the specific sense of arranging all the myriad objects that fill these crowded rooms.
Yet the success of David’s arrangements renders his labour invisible, since when you come upon the artifacts occupying these rooms, everything appears to have occurred naturally in the course of the daily life of the fictional inhabitants. But very little is accidental in this house of mysteries, because everything has been arranged to tell a story, and making those arrangements is David’s tour de force and his life’s passion too.
“I think I have a good understanding of what the life of a servant must have been like, except I am the servant to an imaginary family,” David confided to me after years of cleaning and polishing. Widening his eyes significantly as he revealed his qualification, “though I am a very taxing master – because everything has to be right.” and underlining the statement with such a stern glance that I almost felt pity for him, suffering such an exacting scrupulous employer.
I recognised the glance from when David instructed me to hold silence upon my arrival at the house, when I came to visit during a public opening. It was a look of such gravity that it ensured silence reigned throughout the property, no-one dared utter a word in the face of such an authoritative visage. Yet this hauteur only serves to emphasise the unexpected radiance of his smile when you greet him off duty, because the evocation of fantasy at 18 Folgate St is a serious business and David understands his dignified responsibility to set a certain tone whilst at work. It is an onerous duty that magistrates, members of the clergy, footmen and the guards at Buckingham Palace will recognise, and one which David has perfected to an art.
David discovered 18 Folgate St in his early twenties when was exploring London by following the medieval street plan and he came upon Norton Folgate while walking up through Shoreditch. He peered through the lattice-work of the dining window and spied the baroque interior. “Spitalfields at that time was dark and faded, as if the eighteenth century inhabitants had simply locked their doors and gone, and because I had seen into one of the houses, my imagination created the stories in all the others.” he told me, recalling the moment with delight.
With characteristic rigor, David decided that he would never pay to visit the house, because he knew at once that his involvement had to be more than a tour. Fortuitously, years later, he was invited to a party in the East End and found himself back outside 18 Folgate St. As he explained to me, “I came into this house, walked up to the first floor where Dennis Severs was sitting in the Smoking Room holding court with his circle of friends, and I asked him, ‘Whose house is it?’ and he said, ‘It’s mine!’ And from that moment we were friends, speaking on the telephone every day until two weeks before his death. I never came to this house to strip it down, I never asked questions, I never asked ‘Why?’ I just accepted it as his beautiful creation.”
David lives in a tiny modern flat built upon the roof of a Victorian stucco mansion block in Earls Court, that he has furnished with seventeenth century furniture and lit entirely by candlelight – like a cabinet of curiosities – existing in a manner that is completely in tune with the ambience of Folgate St. “When you live with candlelight, you learn how to use it.” David told me, “You don’t arrange your candles evenly in the room and all at the same height, as people commonly do. You place them strategically. For example, in the kitchen here, there is a low candle on the table where the cook was studying a recipe book. I like to place things together in the manner of ‘still life’ and I love the light of seventeenth century paintings, you see it everywhere in this house.”
I realised how unusual it was for David to sit and talk, because his job consists primarily of housework, revealed by the long apron that is his professional uniform. All four storeys, staircases and rooms, are cleaned twice a week, the silver, brass and copper are polished every fortnight, floors and furniture are waxed annually, bed and table linen are laundered and starched regularly, and dusting is a continuous activity. Additionally, the food is prepared daily, with the master’s breakfast cooked every morning, and tea and coffee freshly brewed. It takes all day, while the house is closed, to prepare it to open for visitors, because even maintaining imaginary inhabitants in the patina to which they have become accustomed takes a lot of work.
As with Mick Pedroli, house manager, David Milne’s involvement in the house is personal, rooted in his friendship with Dennis Severs, which ultimately led to his lifelong commitment to the vision which the house manifests. ”I used to come and stay regularly, and Dennis and I used to play together, cooking meals and taking photographs. I spent twelve Christmases in this house. When Dennis died, I decided to step up and take on the house because it needed people who understand it. Now I am waiting for the right person to walk through the door, one day, who can do my job.” said David, getting lost in thought, gazing fondly around the artfully dilapidated Dickensian attic where he stayed when he first came to visit for weekends at Dennis Severs’ extraordinary house so many years ago, “It’s a story that’s never-ending.”
(from the blog: "Spitalfields Life Daily" ...July 24, 2010
by the gentle author )
