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July 29, 2006

blight and sight...

[Mr. Anthony Hewitt, one of the great veterans of Savile Row, relaxing at his desk at Number 9 Savile Row. Mr Hewitt is also the exact same age as Giorgio Armani.]

If you've been living in the UK, I hope you've been enjoying the recent heat wave. I know when I meet our American friends over here in London, they're just astonished that it’s not raining, and finding the temperature quite normal for them. It’s a bit too hot on Savile Row for me, but buzzing around my local Cumbrian lanes in an old MG is a lot of fun. It's certainly a great way to commute to work.

I would like to thank everyone who has applied for the apprentice position. There are certainly some very passionate young people out there, and I'm delighted to have such a response. We'll start working through the pile of applications soon, and I’ll let you know of any news as it develops.

[My MG parked next to a visiting client's Italian Spyder. Now cars are one thing the Italians are really good at.]

Life is strange how it can throw up marvelous things one day, then totally disappoint you the next. I normally don't care to discuss things like this, but I've had a lot of enquiring mail asking my opinion of this bit of drivel in The Times: "Armani Attacks Savile Row".

I think the main reason why I'm disappointed by this article is not Mr. Armani's silly ramblings, but more the fact that a journalist of such a respected newspaper would take this story seriously. Then again, the writer is a journalist, and Mr. Armani is a couturist. They are both two individuals who know nothing about [A] true bespoke tailoring and [B] how business is done on Savile Row. For Mr. Armani to set himself up as an authority on this subject is ludicrous, and equally ludicrous is the journalist’s inability to separate reality from PR drivel. Had it appeared in some frothy fashion magazine I wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but for it to appear in one of our nation’s great broadsheets greatly concerns me.

We English tailors have been offering the complete sartorial package on the Row for over two hundred years, advising our customers on shoe makers, shirts, ties and jewelry. The difference is between us and Armani is, we direct them to other professionals in their particular field, we don’t pretend to be the best at everything. That way we help maintain the crafts, and also our clients get real authoritative service from the people who matter. We do it for reasons of heritage and tradition, we do not do it for the opportunity to be part of the "snob" group of customers that Mr. Armani so desperately desires. "Snob", by the way, is Mr. Armani’s word choice, not mine.

For anyone to pin the hopes of their new venture on the assumed “snobbishness” of future clients is astonishing. The very fact it's being marketed this way would make me avoid it like the plague, even if I was wealthy enough to spend £75,000 on an outfit.

The one thing I know about my customers is, they do not wear my clothes to impress their friends at cocktail parties, or because they wish to partake in a spot of social climbing. They wear them simply because they appreciate both the product and the people involved in creating them.

My clients range from twenty-year-old college students, to eighty-year-old farmers. I make for customers who do world-famous work in design and technology, and people who have the both the financial and intellectual clout to make or break any number of so-called "designers". They live in the real world and are very much part of it. They are not using my services in order to live up to some empty fantasy ideal, conjured up in some soulless media boardroom.

That being said, Mr. Armani, your unnecessary name-calling, uninformed opinions and ego trip notwithstanding, I'm pleased you are giving your craftsmen an opportunity to grasp the highest rung on the sartorial ladder, and hopefully some of them will excel there. Good luck to them.

But yes, to answer some of my readers, Savile Rows has heard all this sort of nonsense before. And it sounded tedious and vacuous back then, too.

[Me, without glasses, post-laser-eye-surgery.]

On a different but still relevant note, I've just had laser eye surgery. Not directly connected with tailoring, I know, but you must admit a blind Savile Row cutter would make an interesting blog post. It’s pretty obvious how valuable our sight is, especially for my work.

Until last Thursday I was long sighted. Not a problem, my glasses and contact lenses dealt with the problem. However, I knew as you get older things get worse, and Mister Magoo's glasses may eventually be required.

Therefore, I looked in to the possiblity eye surgery a few years ago, and I was sadly not impressed. The main reason was not the possible outcome, but more the way it was marketed to me. Like a lot of things, they were only giving me half the story, the good half. I was bombarded with statements like "Throw your glasses away", " Look more attractive" and so forth. Granted, we know the latter could never apply to me, but I still wasn't convinced, I felt misguided and hence my confidence waned. No matter, I decided to save up and wait for another day.

Then one day, quite by chance, a good customer of mine recommended Professor Dan Reinstein, of the London Vision Clinic. To use his words, my customer was “literally a couple of steps away from the dog and stick”. However, after few months, since beginning treatment his life was transformed, quite literally. He told his girlfriend he had to go and see the dancing girls of Paris again, as he had missed them the first time round.

So I decided to look in to them further. The thing that first pleased me about these people was their attitude. No excited sales pitches or promises, the most thorough eye examinations I've ever had in my life, and all for no fee. Although it was a totally different field from my own, it reminded me of how I like to think my customers feel. Before I take on a new client I want them to know as much as possible. What my style is, and the benefits and limitations it affords.

So then I immediately got my hammer and headed to the eye surgery piggy bank. I now was given confidence with clear information, from people who mattered. A clear informed decision was made.

Well, I've had the treatment and I'm happy to report, I’m amazed and delighted with the results. This of course is not the end of the matter, I have to return regularly over the coming twelve months, and then every year to monitor things. Although they now have my money and have done as they promised, that could’ve been that, however as they are more interested in the work that they do, they have offered to keep checking until they're 100% confident they have done the best possible for me.

The decision of choosing a tailor shouldn’t be taken lightly, but of course choosing an eye surgeon has considerately more serious connotations. So as with Savile Row, get the best you can. If you visit Dan, do say “Hello” for me.

And who knows, I may get lucky and find myself a beautiful wife one day. She will of course need to be almost blind to accept a proposal of marriage from myself, so after I've married her maybe he'll do us a deal and sort her out as well :)

Posted by tom at 1:04 PM | Comments (9)

July 10, 2006

looking to take on an apprentice...

Mr Sheppard's shears [of Anderson & Sheppard, the most respected tailors in London].

Last year I wrote about Mr Sheppard's shears:

These shears were given to me by head cutter, Mr. Hallbery on his retirement, after forty years with Anderson & Sheppard. They were the original shears used by Mr. Sheppard of Anderson & Sheppard, which first opened its doors in 1905. Before that, his teacher, Mr. Cameron gave them to Mr Hallbery, decades ago, when he retired. And before that, Mr. Sheppard gave them to Mr. Cameron, when he retired. And doubtless I'll hand them over to some young turk when my turn to step down arrives. The torch is passed on.

I am looking for my first apprentice. The business is starting to grow and I'm going to need lots of help down the road. Besides that, I've just turned forty and I have start to thinking about the future.

Five criteria:

1. You would need to be young enough so that, when it comes time for me to retire, you would still have a good career still in front of you, with enough time to train your own apprentice.

2. You must be able to work and reside legally in the United Kingdom.

3. You must be willing to live within a short commuting distance from Warwick Hall, Cumbria, where I have my main offices.

4. You must be willing to go through the very rigorous, un-PC, hardcore old-school training and conditions that I went through with Mr Halberry and others, until you are ready [It takes about 5 years of torment before the tailor will let you near a customer].

5. You must be of the right temperament. A tailor's apprentice is not for everybody. That being said, I don't care where you're from or what your background is, so long as you have the right attitude and can provide good references.

If you feel you might have a chance of looking after Mr Sheppard's shears one day, by all means please e-mail me at tomapprentice@yahoo.co.uk in strictest confidence. Thank you.

Posted by tom at 4:23 PM | Comments (0)

July 5, 2006

after the fitting...

[A pile of my American customers' suits, ready to be re-made after their first fittings. Don't panic, I know it looks a crushed pile. But this is the way it's done and nothing will be harmed. Handmade suits are very resilient. All the suits have been ripped down and matched with their patterns for updating.]

Thank God, we've been very busy lately. Lucy and I had a wonderful time on our recent American tour. It was lovely to catch up with old and new friends, though we were both exhausted by the time we arrived back in England, late last week.

[Lucy and her ever-changing hair, on the balcony of New York's Hotel Benjamin.]

My customers I generally regard as friends, and when we meet in London or Cumbria we're allowed a lot more time for business, and then a drink or lunch afterwards, than we get in America. So as a result, everyone in America wants to book the last appointment of the day, for a drink after work. After two weeks of this I start feeling a bit of an alcoholic.

Many of our customers are very interested to know what happens to their clothes after we'd fitted them in the US, and then got them home to Cumbria. What happens next?

Basically, its the same as if you'd had your fitting here at Warwick Hall. The clothes are taken apart and rebuilt.

People are mystified by all the shorthand we write over the job in chalk, when we're fitting your new suit. I'm sure by the puzzled looks I get, many of you must think it's good theatre, just there for for effect. But I promise its not an act, you can see the basic stages in the process of ordering a suit here. However in a little more detail, this is what happens at a fitting.

Obviously we will try on the trousers first and mark as necessary, and then we do the jacket. The instructions I will mark on the suit with chalk, and then I copy on a piece paper after the fitting. This is done because chalk is not permanent, and by the time it's been in a suitcase for a week and hauled round America, it can all look very confusing. Especially when I open my suitcase with jet-lagged eyes.

Some of the details are too complicated to explain here, but these are the basics:

[Above:] This shows the three very basic marks: to shorten [left], lengthen [right], and if were lucky, the cross in the middle means to leave everything well alone.

[Above:] This shows where we want to stretch or shape the fabric, over a prominent calf or shoulder blade.

The two pictures below show different types of sleeve pitch adjustment.

[Above:] This says to pitch the sleeve up 3/8 of an inch.

[Above:] This marks where your arm should hang in relation to your body.

[Above:] When we mark like this over a seam it tells the tailor to let out [left] or take in the amount as marked [right].

When we get back home we rip the suit apart and analyse all the marks, then transfer the changes to the cutting pattern. It's generally a good system that works well. Sadly it's quite time consuming, but that's just the way it is

Posted by tom at 11:16 AM | Comments (1)