The Savile Row suit is the epitome of bespoke, but the concept has been devalued over the years by imitators. Darius Sanai spends some time getting up close and personal with the genuine article, Anderson & Sheppard, the tailor to Prince Charles, Tom Ford, and all points between
Sitting on a deep Chesterfield sofa in the showroom of Anderson and Sheppard, the Savile Row tailors, leafing through a box of cloth samples made of cashmere and vicuña, my eye is drawn to a thick leather-bound book on the table opposite. It is a volume of client details, from some 40 years ago. I ask John Hitchcock, the ever-attentive managing director, whether I can have a peek inside and he hands the book over.
Flipping to a random page, I note the date jotted down: April 23, 1967. The columns on the page are headed, ‘Name, London address and club’ and ‘Country address’. The name I see on the first page is that of Norman Granz, the jazz legend; a couple of pages back is Douglas Fairbanks Jr. In between, other, mere mortal customers have written down their names and London addresses, which are generally either houses or hotels in Mayfair. Under each name is a set of numbers which could be a spy’s code: some 30 sets of two digits, setting out the 27 measurements taken for a jacket, and seven for trousers, with a set of initials after each. The letters after Granz’s entry are ‘JH’. Mr Hitchcock nods – they are his initials. He has been measuring the world’s celebrities and captains of industry since before I was born. I note with some satisfaction that today’s book, and headings, are in exactly the same format.
‘Bespoke’, like ‘luxury’, is a word so overused now it has virtually been shorn of any meaning. A bespoke item of clothing is one that is, literally, ‘spoken for’, destined for a particular individual. However a quick Google throws up thousands of makers of bespoke garments that you can specify over the internet – just as you can find makers of ‘luxury toilets’.
What most of us imagine when thinking of a bespoke suit is something that combines real experts tailoring top-quality cloth to one’s own body and requirements, with a truly luxurious consumer experience. And for that, there is only one place to go, and it’s a shop just around the corner from London’s Savile Row, namely Anderson & Sheppard.
A&S is one of those places that’s so sophisticated, it neither advertises, nor markets itself in any way, nor lets it be known that its customers are the most discerning people in the world. That’s no exaggeration. You couldn’t think of two more diverse people, style-wise, than Prince Charles and Tom Ford, the style icon who rescued Gucci: yet both revere A&S for the sheer quality of its tailoring.
The company doesn’t talk about its customers unless they talk about themselves, but a confidential peek at some of the names on the patterns in its cutting room reveals a roster of names you’d usually find on the front page of the Financial Times, in the international politics pages of The Times, or in the interview pages of Vanity Fair – or all three. These are not people led by fashion; they simply want the best.
But what’s so special about bespoke in general and A&S in particular? “There are a few reasons why people buy bespoke,” says Anda Rowland, the company’s owner, a striking 37-year-old with a mind as sharp as a tailor’s needle. “Sometimes people want to be truly individual: maybe a traditionally cut suit made out of dark blue moleskin, or lined with Hermès silk, or with 15 pockets in particular places. There are people who are cost-conscious and want a suit that can last forever, however much their body changes: they buy quality knowing it’s worth it in the long run. There are customers who want the ultimate in comfort, and know the value of our trademark high armhole, or need a jacket to suit the shape of their torso. There’s the prestige factor; people like the idea of a suit made by Anderson & Sheppard. And there are those who buy for special occasions and want something suitably special.”
While A&S has been around for 102 years, and most of its staff for at least a decade, if not considerably longer, Rowland is a relative newcomer to the tailoring scene. Daughter of ‘Tiny’ Rowland, the tycoon who purchased the company in the 1970s, Anda is an Insead MBA and comes from a fashion marketing background. When she took the helm in 2005, the suits were as fine as they had ever been, but the rest of the company had stagnated. A&S’s Savile Row shop was old-fashioned and forbidding; and a pile of debts had mounted up because customers who hadn’t paid their bills were simply sent a polite reminder every few months or so, without any further action being taken – a Jeeves-like reaction rather outmoded in the internet era.
By then, a number of Savile Row tailors had reinvented themselves as fashion-led, youthful brands, appealing to the young wealthy and (bite your lip) footballers. Many offered customers ways in through ready-to-wear and accessories brands – you can buy into the Richard James brand through underpants and snaffle a ready-to-wear suit from Gieves, one of Savile Row’s most famous names, for the same price as a high street designer brand.
Anda was too wise to lead A&S down the mid-market, branded route. She identified the top-end of the bespoke market, where the brand already was, as having enormous potential, as long as it was dealt with in the right way. Thus the new premises, around the corner, are wood-panelled and feature a Chesterfield sofa as you walk in, as you’d expect; but the lighting is carefully thought through, and you are greeted with customer-facing window and shelf displays, rather than a bemusing galaxy of patterns and tape measures, as previously. The fitting rooms have well-lit, ample mirrors of the type you’d find in an Italian fashion store.
The cutting room is open to customers to stroll around, where they can watch a cutter snipping out the finest Scottish cloth to their own pattern; you can even poke around a button drawer and choose your buttons.
But, thanks be to Beau Brummell, Anda did not see fit to ‘modernise’ the brand with garish displays, white walls, stark logos, or branded jockstraps. You won’t hear Café del Mar Ibiza playing on a sound system at A&S. Her view was that even the less formal younger generation of wealthy would appreciate quality tailoring just as much as their forebears of 100 years ago, and her confidence has been borne out: last year the company signed up 170 new customers (not bad when the entry price for a suit is about £3000 (€3,800)). Three members of Vanity Fair’s Best-Dressed List 2008 were cited as favouring A&S – more than any other tailor.
So what is the A&S experience like? Since no gentleman’s wardrobe is complete without an A&S suit, I decided to try it out for myself. (Indeed, it would be more accurate to say that no gentleman should have anything but A&S suits in his wardrobe, but sadly that day is yet to come.) Strolling into the shop (no appointment required) I am greeted by Colin Heywood, a cheerful gentleman who fetches me a cup of coffee while I leaf through books of cloth samples. (The coffee is excellent Italian stuff, and I’m sure that’s Anda’s doing too.) I am looking for a town and country suit, something I could wear for dinner when invited by a foreign potentate to his estate in Scotland, for example, but which could at a push be worn to a London wedding.
With some guidance, I finally settle on a grey houndstooth that’s sufficiently different to my usual navy or black city suits but that doesn’t make me look like an extra from Goodfellas – always something to be wary of when you hail from the Middle East.
I stroll into a fitting room and the requisite 27 measurements are taken of my upper half, and seven of my lower half, by the jacket man and the trouser man respectively. I remind myself not to pull my stomach in for the trouser man (I’d only be fooling myself), and the jacket man tells me I have a broad chest. I resist the temptation to reply that I bet he says that to all the boys.
The experience is enjoyable and intriguing; these are gentlemen who have come up close and personal with some of the world’s leading actors, politicians and tycoons, not to mention royalty and the odd third-world dictator (African autocrats are famously fond of A&S). I decide not to ask them what kind of underpants African rulers wear; I’m sure they wouldn’t have told me anyway.
I return that afternoon to find Mr Hitchcock has already cut out my pattern, and that it’s hanging on a rail alongside those of the aforementioned celebrities and tycoons. I take a strange delight to see that I’m slimmer than a certain Hollywood A-list actor (though he has broader shoulders).
That visit was purely out of curiosity: my next fitting is a couple of weeks later, when the makings of a suit are draped around my shoulders, more measurements are taken, tailor’s chalk is applied to places, and I’m released.
Two weeks after that, the suit is ready. I resisted adding any mad bespoke quirks like pink satin lining or 73 pockets: my order is a two-button, single-breasted number with unlined, flat-fronted trousers with no back pockets (to keep the purity of line). There is a ‘ticket pocket’ for change in the trousers, and a BlackBerry pocket inside the jacket, but that’s it for signature bits; I also declined having my initials sewn into the lining, because that’s a bit arriviste and it already has a label with my name and date of order sewn into the inside right-hand jacket pocket.
My prior experience of bespoke has not always been happy; there was the Italian tailor who insisted on giving me shoulder pads out of Bugsy Malone; and the Savile Row tailor whose suit for some reason makes me feel like I’m wearing a tent. For that reason I’ve always approached bespoke with an element of scepticism: they may be made for you, but not every tailor who measures you up works for a company with the design flair of the best ready-to-wear, and my ready-to-wear Ermenegildo Zegna and Giorgio Armani suits could teach many tailors a thing or two about cut.
But this was in a different league. It sits perfectly, as formal as Prince Charles, as comfortable as pyjamas. The cloth, the cut, the way it drapes, the way it moves – to someone who is used to ‘normal’ bespoke, Anderson & Sheppard is something different. Suddenly, it made everything else on me feel untidy and inadequate: my expensive shoes looked cheap, my haute horlogerie watch felt messy, my hair needed to be cut again that instant. The A&S suit demanded respect, awe, more expensive shoes and an even hauter horlogerie watch (Lange & Söhne, or a Patek Philippe, or at the very least a Vacheron Constantin, since you ask). I’ll probably even need a new car: anything less than an Aston Martin DBS in gunmetal grey would be letting the side down, I fear.
In comparison to that, the £3,000 for the Anderson & Sheppard suit seems like a bargain; particularly as it will last for the rest of my life.
And how, I wondered to Anda, when the whole thing was done, do they keep themselves uppermost in the minds of their customers? Would I be getting emails or brochures in the post from A&S? She looked a little bemused.“We send out a Christmas card every year. That’s all,” said the understated Queen of Savile Row.