TRAIL BLAZER FOR THE LADIES

Taking inside leg measurements was not a job for a lady, it used to be thought in conservative Savile Row.

But such  prim circumspection has no place in the modern fitting room, where the Row’s burgeoning body of female tailors deal with requirements as part and parcel of the job.

“I wasn’t allowed in the fitting room when I first came to Savile Row,” Fadia Aoun recalls. “I started with Edward Sexton in 1994 and he didn’t think I should do fittings.”

But when she moved after 5 years to Robert Bright’s Wells and Johns & Pegg firms, she was immediately versed in the skills of measuring and fitting by Robert. “He was wonderful and taught me so much.”

Fadia came to the UK from the Lebanon in 1992 and undertook a three year course in fashion and tailoring at the London College of Fashion. She didn’t know of Savile Row but did know that England was the place where men were beautifully dressed and that she wanted to learn tailoring. Whether she came to reconsider the one, she has certainly been successful in the latter, now running her own business under the name of Brian Russell.

Above, one of the velvet numbers being made by Fadia Aoun, seen here and below a slim ladies dinner suit with satin revers.

Brian Russell had been with Anderson & Sheppard before starting his own business. When Fadia joined him from Wells, she learnt to apply the soft, unstructured style that is the A & S hallmark.

“I was influenced by his soft approach but I like a bit more shape, quite a fitted style. I combine a soft make with a more fitted line.”

When Brian Russell died in 2007, she took over the business and kept the name. “I have retained a lot of his customers, but also gained a lot of new ones, who come to me mainly by recommendation. And some have brought their wives. I have a lot of lady customers now. Really, there is quite a variety, from young and old and in between, and both sexes.”

In addition to her own clients, she is the London representative for the Tom Brown firm. This centuries-old company has dressed more Prime Ministers and heads of state than any other, in its role as tailors to Eton college out in Windsor. With an enviable record of capturing the young pupils as customers for life, its London services are provided at Fadia’s base in Sackville Street.

This is on the first floor, above tailors Meyer & Mortimer. Though she does all the cutting and fittings for her clothes, she is able to use the tailoring skills on hand below to complete them – a satisfactory arrangement for both. Her admin assistance comes in the shape of her sister, Dee.

Though classic styles are the basis of her business, she works on plenty of unusual designs as well – one for a lady an adaptation of a tailcoat design for evening wear, another a lavishly fur trimmed coat for a man. “I’m doing quite of a lot of fur trimmed styles currently,” she says. She likes tweed, showing an incredibly soft version for a jacket, and also says velvet suits are in favour. “They may wear the jacket with matching trousers or over jeans.”

Having been on the Row (Sackville Street is traditionally encompassed within the Row’s environs) for some 18 years, and owning her business for five of them, she may be said to have successfully blazed a trail that other females have followed. A slight, elegant woman, with quiet authority and charming manner, she has become very much established in her own right and earned the respect of fellow tailors.

"I always wanted to do tailoring, from when I was a little girl. And now I have this lovely workroom in this lovely building and I love London. And I'm busy, always busy!" And she returned to cutting her latest garment.