TAILOR TO WORLD'S TOP STYLE ICON

Top name on the all-time best-dressed-man lists is Cary Grant, elegant star of such movies as North by North West, The Philadelphia Story and To Catch a Thief, to name but a few.

Not surprisingly, a raft of tailors claim to have made suits for him but one with pictures and documentation to prove it is Arnold Grayson.

A tailor who has witnessed a revolution in men’s clothing since he earned his diploma in tailoring from the old Tailor & Cutter Academy in 1946, Grayson cuts an elegant figure himself, now working just a few days a week but still with a loyal clientele.

“I made for Cary Grant from 1979 up to his death in 1986,” he said. “He was a very nice man as well as being elegant, a real gentleman,”

Starting work in his father’s tailoring business after WWll, Grayson decided he wanted to learn the craft properly. “So I went to the Tailor & Cutter Academy.”

Eventually taking over his father’s business under his own name, with a large shop and workrooms near to the Old Vic theatre, he did very well “until the revolution of the 1970s”.

“Suddenly, jeans and T-shirts were in and sons stopped wanting to follow in their fathers footsteps to a bespoke tailor.”

Seeing the writing on the wall, he looked to the West End for a career move – and became something of a trailblazer by opening a tailoring concession within Harvey Nichols, then in Wigmore Street.

“Concessions are everywhere now, stores are shopping malls, but then, in 1976, I was the first one to establish a bespoke tailoring concession. I also established a link with a Japanese store, and built up quite a business in America from personal recommendations.”

From Harvey Nichols, he moved to a concession within Selfridges, where he established an impressive customer base over 13 years, then moving to Burberrys, and later opening a hand tailoring department in Holland & Holland.

“Many of these customers were from overseas,” he points out. “And as you get older, so do many of your clients! But I still have a loyal following, some who come here from long distances and others who I visit in their homes.”

He is a walking embodiment of bespoke elegance, and can’t understand why young men today “don’t want to look nice”.  Remembering days when youngsters would queue outside his father’s shop on a Saturday morning to order a new suit, he finds modern standards of dress a far cry from the taste and style shown by Grant and a host of other celebrity customers he has had over the years.

Now with a facility within Holland & Sherry’s Savile Row showrooms for fittings, he has workrooms in Soho and a team of long-experienced tailors. “I just work a couple of days a week, though I will do more if someone needs something in a hurry. And I still enjoy it.”

At top, style icon Cary Grant, as seen on the back of Eric Musgrave's book, 'Sharp Suits', by Pavilion; a snapshot of Grant with Arnold Grayson; and left, a little seen shot of Mick Jagger with slicked back hair, for whom Grayson made suits for the film Performance.

There is no Arnold Grayson website but his email is arnoldgrayson@tiscali.co.uk

LATEST HISTORY BOOK ON SAVILE ROW

For over 250 years, tailors have been stitching away in Savile Row, making for the rich, the not-so-rich, the famous and the infamous. In this small thoroughfare, princes and stars, emperors and impecunious playboys have had their inside legs measured and their paunches concealed by wizards of the tailoring craft. And the latest book to chart this beguiling history is published this October by Thames & Hudson.

The result of patient and dedicated research by its author James Sherwood, it goes into the histories of the tailors and into their workrooms. It charts the many glamorous clients over the years and the styles they and lesser mortals have had made for them. And it provides a raft of previously unseen and specially commissioned photographs that will be a delight for bespoke aficionados.

'SAVILE ROW The Master Tailors of British Bespoke' is a lavishly produced hardback, ISBN 978 0 500 515242, price £45.