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News, Suits, Tailor News

Savile Row Style’s resident guru, Robin Dutt, praises Anderson & Sheppard for its ineffable sense of English style

Speaking of the soft drape… if you are in conversation with anyone who has any interest in ‘sartoria’, the one tailor possibly to be mentioned will be Anderson & Sheppard. Like a particular hallmark, expressing provenance and maker, the mastery of the shape of the drape has, since 1906, been at the epicentre of the individuality at the heart of this establishment. Its senior directors share over 100 years of experience.

Sir Hardy Amies famously (and often) trumpeted about sharp suiting being a vulgarity; a knife needs to be sharp – a suit does not. “Ease, peace, flow” was his making mantra when it came especially to the male wardrobe and he wrote lists of tips on how to be elegant in his famous ABC of men’s fashion published in the 1960s. And in a way, is not Amies’ tailoring philosophy at the heart of Anderson & Sheppard, too?

Beautiful clothes speak without a voice.

The late A.A. Gill, who was a contributor to my first art exhibition I Criticus in Notting Hill in 1987, spoke highly of Anderson & Sheppard. A sonic writer, he once described a suit made for him here as “a thing of striking beauty” – obviously remembering Keats.

Model turned designer, Tom Ford simply says that, Anderson & Sheppard is the best tailor in the world.

One might reasonably opine that all the above mentioned had no reason to want a soundbite attached to their names. Each Savile Row tailor’s presence on this unique London and internationally renowned street (once a street of doctors) has its own unique identity – easily understood, easily trusted. For, when one finds one’s tailored carapace, it is a matter of lifelong trust. And, whilst it may seem that the tailors are in competition, this is not really so simple. Everyone on the Row can collectively boast over a thousand years – or more – of contributing to a unique identity. A very English affair – the envy of the tailoring world.

There is no enmity in The Row. Perhaps, mutual arch admiration. In the tailoring alphabet, “A” is for Admiration. “J” is not for jealousy. Like an extended family, you can’t love everyone but you acknowledge all who are part of it. There is a reason why those who are there, are there. There is obviously a reason why others, so far from sartoria, crave a Savile Row address.

Anderson & Sheppard was established in 1906 and, like any true tailor on the Row, boasts several loyal staff with especial disciplines from Front of House (very important) to finishing (the outcome). Each element of any great tailoring house seems labyrinthine but it is actually and more importantly, logical.

Fabric to those who love it and understand it has soul. Fabric itself might be said to be the tailor.

I interviewed the great designer Yuki some time ago and he insisted that he cut as little as possible into the material, because for him, cutting cloth was akin to cutting skin. Master tailors know the importance of the performance of cloth.

One would hope to trust a doctor. It is the same with a tailor. One is in their hands. One might come in with an idea of what it is thought might make one a sartorial Adonis. But the masters must prevail. They know what will suit – quite literally.

The English Drape is also known as the London Cut. In 1906, it was a reaction to the constricting tailoring (sharpness again?) of the recently extinguished Victorian era. Dr Jaeger apart, who was passionately advocating the use of only natural fibres next to the skin, might have made a noble bow. Indeed, to emphasise the importance of any indispensable natural material, sourcing remains the central tenet. And what better way to remind all those who choose to care that the Campaign for Wool, which first took place in the autumn of 2010 and again in 2015, drove a flock of sheep down Savile Row? The sheep didn’t know it but they were the stars of the show. Their first skin is our second. Our second becomes our first.

Anderson & Sheppard is a typical old-school tailor. The interior is akin to a gentleman’s club, quiet, peaceful, all at ease with paintings, heritage furniture and leather-bound ledgers. Always so reassuring – even if you don’t know why. Other tailors refer to the company as “the Savile Row cardigan” – a reference to how, on the Row, one never refers to a jacket – that’s only for potatoes.

Naturally, perhaps Anderson & Sheppard’s most famous client is HRH The Prince of Wales. But is a sense, all customers are princes of their own being, princes of discernment. One might ask, what the legacy of this establishment might be? Perhaps the answer is easy enough.

Put simply, it is to be as it always has been. Even time itself can never counter real style.

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Savile Row Style’s resident guru, Robin Dutt,

Events, Launches, Lifestyle, News

The team at Savile Row Gin were delighted to have received the most votes for the best gin, as voted by attendees at its first consumer gin event, The Gin Lounge held at the Oval Cricket Ground on the 11th & 12th May 2019

The team were joined on their stand by the founders of Savile Row, and the creators of the dinner jacket, Henry Poole & Co, who showcased many different cloths in addition to the original Winston Churchill fabric. Henry Poole were represented by front of house manager Anthony Rowland who gave visitors an insight into the history of Savile Row and the Henry Poole story which dates back to 1806.

Commenting on the award, Stewart Lee, CEO of Savile Row Gin told Savile Row Style: “This was an important test for Savile Row Gin as whilst many thousands of guests have enjoyed The Perfect Serve Savile Row Gin & Tonic at our partner events, this was our first public facing showcase, attended by a loyal, knowledgeable and gin-loving audience who certainly knew their Gins.”

“The overwhelming feedback over the two days was very positive for sure, and I could tell they liked it a lot, as many visitors came back at the end to buy a bottle”, added Lee. The team were joined by head mixologist Maurice Lawrence who gave visitors to the stand an in-depth talk about the gin’s twelve botanicals and what they can expect to experience when tasting this very smooth gin neat, and when served with tonic and a slice of pink grapefruit. “They loved our samples of the Perfect Serve”, Lawrence told SRS – 50ml Savile Row Gin, 150ml classic Indian tonic, a slice of pink grapefruit and a mint leaf. Lee also confirmed at the show that the brand will be exhibiting at this year’s Imbibe Live at Olympia in July.

To find out more, please visit: Savile Row Gin

Savile Row Gin winning at the Oval

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The team at Savile Row Gin were

Lifestyle, News

Robin Dutt celebrates the history of Mayfair nightclubs, from aristocratic Annabel’s to sexy, swinging Tramp.

In essence, London could be the only place on earth associated with the concept of “the club.” It created this night-time entity with a zeal which is internationally recognised and thronged to. The identity of a club and its sparkling denizens was and remains not British, not even English, but stands for London itself.

Annabel’s, Tramp, The Embassy and Titanic, for example, are emblematic names – along with a handful of others – even if some are consigned to history. The understanding of a club might be said to have found form in the St. James’s of the 18th century where the idea of being “apart” from society but with your “peers” took happy and healthy root. Who one knew, who one was – how much did you spend (or lose, which was no shame) are still hallmarks of today’s club scene. Arch froideur was a passport too, the dandy, Beau Brummell once exclaiming from the safety of his club’s bow window that he loved to see the ordinary people pass by in the rain.

The club is a sheltered world within a mass-populated one. The very word is thought to be traceable to the 17th century. Celebrated London clubs benefitted from the grand classical nature of the mostly one-time grand family houses they occupied. Every club wants to have that crucial slice of the social cake. As Bryan Ferry, who made the song The ‘In’ Crowd so famous, sang:

“I’m in with the in crowd
I go where the in crowd goes
I’m in with the in crowd
And I know what the in crowd know”

But the song might be said to have in equal measure, irony, and sarcasm when he adds, “Looking flash, talking trash…”

And yet, this is part of the whole purpose. Long-standing, even generational and loyal members might be culled to make way for the new blood. It’s as draconian as that.

Take me to Bel’s
Annabel’s began in 1963 in a Mayfair basement. Historian Harry Mount writing in the Daily Telegraph, quotes celebrity interior designer and socialite Nicky Haslam as saying how he had been asked to cover the opening party by one Diana Vreeland for Vogue. He recalls the aristo-mantra at the time by the debutantes, “Take me to Bel’s.” It is worth remembering that Annabel’s remains the only club that HM The Queen has visited for a cocktail. Basement coal hole as it surely was, it was a magnet. Elizabeth Taylor, Diana Ross, George Hamilton, Princess Diana. Everyone in the know, simply knew.

“Once people had made it in London, everyone went to clubs – sportsmen, pop stars, actors. Anybody who was anybody, went to Annabel’s,” says one-time regular, property developer David Green.

Jackie Branston, another habitué, recalls the ladies at Annabel’s clearly: “Women dressed like women – stylish, sexy, international – something quite unique that has never been repeated. You always went to Annabel’s first and ended up at Tramp. Johnny Gold [Tramp founder] was the perfect host.”

And it is David Green again who remembers the cheeky signage there: “No Bird, No Tramp.” That’s why the girls went to Morton’s to pick up fellas, to go on to Tramp. The regime was that you went to Mortons, then to Tramp.

Art dealer and collector James Birch recalls his London clubland vividly, going to Annabel’s and Tramp “a lot” with his friend, Daisy Borman. Prior to that, it was The Embassy for him, sometimes every night, although he cites it as “a poor man’s Studio 54”. Tramp, he says, “always used to have a morose George Best sitting there, not speaking. There was always the Maître D – Guido – who liked to share a joke with you”.

Tramp regulars included, from the early days, Peter Sellers, Joan Collins, Liza Minelli and Ringo Starr and they all had their wedding receptions there. Founded in 1969, it is considered to be one of the most exclusive clubs in the world. But the fact that London’s clubland was and remains same and different saw a criss-crossing of its selected clientele, however loyal they might be.

Embassy was started by Mark Fuller and he was vocal a couple of years ago when he lampooned the greed of some of the London club owners who have, he told the Evening Standard, “have killed our industry”. He cited free drinks and the hiring of attractive women as a disastrous move by some establishments.

And it is certainly not all roses for one-time club goer Demir Mustafa, whose views might in some way chime with Fuller’s. Mustafa points to the pretentious nature of certain establishments, their emphasis on celebrity – even saying pointedly that one (remaining nameless, naturellement) is “full of people who have an overinflated view of themselves”. He describes another venue as “dark, pretentious and unnecessary – a place one goes to merely tell others”.

But then, an exclusive club might be a circus ring or a psychiatry wing at the same time. Who are the players, who is the audience?

Andy Warhol certainly understood celebrity in a prescient way. He understood people’s hunger for it, their abject need for it. Clubs were – and are – ready stages for spangled performances; the manufactured reality more important than reality itself. When I interviewed him a year or so before his death, famed for his celebrity pop portraits and snaps at Studio 54 and clubland in general, of all the beautiful people, I met him in a London gallery. There were vast queues for his autograph – scrawled on paper, proffered jeans, catalogues – anything. To hold celebrity or a snatch of it, is to be rewarded, somehow, to some. As Bryan Ferry put it in the song, “You ain’t been nowhere till you’ve been with the in-crowd.”

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Robin Dutt celebrates the history of Mayfair

Suits

Robin Dutt on a visual trick which works its magic

While Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode (whom I admire enormously) sang Everything Counts in Large Amounts, the opposite is so often true. The tiniest detail informs. Take for example, the Rope Shoulder.

In important tailoring, the silhouette has to be everything – not just fitted to the form. Working cuff buttons, that twisted thread hovering behind the lapel button hole, that third button on a 3-button coat cut so you can’t – or shouldn’t – close it, are all vital aspects of fine sartoria. The Rope Shoulder presents a coat sleeve top which stands proud, extending it and informing the line of the continuing shoulder plane as it makes its way to the lower or mid-neck, depending on the cut commissioned.

For the observant, it may remind of those cartoons and caricatures by 18th century masters such as Cruikshank, Rowlandson and Gilray who often showed politicians, royalty and dandies with exaggerated, raised shoulder “puffs” in light mockery of them. Engravings of costume, parlour prints and book illustrations were more what we are talking about here – a realisation of this tailoring device’s elegant purpose.

But this serious and un-mocked Rope informs and educates the whole costume and indeed the wearer and so, the observer. It draws the eye to it very subtly and also if the sleeve is cut to be just a mite narrower the torso itself will be narrowed and slim the body of the wearer. It also lengthens the arm and looks splendid when balanced by a judicious shooting of a white cuff. The Rope shows the nature of the fabric, suggests its feel and is certainly a visual trick. It is still much favoured by even designers and if you look, the odd example may be unearthed in the most unlikely high street temples of male dressing (ruined as they are). But of course, that poor rope in these circumstances, trapped into a dark place by the sharp, single steel tooth of a machine not the loving hand of a cross-legged tailor.

As Simon Cundey, MD at Henry Poole & Co, says: “The rope sleeve signature in cloths from Savile Row gives a mark of destination. It gives the feeling to the suit of the elevation and frames the shoulder to the head. This, with a high gorge, is synonymous in English suiting and recognised throughout the world.”

Although the Rope Shoulder is usually associated with Italian tailoring, Savile Row tailors are often asked for it. I know, I did when I designed my coat at James & James, overseen by Eric James but cut to perfection by the late, great Yvonne Nichol, a fiery, feisty Scotswoman I playfully thought of as “Thistle”. It is thanks to her that my roped shoulders are as they are.

Not exactly Leg O’ Mutton, never Gigot Sleeve and, heaven forfend, the Neapolitan, the sculpted, lovingly entombed rope that makes up the Rope Shoulder is a most masterful sartorial device.

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Robin Dutt on a visual trick which

Accessories, Watches

The allure of high-complication hand-crafted timepieces simply can’t be beaten – and yes, they’ll even outlive the Apple Watch too. Hazel Plush reveals why.

In an idyllic Swiss village not far from the Rhone River, there’s a small miracle in progress. Dressed in white coats, hovering over microscopes, and sealed from the outside world in their airlocked laboratory, this team of men and women look like scientists at first glance – but they’re engineers, artists, craftsmen, gemologists. Working to miniscule scales, they are creating some of the finest, most complicated watches on earth – timepieces that will fetch hundreds of thousands of pounds, maybe more. They’re the masters of watchmaking; creating the next generation of chronographs – miraculous, yes, but the real wonder is that they’re here at all. Because, if common sense had prevailed, their work would be obsolete.

Ask any horologist who invented the first mechanical watch, and you’ll never get a straight answer: The history books are muddied with conjecture, but one thing remains certain: The 1770s were landmark years for the craft. Hitherto, portable timepieces – hand-wound, and powered by a mainspring – had been heavy, temperamental, inexact. If you wanted precision, you were better off with a pendulum clock. But a small band of talented engineers were making strides.

Swiss-born Abraham-Louis Perrelet led the effort, inventing in 1777 the self-winding mechanism – powered by the movement of the watch wearer, rather than a hand-wound spring. “Just 15 minutes of movement is needed to power it for eight days,” claimed a report by the Société des Arts in Geneva. Revolution indeed. Other watchmakers, including Hubert Sarton and Abraham-Louis Breguet, forged ahead with their own designs – and development of the self-winding mechanism spread through Europe. It wasn’t perfect, but it was progress.

Over the next 125 years, portable timepieces became the hallmark of the elite. Men favoured pocket watches, while wristwatches were more fashionable for women – marketed as bracelets, and often adorned with diamonds, precious gems, and intricate hand-painted designs. However, few new patents were filed during this time: Watches grew in opulence, but not in accuracy.

But a watershed moment came in 1904, after Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont complained to Louis Cartier that it was tricky to check his pocket watch while airborne: He needed both hands for flying. Cartier created a practical, flat, wrist worn design with a leather strap – the “Santos de Cartier” – and the pilot watch was born.

Changing fashions
During the First World War, the idea really caught on. Service wristwatches were issued, designed to withstand trench warfare with their reinforced glass faces and luminous dials. Military pilots relied on their timepieces just as Santos-Dumont had, with extended leather straps to fit over their flying jackets. In 1917, the Horological Journal reported that “the wristlet watch was little used by the sterner sex before the war, but now is seen on the wrist of nearly every man in uniform and of many men in civilian attire”. Fashions were changing, and the Second World War brought an even more pressing need for accurate, durable designs: A far cry from the frivolous diamond-clad wristwatches of the 1800s.

Innovation boomed. The village of Plan-les-Ouates, near Geneva, had become a hub for high-end watchmakers: The likes of Rolex, Vacheron Constantin and Piaget developed workshops there, and the post-war years saw them busier than ever.

Not content with merely keeping the most accurate time, watchmakers turned their attentions to more specialised functions, or “complications”. They included “perpetual calendars” to keep track of the date, “minute repeaters” to chime the time, altimeters, lunar calendars and auxiliary dials – to name but a few. The “tourbillon”, a mechanism to improve the timekeeping accuracy, was perhaps the most prestigious advancement – only available in the most expensive of watches.

Some watches were powered by the new generation of self-winding mechanisms; others were simply still cranked by hand.

Everything changes
The watch became, once again, a symbol of status and wealth, marketed to buyers all over the world with celebrity endorsements and sponsorships galore. Steve McQueen sported the TAG Heuer Monaco, while Paul Newman chose the Rolex Daytona. Elvis wore a Hamilton Ventura, while Miles Davis wore a Breitling Navitimer. Watches were a fashion statement, too: Andy Warhol was rarely without his 18ct gold Cartier Tank. But then came quartz – and everything changed.

Receiving power from a battery, with hands controlled by a circuit board rather than a mainspring, wristwatches had never been more accurate or lightweight. Analogue quartz watches were first toted at Geneva’s Baselworld watch fair in the early 1970s – but it was their digital counterparts (with LCD faces and no moving parts) that really caused a stir. Quartz timepieces, quickly became the new status symbol: Why rely on ancient craftsmanship, when you could wear the future on your wrist?

In the 1970s, there had been over 1,600 watchmakers in Switzerland; by the mid-1980s, there were fewer than 600. The end was surely nigh for Europe’s luxury timepieces.

Rolex and Blancpain persevered with hand-crafted movements – the latter spurning quartz completely. In 1980, Patek Philippe began designing a new exclusively mechanical pocket watch to mark its 150th anniversary in 1989 – though nobody was sure if it would ever make production.

Gradually, auction houses noted a slight trend for vintage mechanical watches. Now that they were almost obsolete, they’d become a nostalgic indulgence – and perhaps their impending rarity might increase their value?

By the mid-1980s, the prestige, rarity and craftsmanship of high-end mechanicals had weathered the quartz crisis.

Patek Philippe’s anniversary Calibre 89 – completed, finally, in 1989 – sold at auction for $3.1 million. In spring 1990, Swiss watch exports totaled $1.5 billion.

The rest is history. In Geneva, where the world’s finest watchmakers showcase their new designs, to see that the market for high-calibre, highly complicated timepieces is more buoyant than ever – even with the rise of wrist-worn computers, such as the Apple Watch.

Yes, based on their primary function, mechanical watches are obsolete. We no longer need them to tell us the time. But we do want them: To remind us of the power of the human brain and hands, perhaps, or
the joy of an exquisitely-engineered movement. The mass-production line is, quite simply, no match for handcrafted perfection: Some things really do stand the test of time.

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The allure of high-complication hand-crafted timepieces simply