BESPOKE SERVICE
AS HEAD CUTTER AT GIEVES & HAWKES, KATHRYN SARGENT WAS THE FIRST WOMAN TO HEAD THE BESPOKE DEPARTMENT OF A TOP TAILORING FIRM. NOW RUNNING HER OWN BUSINESS, SHE IS LIVING PROOF OF HOW SAVILE ROW HAS MOVED WITH THE TIMES TO ENSURE ITS CONTINUED RELEVANCE AS THE GLOBAL CENTRE FOR BEAUTIFUL, HAND-MADE CLOTHES
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Cut from a different
espoke tailoring is steeped in history. Techniques of measuring, patterning cutting and sewing
garments that were devised in the late 1700s and early 1800s are still used to produce today’s hand-made suits. The global epicentre of tailoring excellence is Savile Row and the surrounding roads like Sackville Street, Cork Street and New Burlington Street. Nowhere else in the world can rival the concentration of high-quality artisanship that is found within this compact area of London’s Mayfair. The district has been a centre of men’s fashion since the 1600s at least, when extravagant wired ruffs or “pickadils” (from pica, the Spanish for spear) were made in the vicinity of the thoroughfare now known as Piccadilly. The north of Piccadilly became the area for tailoring. Savile Row was laid out in the 1730s, by Richard Boyle, the third Earl of Burlington, whose wife, Lady Dorothy Savile, gave her name to the street. Once known for its doctors, it welcomed its first tailor in 1806.
20 Sackville Street, almost a
continuation of Savile Row, was built in 1730 and soon housed several tailoring firms, including that of John Meyer at No 6. A German military tailor who understood the royal Hanoverian court, he had among his fashionable customers The Prince Regent (later George IV) and the first male style icon, George, “Beau” Brummell, who set exacting standards of dress for the males of the Regency period and helped establish the Englishman as the best-dressed species in the world. Today No 6 Sackville Street is home to the tailoring firm of Jones, Chalk & Dawson, which in turn owns Meyer & Mortimer (John Meyer having joined forces with an Edinburgh gunsmith called Mortimer). In the room where the Prince Regent’s orders can be viewed in a 200-year-old ledger, Kathryn Sargent has based her own business. In the time- honoured fashion of fine bespoke tailoring, as an independent cutter she rents “a board”, or cutting table, at a larger firm.
ART & SCIENCE
Sargent has spent her entire 16- year career in this legendary district. She is obsessed with the blend of art and science that makes tailored clothes by hand to a customer’s instructions, to what the customer has “bespoken” for. Her ambition is to continually improve her skills and to ensure that she passes on what she has learned to the next generation of young craftsmen and women who will continue to ensure Savile Row’s reputation for painstaking excellence.
tailoring appeals to connoisseurs, those men (and increasingly women) who appreciate quality and craftsmanship. They want and expect their clothes to perform way above the average. Sargent sees clients from around the world, from royalty to high-profile industry leaders, from low-profile self-made men to clothing obsessives who are hooked on hand-made clothes. “Like a fine timepiece, a bespoke suit is a luxury item, even an investment piece,” she says. “Savile Row suits will literally stand the test
Like fine watches, bespoke tailoring appeals to connoisseurs, those men (and increasingly women) who appreciate quality and craftsmanship.
“Fine bespoke tailoring is like creating a sculpture of a person,” she says. “You can’t have any flatness in a Savile Row suit. It must be correctly shaped to the customer’s body. It is like a work of art produced by incredibly skilled craftsmen and women.” Like fine watches, bespoke
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of time. Like a watchmaker, we regularly ‘service’ suits. We have them back in for alterations if the client has lost or gained weight, for repairs, for sewing in new linings, for re-pressing. It’s not unusual for us to work on suits that were made in the 1970s and still look good. As virtually everything is sewn by
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