BESPOKE SERVICE
“I had an interest in fashion because I was a Mod, but I went to college with the intention of being the next Vivienne Westwood,” she recalls.
assisted in what was an unusually rapid rise to prominence. It was while taking a fashion design degree at the Surrey Institute of Art & Design in Epsom that the Leeds-born Sargent found her way to bespoke tailoring. “I had an interest in fashion because I was a Mod, but I went to college with the intention of being the next Vivienne Westwood,” she recalls. “When I got there I realised that there were 60 people in my year and only five were doing menswear, so that seemed a better area to specialise in if I ever wanted to get a job. Although I had design ideas, I was
embarrassed that I knew nothing about the technical side of how clothes were made, so I started to buy second-hand books about pattern-cutting and tailoring.”
TAILORED PRINCIPLES As with mechanical watchmaking, the essential principles of tailoring were set a few hundred years ago. It’s interesting to consider that before the invention of the industrial sewing machine in the 1840s every item worn by every person was
made by hand. Sargent’s valuable old manuals, some of which date back to Victorian times, are among her most precious possessions. They were her guidebooks to the mysterious world of bespoke tailoring. “Tailoring is a craft and art. The whole idea is about applying the measurements you have taken of a customer the principles of the draft instructions that those old manuals contain. Men’s figures may have changed, the qualities of cloth may have changed, but the principles of fit have not changed in 150 or so years. When you fit a garment correctly, it looks good. Right from the start, I wanted to challenge myself to be the best.” Sargent secured a work
experience place in her final year at Denman & Goddard, a long- established small firm in New Burlington Street that was run by partners Peter Day and David Cook. Day in particular was to be her mentor. “Even though I was only doing things like running errands, I loved it from the start. The whole atmosphere and lifestyle was so different to anything that I’d been used to. They were
really good to me and there I had my first taste of oysters, mussels, champagne and brandy in coffee! Famous people came in and treated Peter and David like friends. I realised that making individual clothes for individual people would be more satisfying than making a collection for some people you don’t know.”
Having graduated, Sargent was recommended to Gieves & Hawkes by Day and Cook, who did not have a permanent position for her. Occupying an imposing Georgian townhouse at No 1 Savile Row, Gieves & Hawkes traces its history back to 1785 Although it is mainly a ready-to-wear business today, it still runs one of the largest workshops on The Row and, with Henry Poole, Dege & Skinner and Anderson & Sheppard, is one of the Big Four tailoring firms.
ARCHITECT AND BUILDERS The world of making clothes by
hand is divided into cutting and sewing or tailoring. (Confusingly, tailor is derived from the French word “tailleur”, which means cutter). In Savile Row, cutters are the more senior figures and they
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