FASHION
He left – to sell Christmas trees – but was only away from Lower Sloane Street briefly. Oliver Brown, which had been trading for 16 years, collapsed and – at the age of just 24 – Robson bought it.
“I rang up and offered a silly amount of money, and they said yes so I bought it,” he says. “That was 14 years ago.” At that stage, Oliver Brown was a ladies’ outfitters specialising in country wear. “Now that’s probably the smallest part of what we do,” says Robson. “We do formal wear, morning coats, dinner suits and smoking jackets all year round. Morning coats are huge this time of year because of Ascot. Ascot’s massive for us, we’re very well known for that. We have the only stand at Royal Ascot selling top hats, waistcoats and braces.” He adds: “Margaret Thatcher’s big day was very handy for Oliver Brown because we sold lots of black waistcoats. We’re now going into things that you can’t really get elsewhere: heavy flannel trousers, black waistcoats… we sell loads of dinner jacket waistcoats. They’re very, very popular.” He’s just taken on a new tailor, Juan
Carlos, whose father is one of the most successful tailors in Madrid – and he’s spent £100,000 on a refurbishment of the Lower Sloane Street shop in time for the mini-boom of Royal Ascot, when hundreds turn up at once.
“Europe is a huge market for us,” Robson says. “They turn up unannounced, they just walk in. They come to La Bottega for coffee and then to us for shopping. They’re very nice people to deal with and they buy in quantity so they’re good spenders. They love the English kit, and we are quintessentially English.”
Married – to Davinia – in June last year, Robson thinks carefully before answering a question about his ambitions. “Now we’ve done the shop up, I should think in the next two years we’ll decide whether to expand and go elsewhere. But I don’t really want to be doing that… I’d like to make a hell of a lot of money and get out, but I don’t want to ruin it. We need to get the internet working first: we need to get that taking easily £700,000 – £800,000. And if that’s all done from here, we’ll be making a lot of money and I won’t need to sell it on because it will all be manageable and all under one roof.” Our interview, in the sunshine outside La Bottega, is surprisingly short. Is there anything else we should know about you, I ask. He thinks for a while and says: “I’ve got two season tickets to Chelsea football club.” Then, in that affable way he has, he adds: “That’s it really. It’s not that exciting. But it’s great that we’re so busy still.”
Oliver Brown, 75 Lower Sloane Street, SW1W 8DA.
www.oliverbrown.org.uk,
www.oliverbrowntophats.com
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