REVOLUTION A GENDER
button makers and executives, and it’s clear an almost unreported gender revolution is taking place. Understandably, all wish to be judged on their ability not their gender, readily accepting all that counts is performance in this competitive and high priced industry. Yet intriguingly their personal stories, and how they have arrived from very different starting points in life, offer a fascinating insight in to what is possible in meritocratic Britain today. Daisy, aged 25, was born into the world of aristocracy
and great houses. Her great grandfather was Lord Mountbatten
of Burma, her Uncle Norton the
inheritor of Broadlands where The Queen spent her first night of honeymoon. School was Benenden, alma mata of Princess Anne. She regularly stars in the glossy pages of Tatler, appearing at fashionable parties, and emits an easy style as she moves gracefully around old school Huntsman with its twin stag heads on the wall above the open fire place, a languid veneer which masks, I suspect, a driven, hardworking determination to succeed in a business she loves with a passion. “I really want to help men find out what suits them and to make it a pleasure,” she says. “Women enjoy shopping for clothes but, for many men, it’s something they want to get done and over with. I always used to dress my father.” Nina, aged 35, grew up in the Welsh seaside town of
Rhyl and, later, Chadwell Heath, her father a postman, her mother a school dinner lady. But she always knew what she wanted to do. At three she was playing on a pink toy sewing machine making little dresses for her dolls. After studying theatre and art design at Wimbledon School of Art she commendably took her original home-made designs to a market stall in earthy Brick Lane, east London, where she stood every Sunday from daybreak till dusk selling what she could, boosting her wages from her day job in the civil service, and gaining a valuable insight into what customers want and an intimate experience of paramount details such as seams, pleats and cuffs. Nina then landed an apprenticeship at Dege and Skinner, working in the cutting room while also making character forming forays to Sandhurst Military College to fit the young cavalry cadets out with officer uniforms. It was here she encountered one of her rare experiences of prejudice. “I asked one officer if he would change so I could measure him properly,” she says. “He stayed silent. He wouldn’t even speak to me because I was a woman. Eventually one of the other officers said to him ‘for God’s sake do as she says, she’s not your nanny’. I’ve been at Gieves and Hawkes for three years and only once or twice have there been
It’s too early to say what the impact of this arrival of so many ladies will be in the long term on Savile Row but undoubtedly there will be a consciousness of
benevolent feminine qualities as they grow more established
42 SAVILE ROW STYLE MAGAZINE
difficulties with fittings because I was a woman. One gentleman did say ‘I don’t want to be seen by you’ but eventually agreed, was very happy with his suit and is now a regular client.”
C
Carolyn Springett, CEO of New and Lingwood
Daisy, below, gets fitted for her trip to Royal Ascot
learly attitudes are changing at a rapid pace. Nina takes me into an upstairs private room where a copy of the chic blue boat cloak made
by Gieves and Hawkes for The Queen in the 50s is hung on a mannequin alongside military costumes in glass cases. She points to an extravagant, blood red uniform, with gold braid epaulets the size of floor brushes on each shoulder, elaborate frogging and helmets of 24 carat gilt topped with plumes of swan feathers. “I make these for formal ceremonial occasions and none of the very male gentlemen ever queried my ability,” she says. A two-piece suit made by Nina will involve three fittings, 70 hours of work by about 10 other experts, cutters, coat makers, trouser makers, alteration tailors, finishers, pressers etc. and cost about £5,000. Nina takes great care before she starts designing to make sure she knows as much about the lifestyle of those she works for so the suit is both stylish and practical. “We have a coffee together and talk about their job before I even think about cloth,” she says. “I want to
IMAGES KIM LANG FOR THE RAKE, ROBERT LEEMING, STREET & CO, DANIEL EVANS
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