Brett arguably looked stylish throughout his life, on screen and off. His career allowed him to don finery on a regular basis, especially in his penchant for period dramas, whether as Freddie in My Fair Lady (1964) or the almost constant period television roles he enjoyed such as John Middleton Murry in A Picture of Katherine Mansfield (1973), De Winter in Rebecca (1979) or Robert Browning in The Barrets of Wimpole Street (1982). When dressed in more seemingly modern attire in his personal life, Brett matched the standards of these older epochs, often adding casual flair, usually in the form of busy scarf, a foppish hat or a some other playful take on menswear.

However, one thing that the actor and Holmes had in common was their shared love for another item of clothing: the dressing gown. Even before Brett had considered matching his wits against Moriarty or demon hounds, he already had a love of dressing gowns that would find purchase later when finally embodying Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s character. This is appropriate considering that the dressing gown itself, despite being popular among the more orientalist-minded gentlemen of the 1700s, really hit its golden age in the Victorian era so perfectly embodied by the stories of Conan Doyle’s the great detective.

Brett on Screen

One of the many commendations of Brett’s turn as Holmes – in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes which ran in various forms (including single specials and various series) from 1984 to 1994 – was its adherence to Conan Doyle’s original work. This strict loyalty to the prose stories manifested in a variety of ways, but one of the most striking was in its liberal borrowing from the early visual interpretations of the detective in the illustrations of Sidney Paget. Published in The Strand Magazine, and later in their various anthologised volumes, Paget’s distinct and atmospheric illustrations have held a great sway over many interpretations of Conan Doyle’s stories ever since, though none so much as Brett’s series.

Paget was, of course, responding to Conan Doyle’s various descriptions of attire worn by the character. According to the Sherlockian website, I Hear of Sherlock, the first instance of the character wearing a dressing gown appeared in the 1891 story, The Man with the Twisted Lip. “He took off his coat and waistcoat,” so Conan Doyle wrote, “put on a large blue dressing-gown, and then wandered about the room collecting pillows from his bed, and cushions from the sofa and armchairs.” What’s more, the story featured a Paget illustration featuring the first instance of a visual of Holmes wearing the item.

The dressing gown was to feature variously throughout the stories that followed, in the prose and in Paget’s illustrations. One of the interesting things about it is that it seems the detective had several as the colour changes variously (perhaps the only real description the writer gifts the reader of the item). The three colours in question (blue, purple and “mouse”) have since become the official, striped colours of a Sherlockian society tie for the Baker Street Irregulars. Either way, it’s clear that Paget was drawing on designs of his era more generally than any real specific description of Conan Doyle’s.

The point in raising all of this detail is due to the fact that Paget’s illustrations are really what appear on screen during Brett’s run, and this includes the costume design of the series. The dressing gowns worn on screen were designed by maverick costumier Esther Dean to echo such drawings. Dean had an extensive background in period costume work, from dramas such as Hard Times (1977), Cribb (1980-81) and The Jewel in the Crown (1984); though Sherlock kept her busy for the majority of her career. In an interview at Brettcon only last year, she told of how the Paget illustrations had influenced Brett’s general attire. According to her, it was the actor who desired to retain their influence. “When I talked to Jeremy,” she recalled, “he wanted to follow the Paget drawings. That was the basis for all of the costumes.” So what were Dean’s dressing gowns for Brett really like? Well, thanks to several being auctioned off, we can see in hindsight just how faithful they were as recreations of Paget’s vision.

The first to be sold was part of a famed and extensive sale at Bonham’s organised with Angels costumiers in 2007. Alongside jackets worn by Roger Moore in The Saint, velvet smoking jackets worn by Jon Pertwee in Doctor Who and suits worn by John Thaw in Inspector Morse, several items from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes were up for auction. This included one of Dean’s capes worn by Brett in the series. But the real interest here is the first sale of one of Brett’s dressing gowns.

On the 6^th of March, this dressing gown was lot two of the auction and sold for just under £2000 (not actually a great deal more than what one would pay for a luxury dressing gown from the likes of New & Lingwood or the handful of Savile Row tailors who still make such items today). The gown was largely made of a gray patterned material with an extensive green shawl collar and cuffs, an orange silk inner lining and a red ribbon belt.

However, there’s something rather curious about this dressing gown: contrary to the information on the website, Brett did not wear it on screen. Knowing the series well, and having skimmed through every episode again, I’m certain that Brett doesn’t wear this particular item in any of his episodes. In fact, the only time I can see him not wearing his more regular dressing gown (which we’ll get to shortly) is in the fourth episode of the fourth and final series, and even that example is a dark silk affair rather than the one sold at auction. So, what was this?

I’m tempted to say that it was one either made for the series and not worn, or one made for Brett to wear in between the shooting of scenes. It could also have been one worn by Brett for the stage show The Secret of Sherlock Holmes in 1988-89. There are scant photos of the play, though the following may show it being worn. The lack of colour and detail makes it impossible to tell. Either way, it’s not on screen (which may explain why it’s information was amended on the Bonhams website).

This didn’t prevent its sale, it must be said, and the buyer of this dressing gown is well known. For the item was bought by the Science Museum Group, the conglomerate that runs everything from the Science Museum in Kensington to the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester. The group proudly display their purchase on their website and images of it are now copyrighted by the group’s board of trustees. It does not say where it is stored, what made them purchase it (related items to it include Frank Gallagher’s trainers from Shameless…), or whether it’s on display today at one of their museums. Still, Brett didn’t wear it on screen, and its connection to the series is still a mystery, even after research.

What Brett did wear, however, is a dressing gown that makes far more sense considering Dean’s desire to adhere to Conan Doyle’s world. Throughout the entire run, Brett wears one kind of Dean’s creation in a distinct mouse colour and with some lovely features including generous pockets and wide, lounging lapels. The design is playing on several references the author made to a dressing gown of this colour. In The Adventure of the Empty House (1903), Conan Doyle describes it:

“He had thrown off the seedy frock-coat, and now he was the Holmes of old in the mouse-coloured dressing-gown which he took from his effigy.”

This is the first time Holmes’ dressing gown is described as such but not the last. The second appearance occurs in the brilliant The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans (1908) in which Holmes “was a different man from the limp and lounging figure in the mouse-coloured dressing-gown who had prowled so restlessly only a few hours before...”.

This is the dressing gown seen most in the series. Brett wears it religiously throughout the first two series, in a handful of episodes in the third and fourth, as well as sporadically in the handful of feature-length specials. Like the mysterious green and grey dressing gown, it has been sold at auction, or at least one of the no doubt many made for Brett over the years has.

Only in 2023, on April the 20^th, one was sold at Potter & Potter Auctions in Chicago. Though information isn’t available as to who bought it or for how much, its original estimate was for between $1000-$2000. More importantly, there is more information given about the item than those in the Bonhams sale. Aside from showing the actual Angels label with Brett’s name handwritten upon it, the inner tag also shows the year of 1992 and the month of August. The auction site, therefore, links this with being worn late on into the run and the description suggests it’s worn in the episode The Adventure of the Cardboard Box, as well as “possibly other episodes.” This is true as Brett is seen wearing the item a handful of times beyond that episode.

The long and short of it is that Brett was the most natural performer to play Holmes and his louche and debonair qualities meant he was perfectly at home in Holmes’ attire. With this in mind, it’s unsurprising to find Brett himself enjoying a luxury dressing gown, even before there was the merest hint of a magnifying glass or a Musgrave Ritual.

Brett at Home

With Brett’s handsome, aquiline features and early success in the 1960s, it made sense for the actor to occasionally model some of the latest menswear, often alongside the usual byline advertising his latest work on stage and screen, as was common in magazines like Vogue. Even before this, however, Brett was happy to be snapped wearing a dressing gown, albeit of a slightly less lavish kind to that he wore as Holmes, and usually in a more theatrical setting.

In 1958, he was snapped in his dressing room at the Gielgud Theatre wearing a typically fluffy dressing gown. This was at quite an important point in Brett’s life and career, despite the casual manner of the photo. The image was taken by Ronald Dumont for The Daily Express on the 9^th of May, 1958. The reason for the photograph’s existence is that Brett was replacing actor Tim Seely in the role of Ron in Terence Rattigan’s Variation on a Theme. According to the April issue of The Stage, it was “Because Tim Seely looks too young as the gigolo in Terence Rattigan’s new play, Variation On a Theme, he is to be replaced by Jeremy Brett.” More than this, the photo was taken only two weeks before Brett was to marry Anna Massey in St. Michael’s in Highgate, so it’s an incredibly charged moment in the man’s life all round. Even so, a dressing gown was what he wore in this captured moment.

Only a few years later, Brett would very publically heighten his dressing gown game. In the November 1967 issue of Vogue, he was photographed by celebrated snapper Peter Rand as part of the growing men’s section of their magazine. Partly to promote the actor’s double roles as Orlando in As You Like It and Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing at the National Theatre, Brett was only too happy to show off the latest in loungewear. In it, Brett sports a number of high-end items of clothing, my own particular favourite from the article text being an “Important sort of hat” from Bates of Jermyn Street. However, the main photos are reserved for Brett’s rakish loungewear of dressing gown and slippers, and what things of beauty they are.

To start with, the slippers. They’re a hand embroidered tapestry pair in what is presumably a vivacious green and blue design (hidden by the black & white photos sadly) with Brett’s own initials adorning them in gold. They were handmade by someone called P.T. Colin who worked out of Michael Fish’s new Mr Fish shop on Clifford Street, and they likely cost a bomb. In other photos taken by Rand, this doesn’t seem to worry Brett as he has a remarkable amount of fun throwing them about, including towards the camera. It was certainly a fun shoot for the actor.

The dressing gown, just as lavish as the slippers, would have done Holmes proud; perfect for solving a two-pipe-problem. The first thing to note is that the dressing gown is actually a Savile Row creation made by none other than Blades. The still-new tailoring house had just moved from its premises on Dover Street to New Burlington Gardens and likely wanted fresh publicity. Started by ex-Etonian, Rupert Lycett Green, Blades was one of the great power houses of the Peacock Revolution, with a range of swinging extravagances available to the newly affluent hip young things after something swinging a la Carnaby Street but with better quality and craft. Aside from inspiring Jilly Cooper’s rakish character of Rupert Campbell-Black (not that being married to John Betjeman’s daughter, Candida, stopped him), Green showed a way forward in combining the historic skill of the Row with the eccentric, magpie nature of Carnaby Street and swinging London more broadly. Brett’s dressing gown is a perfect example of this.

The gown is made of white Indian silk with an extra silk lining within. It is sashed with a Holmes-esque shawl collar along with, to quote the magazine, “lapis lazuli and gold embroidery on the cuffs and up the sides of the hem,” and a “big matching motif on the back.” The writer suggests that several other options for these were available from Blades in red, turquoise and black, though the white here is obviously the most absurdly decadent. It’s only a shame that a lot of this detail is lost in the photographs, and even the test sheet of Rand’s others from the shoot only hint at it. We certainly never see what the “big matching motif” on the back is like.

Whether a luxurious gown from Blades or a draping gown realised from the pen-and-ink drawings of a great Victorian magazine, few looked as good wearing a dressing gown as Jeremy Brett. “At half-past seven next morning,” Conan Doyle wrote in The Adventure of the Resident Patient (1893), “in the first dim glimmer of daylight, I found him standing by my bedside in his dressing-gown.” It’s not difficult to imagine this being the way to find Brett any given morning of his successful and detective-defining life: louche, nonchalant and stylish.

Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg’s Performance (1970) is one of the most creatively hyperactive and controversial films of its era. Though made not long after Duffy, such was Warner Brothers’ unhappiness with the film that they sat on it for two years, with Cammell in particular forced to endlessly re-edit it until finally in the form that we know today. Roeg had already escaped this spiral into his own solo debut project, Walkabout (1971), so it was left to Cammell to try and toe the line. Even with the studio bosses on at him to make some sense out of his dark, nihilistic project, the nature of so much of the material and the kinetic style embedded into every frame meant that even the film that eventually went out was as heady a trip that could then be bought legally.

Written by Cammell, Performance initially seems a creatively shot but essentially straightforward British gangland drama. The London underworld in Cammell’s vision is run by businessman and protection racketeer, Harry Flowers (Johnny Shannon), alongside his mob of heavies. The most sadistic of them, Chas (Fox), is a cold loner in a sharp suit who doesn’t mind putting the frighteners on local businesses and lawyers. When he lets a feud with old boxing rival, Joey Maddocks (Anthony Valentine), cloud his judgement and cause infighting in the “business”, Flowers has little choice but to put Chas out of the frame.

Fleeing his attackers, Chas overhears a hip guitarist at a train station suggesting that he’s leaving his room in Notting Hill for a while. Pretending that he himself is a performer, and travelling incognito, Chas hides in the trippy world of faded musician, Turner (Mick Jagger). Increasingly toyed with by the musician and his lovers, Pherber (Anita Pallenberg) and Lucy (Michèle Breton), as well as suffering due to the psychedelic drugs they spike him with, Chas descends into his own nightmares until the harsh reality of his criminal world and the violent mental torment of Turner’s finally meet.

Performance is often praised for its various levels of authenticity. On the one hand, the descending darkness of sixties drug culture is there for all to see, and no doubt real debauchery took place during the film (famously almost splitting up the Stones at the time, with a sex scene between Jagger, Keith Richards’ then girlfriend Pallenberg and Breton being just a little too real). The excess and madcap nature is of a far more authentic hue than the flimsy attempt in Duffy.

However, the real authenticity comes from its gangster credentials. Johnny Shannon had real underworld connections around the Old Kent Road mobs (rather diplomatically referring to his old associates as “characters”), while actor John Bindon, in spite of a surprisingly fruitful acting career, had just as many crime connections. He ran protection rackets just like the mob in the film, was involved in genuine killings and was even too violent for working security for Led Zeppelin in the late 1970s (quite an achievement). All of this authentic edge is given a final gleam by the presence of an even shadier character behind the scenes, but it is in this character where Fox’s change of tailoring, the one seen in that much earlier clip alongside the Stones in the studio, comes to the fore.

David Litvinoff was arguably the ultimate mover and shaker in the 1960s London underworld. Half-brother of writer and East End Jewish chronicler, Emanuel Litvinoff, David was a fixer who initially made his connections through the Soho jazz scene. An outrageous raconteur and shady villain, he stepped through the city with one foot in the smart set and the other teetering on the brink of the underworld. He was a well-known Kray Twins associate, though also knew the Stones, George Melley, and Francis Bacon. Lucian Freud painted him after becoming pally through gambling in the Kray-owned Esmerelda’s Barn gambling joint. Rumours abounded that, after Keith Richards’ famed drugs bust at Redlands in 1967, Litvinoff and Performance co-star Bindon dangled the suspected grass out of a window by the ankles during a lengthy interrogation before deciding it wasn’t the dangling chap in question. Perhaps it was Bindon’s talents in this situation that led to his casting in Performance.

Freud’s painting of Litvinoff was appropriately named “The Procurer” and, though the villain had a hand in almost every aspect of authenticity in regards to the underworld elements of Performance, this distinctly came through most in the choice of tailoring. This is because, in the words of Marianne Faithful, Litvinoff’s job “was to be James Fox’s tutor in infamy.”

While Fox’s method approach – from intense physical training to hanging around real gangsters – meant that an eventual crisis occurred for the actor, forcing him to leave the profession for at least a decade, Litvinoff certainly dressed Fox with an eye for that other kind of sixties tailoring: sharp, crisp, slim, no frills. According to Keiron Pim in his book Jumpin’ Jack Flash (2016), Litvinoff even lent Fox some suits for a time while he was getting into character. But more than this, he helped Fox and the film’s crew in the commissioning of several suits for costume.

These suits were the frosty opposite to the Peacock foppishness exuded by Fox’s clothes in the earlier Duffy, but the story of the film’s tailoring is much more complex than being a mere opposite to this. Instead, it ties distinctly to Litvinoff’s Jewish heritage.

Cecil Gee

In researching online, I came across this supposed fragment of Litvinoff’s diary (admittedly published in such a way that it makes me think it might be a creative interpretation rather the famed actual and much sort after text… Viewers of Iain Sinclair and Chris Petit’s The Cardinal & The Corpse will understand my reluctance to simply quote it as gospel). It details Fox being fitted out with clothes suitable for putting the frighteners on, and seems as essential as getting him into shape down the South London gyms or going on a few genuine larks with the “associates”. As it reads:

Met young Fox above the Becket, boxing with Johnny Shannon. Boy’s tasty for a toff. Don’t talk like one though. Visiting Brixton nick taught him well, meeting some of the chaps. He’s no poncy layabout. Doing push-ups with Jimmy Evans did him no harm either. Never understood method acting. Cecil Gee clothes seem to make a difference, or so he says. Put the frighteners on the rest of that film lot. Don’t know where Cammell found him to be in that film. Bit of a sweetie really. Just like the toe rag in that Dickens book, he wants to make that lot’s flesh creep. Should take him to meet Freddie the Earbiter and show him how it’s really done.

Whether this is real or not, the point stands that clothes were important to Fox’s transformation. The thing that really makes the difference here isn’t the push-ups with Jimmy Evans or the threatened educational meeting with Freddie the Earbiter, but the fact that he’s wearing clobber from Cecil Gee. As author of Performance: The Making of Classic, Jay Glennie suggested, “James [Fox] was an Eton schoolboy who had to turn himself into a chap. He went away, learned to box, cut his hippy hair off and had suits made at Cecil Gee the tailors.” Clearly Cecil Gee was important to Fox’s transformation. But who was he? And what made the suits he provided for the film so important for transforming into a gangster?

Cecil Gee was a Lithuanian-born Jew named Sasha Goldstein. Moving to England early in life, by his mid-twenties he’d opened up his first menswear shop on Charing Cross Road (in 1929). He made a name with several garments in years before World War Two, most famously the “Jacket Shirt”, before making a killing designing and producing the “Demob Suit” for servicemen after the war. Gee was a mover and shaker in high street menswear; from buying up various smaller brands to providing early Italian imports by the likes of Brioni and Canali.

The thing that really put him on the map was his huge mega-store on Shaftesbury Avenue. Opened in 1957, Gee was perfectly placed to catch the growing and eventually swinging teenage footfall that flocked to the nearby Carnaby Street, and the designer certainly rode the wave of the new youth movements that sprung up in the capital.

Appropriate to the arguments of this article, Gee became a go-to place the emerging Mods, with a sharp, slimmer, Italian-inspired (and occasionally imported) style. Gee’s suits made a perfect match for a Lambretta and a quick espresso at Bar Italia. But they also made for perfect underworld armour.

However, Gee’s shop was given rocket fuel by being a favourite haunt of various musicians, from Cliff Richard to the Stones (again ironic considering the film being discussed). Most famous is the association with The Beatles who were snapped by Dezo Hoffmann visiting the store after a BBC recording session in April, 1963 (I haven’t been able to find the photograph online sadly), as well as providing John Lennon in particular with various items over the years. This included a suede jacket worn religiously by him during the sessions and tours surrounding “With the Beatles”. It’s now housed in the Museum of Liverpool (and is captured in action by Norman Parkinson below).

Cecil Gee evidently supplied various bits of clothing for Performance, too. Glennie’s quote earlier suggests that suits were tailored there especially for the film at Fox’s request, though it was likely Litvinoff who arranged things. There’s a mystery involved in these suits, however; not every suit on screen, worn by Fox, Jagger and others, may be by Cecil Gee. I’d certainly wager that the shirts, ties, coats and the like are almost certainly Cecil Gee. All of tailoring, though? Well, we shall return to that later. Compare this advertisement for the shop taken in 1965 to the shirts worn by Fox and co on screen (the earlier photo, for example, of Fox, Valentine and Shannon) and this much is obvious. The collars were, appropriately, sharp enough to have someone’s eye out.

The suits seemed to complete the actor’s transformation into Chas. With all the workouts and boxing in preparation for the film, he needed a suit as clean-cut as his newly hardened jaw-line. On his shopping trip with Litvinoff, the procurer clearly chose suits that he thought would fit the role (and likely were also worn when Fox was unofficially taken along on a real “gig”, i.e. a genuine frightener job, the real deal, as is filmic folklore).

For Fox in particular, there are at least two very distinct suits on screen. Both are slim, with the jackets crisp and sharp in their moulded silhouette, but with the modish style of slimmed down lapels and tapered, slimmer trousers. They’re stylish but there’s also a cold practicality to them; as if worn by people who might find the merest hint of drape a hindrance while engaging in violence. Some of the suits on screen do feel Cecil Gee-ish in that mod way; the darker suit for example, worn by Fox in both Sympathy for the Devil and Performance, feels like an off-the-peg example of what Gee had on offer then (though it was likely made-to-measure). Others, however, didn’t have that that feel, boasting a slightly more precise and considered make-up. Gee was known in the day as Mr Swish and that hardly describes the style of some of the villains on screen, nor some of Fox’s other suits like the one below.

There is, therefore, a conundrum to the suits worn by Fox in the film because of this. When writing to him about Performance and the suits, I asked him about the film. “Hymie sound rights & Cecil Gee,” he wrote when asked about who made them. Cecil Gee was definitely involved in the suits as Glennie’s earlier quote shows, but another tailor was also involved; one equally Jewish and, even more tellingly, involved with London’s underworld. His name was Arnold Grayson.

Arnold Grayson

While Cecil Gee is often given the kudos for making the sharp suits of Performance, Arnold Grayson muddies the water and definitely played a role in making some of the suits on screen, including some worn by Fox. Grayson had been in the trade since his teens, learning work as a cutter at an academy in Soho. His father was a tailor, too, and so this was very much a family business.

His father’s shop was originally in Waterloo named “Hymie the Tailor” where he first began working properly. He was known variously as Hymie by those he tailored because of this. The word “Hymie” is a derogatory slur against Jews (though also has tailoring connections and implications historically), so, henceforth, beyond quotes, he’ll be known as Grayson. Suffice to say, it was the junior Mr Grayson who really put the store and the family name on the map. In fact, despite his relative obscurity today, Grayson’s tailoring has popped up in some of the most unusual and exalted of places.

While he was based in Harvey Nicholas, he made a suit for Milton Reid for his rooftop fight with Roger Moore in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977); he was Cary Grant’s final personal British tailor up to the actor’s death in 1986 (in particular making lighter suits for travelling); he appeared as an extra in a scene filmed at his desk in Selfridges for the John Schlesinger musical, Madame Sousatzka (1988); and he advised Princess Diana on what Prince Harry was to wear for Prince William’s confirmation. In other words, Grayson got about, and, considering all of this, he may seem an unusual choice for dressing a gangster film. But there was another side to Grayson’s business, one which provides evidence that Litvinoff was once again involved in securing the tailoring services.

Grayson also made suits for members of the underworld. The divides in city territory didn’t seem to matter at his shop; his tailoring was like a neutral zone for villainy. On the one hand, he dressed South London gangsters (and friends of Stanley Baker) the Richardsons. On the other, he dressed Mad Frankie Fraser, a Richardson and Kray Twins enforcer whose trial, sharp tailoring and personal penchant for violence arguably defined some of the clichés surrounding the actions of London gangsters in pop culture. Grayson even made the wedding suit for Buster Edwards, partaker in the Great Train Robbery (which is itself a connection to Fraser) in 1952, and rumours still circulate that some of the cash from that venture was hidden on the roof of Grayson’s Waterloo premises (without his knowledge, naturally).

With all of this villainy, it’s unsurprising that Litvinoff also pops up. According to Grayson’s granddaughter, in the potted biography of the man written several times online, she recalls how the tailor first came to be involved in Roeg and Cammell’s film. “In 1968 a client of the business was a consultant for a film called Performance,” she wrote, “starring James Fox and Mick Jagger, and he recommended my grandpa as the tailor for the production. Grandpa went on to make five suits for James Fox for the film plus a three piece suit for Mick Jagger. He fitted him personally and hand delivered it to his home in Chelsea. This was his first taste of celebrity culture but definitely not the last.” This “consultant” was undoubtedly Litvinoff. However, questions now arise about the suits in the film.

There’s no doubt whatsoever that Jagger’s three piece (and logically Johnny Shannon’s) is by Grayson rather than Gee. He only wears one, the brown affair for the “Memo for Turner” sequence. This in itself is odd. The granddaughter suggests that Jagger’s suit was personally fitted and delivered to his Chelsea home by Grayson himself. Yet, looking at the jacket in the scene, it’s absolutely massive, with a great deal of excess material on the shoulders and very short sleeves. The probable reality is that, while Jagger is definitely wearing a suit made by Grayson, it’s likely Johnny Shannon’s (or the jacket is at least), worn in order to keep continuity. In fact, this is the likely scenario (perhaps a matching pair of trousers and waistcoat were tailored for Jagger but the jacket was Shannon’s). The idea of this being a bespoke item for Jagger alone, however, seems unlikely for a tailor of Grayson’s quality. It’s so baggy on the shoulders that it looks like the suit is being inflated with air.

Equally, the suggestion of Fox having five suits made for him by Grayson also feels unusual, if only because it seems that only two fully fledged suits are worn on screen by the actor. These may have been in multiple versions of the same two suits for the various wear and tear as is normal for a film. Another possible reality behind the reminiscence is that one or two were made for Fox by Grayson, while the other suits remembered were made for the other gangster characters (so a suit for Shannon, Bindon, Stanley Meadows, Anthony Morton or perhaps Anthony Valentine, take your pick). All are dressed in a vaguely similar manner and the suits share some similarities, but it’s probably information lost in time. Either way, the suits are Grayson or Gee’s. And Litvinoff procured them all.

My two pence is that the Prince of Wales check worn by Fox is Grayson’s, while the darker suit is probably a Cecil Gee creation. Both have elements of that harder edge that dominated post-Mods at the end of the decade, though Grayson’s has a bit more flexibility in terms of cut. A little leeway gives the material room to move; perfect for putting the frighteners on taxi firms or forcibly shaving the heads of lawyers’ chauffeurs. Both have slimmer lapels on the jackets and are generally slimmer than would be common even just a few years later in the 1970s (ironically when the film was eventually released). The dark suit is especially tapered in the leg and bears a stark resemblance to the advert for Gee’s made-to-measure offers seen earlier. This is flick-knife-sharp tailoring in more than the figurative sense.

Compared to the earlier tailoring worn by Fox in Duffy, this is miles away from that seemingly carefree world. Though the following decade would go to even greater, flamboyant lengths in closer line with Mr Fish’s efforts in dressing Fox, there’s no doubt that this armour-ish Mod take on the suit defined the end of the swinging sixties; when its optimism was dying a slow death in the face of cultural and global calamities. It would appropriately make a return towards the end of the following decade again when such suits would once be in vogue and pessimism reigned once more.

As Fox walks past Brian Jones in that first scene discussed from Godard’s film, there’s something almost death-like about the power of his silhouette, a kind of sharp-suited reaper subtly aware that the musician wasn’t far from meeting his maker. It’s a signpost of the decade souring, and Fox’s incredible style ironically defined its darker hues. It’s almost funereally minded, except that the dearly departed is the optimism of the decade as well as its hip, young social causalities.

To conclude, there’s another photo of Fox I’m somewhat haunted by. It was taken by legendary fashion photographer, Terence Donovan, in 1969 after Performance was filmed. In the photo, Fox has reverted back to some of the dandyish styling of his time before he embodied Chas. He may still be wearing a dark suit but little details add flourish and foppishness in comparison to Chas’ suits. For a start, it’s double-breasted, the lapels are wider and the grain of photo hints that it may even be made of velvet. Unlike Chas’ ties, a busy patterned affair is worn, closer to the sort Fox wore in Duffy. However, something hasn’t changed: Fox himself. His overall outfit is closer to his carefree persona from Duffy, but the face is haggard, his eyes dark, and his persona cold. He’s still possessed by Chas. With the exception of the Christian feature, No Longer Alone (1976), it would take Fox over a decade to recover from this transformation, and even then only through finding God. Never was a suit, and all that it came to represent, so difficult to take off.

Enjoy.

On the Row: I tend to get in touch with people about their tailoring via letter so when I got the reply asking to chat in detail over a call, it was an especially nice surprise.

Paul Smith: Do people generally respond to them?

OTW: Yes, I’d say half and half so far. The last one I had was from James Fox about things Mr Fish made for him in the 1960s. Before that, I had one from Mark Rylance about his Huntsman suit for Jerusalem. And before that, the last response I got was from the office of King Charles thanking me for a letter about enquiries into his views on the future of Savile Row but that he couldn’t respond specifically at that juncture. It did say he cared deeply about all heritage crafts (laughs).

PS: Well, Charles is an Anderson & Sheppard man for his tailoring. Tailors there have long retired or passed away but even now they still create a lovely, very soft suit with a soft shoulder that Americans especially love. Whereas people like Henry Poole are a lot more structured, while Huntsman has a very slim silhouette as they work a lot by military standards. All very different. In our bespoke room, the main tailor worked for Huntsman for years so always cut a slimmer suit. Bespoke is interesting because you often have to be careful with the cutter themselves as they’ll cut a suit the way they think it should be rather than the way you’d like it to fit. One of the hardest things with bespoke is that you’re starting with a blank sheet of paper, so it’s very much about the dialogue between the customer and the cutter. And understanding what the customer is looking for. Comfort is something our older customers want but our younger guys often want tighter, form-fitting things.

Michael Fish had a very interesting company in Clifford Street. He was part of that whole dandy era, like Blades and Granny Takes a Trip on the King’s Road. Granny was quite an interesting idea, too, as they were upper-class lads so, when they wanted to show their individuality, they would make fab jackets from velvet or from upholstery fabric, but always using their father’s tailors because of their skill. So you got these beautiful handmade suits in an elegant cut but made out of a pair of old curtains from the attic. It was rather wonderful.

OTW: I wanted to talk to you about tailoring in films and culture more widely as well as the Row. You’ve been connected to a huge amount of culture over the years. Was there a first suit that you can recall seeing on screen and thinking “That looks great!”?

PS: Probably never! (laughs). However, that era of American films with Fred Astaire and such was always very elegant and tailored. But it was never really a big influence. Whereas Armani, he definitely adored that whole era and all the studio lighting of Clark Gable and those very famous, handsome film stars. It probably affected me without realising it but I’ve never really had a strong feeling about it.

OTW: Would it be the same for music and wider culture?

PS: I was quite interested in dandies really. There was a man called Bunny Roger who wore very colourful suits and a carnation in his lapel and a bowler hat. He had bright pink and yellow suits, strong bold check suits. He lived near Harrods and he was true dandy, following people like Oscar Wilde, Cecil Beaton etc. They were the days when time was treated very differently. Now, everyone claims to be so busy all the time and they want things that are easy. Whereas being a really good dandy is time-consuming as you have to compose your outfits in advance so that you’ve got the correct shoes and socks and belt. It was more of a principle of caring how you looked over a specific influence that I appreciated.

OTW: That’s interesting as, perhaps because of the Quadrophenia costumes [Smith made the costumes for the ballet version of The Who’s film and album in 2025], I’d always seen your tailoring as an extension of a straighter Mod style over dandies. Was that in itself an influence or just a cousin to this dandyism?

PS: The dandyism is more to do with my age. As someone who was young in the 1960s, that was a period when, if you were part of a community interested in creativity, art, music, architecture or anything like that then, without realising it, you were just trying to look different to the homogenised look after the war. Everyone after the war just wore a suit, dark brown or navy blue, and so the 1960s was the first time when young people could actually express themselves in a way that was their own; long hair, flowery shirts, velvet trousers. The Mods, the Rockers, The Beatles, the Stones. It was all to do with self-expression.

OTW: How did you look around this time?

PS: Oh, very silly! Long hair, floral shirts, velvet trousers and jacket. Of course, at eighteen I made trousers for Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, and I remember his waist was only something like 24 inches and the leg was 28 (laughs) so that should say something.

OTW: You mentioned Blades and Grannies Takes a Trip before. Did you go anywhere in particular around then where you thought, “This is where it’s happening”?

PS: Well, they were a bit later on to me in hindsight. Grannies and Mr Fish I mean. What you have to bear in mind is that there was almost no fashion anywhere, and certainly as a man born and living in Nottingham until the 1970s, there was no real fashion boutiques anywhere in the city. Except for the one I helped start and help called The Birdcage. That was owned by a friend of mine. Apart from that one shop, all the others were just regular clothes, not fashionable at all. What there was, however, was at least eight bespoke tailors all of whom I can remember. People used to get things made a lot more.

OTW: What was the fashion like in Nottingham then? I’m picturing Albert Finney in Karel Reisz’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning in which he has some pretty sharp suits.

PS: As a young man in the 1960s, everyone just wore suits. I went to school in a suit, a little grey short trouser suit, so everybody wore them. It was what you did. There was little to no denim or casual wear. Everything was suits, so that’s why up until the end of the 1960s, the whole explosion of dressing differently was such a thing with people who wanted to rebel in a way that was not cruel or violent.

OTW: You’ve talked about men in suits. Looking at the recent film work, like Men in Black: International (2019), and dressing various stars like Matt Smith and Cillian Murphy, there seems to be a stronger film presence in Paul Smith as brand today. I was wondering if there was a performer from the past that you would have liked to potentially have dressed on screen and off?

PS: Well, I’ve already dressed who I want to be honest. The one I was really pleased with was Daniel Day-Lewis who we made quite a lot of bespoke suits for. I loved how he was always contradictory in the way he put things together, like a pair of motorbike boots with a beautiful W. Bill fabric bespoke suit, a denim shirt, a necklace and arriving on a bright yellow Triumph. He does something I’ve always liked a lot. We’ve just dressed Stanley Tucci and he’s always immaculate as well. We’ve done styling and shrinking for Harrison Ford, and then I did some work on Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011) as well. That was more to do with the general ambiance of the movie rather than the tailoring. My brief was to explore how does it feel and what colours should be important, what moods should be set.

OTW: Did you work at all with Huntsman on Tinker, Tailor? They made quite a few of the suits worn on screen for that film.

PS: No, it was just a mise-en-scène and mood. That was my job. In fact, I don’t really know what I did (laughs). But I’ve got the actual document here from the working title onwards, the script etc. And with my pack of notes on how everything should look, the camera angles, in focus, out of focus etc. It was really interesting work.

OTW: Talking of all of the big names, if I think of a name you’ve dressed over the years, David Bowie ranks pretty high. I was wondering how you approached dressing someone who’s had so many distinctive and influential looks? It must have been quite intimidating.

PS: The thing about Bowie is that I only dressed him for his own personal use, not really for his stagewear which he was really brilliant at. He did that himself with his costume-makers. With me, he’d buy, say, a black suit. I’ve got a great photo in front of me here by Tony McGee, of him wearing a beautiful double-breasted black & white houndstooth. These were clothes he was just buying for himself. So, in a sense, it wasn’t that challenging really.

OTW: I only realised recently that, in photos of him getting onto the Eurostar in 2002, he’s wearing a suit that’s from the album cover of Heathen that’s now in the V&A. The suit is really old, a 1920s three button tweed by a company called Benson, Perry and Whitely. But he’s matched it with a pair of Paul Smith tan Derby brogues. And they’re now held in the V&A archive as well so that must be a point of pride!

PS: Absolutely! I mean he used to buy a lot from us. One time he bought every shirt in his size from our shop in New York. But always for personal use. You know, we’ve worked with Bill Nighy, we’ve got Walter Goggins coming in today; he’s just been doing some filming for us. We’ve done stuff for Paul McCartney, so we’ve worked with all sorts of people over the years. We don’t really make things especially for people though as we’re not quite set up for that. Generally people like picking things up off the peg.

OTW: That’s interesting as you mentioned tailors early on, and they’ve dressed many individuals over the years explicitly which is very different to your set-up. You mentioned Huntsman, Poole’s, Anderson & Sheppard. Is there a particular house’s work that you’ve admired over the years?

PS: Well, Henry Poole’s is one of the oldest and certainly they made the first western-style suit for the Emperor of Japan which was fantastic. Previously he’d always worn kimonos, so that was really interesting because kimonos create a different shape to your body, but put a western suit on and it becomes a very different but elegant thing. Obviously the Duke of Windsor always dressed well, too. He was totally immaculate, a fantastic dresser even with the abdication.

OTW: Those Frederick Scholte creations with the great drape were evidently a big influence on the Row as a whole.

PS: Yeah, definitely. One of the most special things for me was with my wife. She trained at the Royal College of Arts during couture of the 1960s, so all her training was amazing. She could draft a pattern from a blank sheet of paper, and not many so-called designers can do that as a lot of designers these days are more like stylists really. And everything was about the construction, the balance of it, the type of lining, all of that was what I was taught by her at home around our kitchen table. In the evening, I also used to go to a tailor who ran a course at City & Guild, a night-school where it was one-to-one which was nice. He was a ceremonial and livery tailor; that work is all about making a person look important and elegant. Gieves & Hawkes were really important in that regard as well. Cutting a trouser with only an inside leg seam or a big high fish-tail back which gives posture, all these sorts of things; creating something that makes a person look important appealed to me.

OTW: You mentioned Poole’s before and they’re historically the great livery and ceremonial tailors on the Row even today. It’s funny you mentioned them earlier as, having recently been learning of their history, I read Stephen Howarth’s book about them. It ends with this triumph of Poole’s having come into the twentieth century and it proves this by showing a photo of [the owner] Simon Cundey with… you! This is the evidence that Poole’s hasn’t stayed in the nineteenth century but is up to scratch.

PS: (Laughs) That’s really nice!

OTW: Finally, then, we’ve talked a lot about film. Would you like to do more stylistic work for tailoring in cinema?

PS: I find that just running a business these days, especially as an independent company, is such a time-consuming job that the idea of doing an entire film is something that I probably couldn’t take and we certainly don’t have the manufacturing set-up to do suits in quantity, just one or two. I mean we dressed one person for the Met Ball last night so we can individual things sometimes. But the Men in Black film, for example, was possible because it was largely just black suits (laughs) so that was easy!

Thanks to Paul Smith, Kirsty Taylor and Richard Harvie.

Such names will come as no surprise to anyone with even a fleeting interest in the paraphanalia of gentlemanly life. In political terms, Winston Churchill is an obvious candidate for the most mentioned. Almost every business of historical distinction professes some relation to catering to the man’s various, luxurious needs. Equally, there’s the (still much sought after) Royal Warrant, with tailors on the Row in particular collecting them, whether historically (as Henry Poole’s have done over the years, even up to the present day with the making of state livery for HRH King Charles III), or the more general tastes of the current king and his everyday wear (which is everywhere from Anderson & Sheppard to Turnbull & Asser).

Moving away from these more stately historic figures, a handful of men from popular culture carry a certain pride in this circle, too; usually with a transatlantic flavour and a distinct relationship with Hollywood. The candidates for this are not unfamiliar names either: Gregory Peck and Fred Astaire are two prominent examples. However, there is an equal trade in this regard for British actors who made their names in Hollywood, with the likes of Cary Grant, Sir Rex Harrison, Sir Dirk Bogarde and Sir John Mills all mentioned by various tailors as esteemed customers.

The most notable of this batch of fine British thesps, however, is undoubtedly the late, great David Niven; an actor who was distinctly British but also undeniably a product of the classical Hollywood Studio system. Niven, or Niv to his friends, was one of the best dressed men on screen of the last century. Whether in the sunny climes of California or bombed-out London during World War Two, Niven rarely looked anything other than the ultimate English gentleman. Because of this, his name still carries tailoring weight, and a large number of businesses around St. James’s proudly highlight his historic patronage.

With this in mind, I began to wonder who it was that enjoyed such patronage first. After all, Niven’s life was dramatic and unusual in that he had well-to-do airs, and yet grew up in phases of abject difficulty. Even his career in Hollywood was ultimately chancy, and a wealth of bad decisions (coupled with bad luck) makes his career seem incredibly fortunate in hindsight. It’s not too dissimilar to Churchill’s various ups and downs, but one thing that both men were reluctant to relinquish during the hard times was their taste for the finer things in life. Tailoring was part of this.

Still, the question of who can reasonably say they tailored for Niven before all others led to a wealth of research and ongoing queries in the archives of many of the Row’s most famous houses. Though it could be argued that Niven was likely first tailored for his uniform at Stowe, the historic school where he boarded, it is his first military commission that I think really deserves the honour of his debut in the history of his tailoring as an adult; one whose traditions he came to so wonderfully embody. This series of articles is a chronicle of this ongoing endeavour: to find the house that can proudly proclaim to have first served this bastion of English style.

Before going further, however, the fact that this first tailoring order was most definitely military attire cannot be ignored. And Niven’s military background is as dramatic as his life on screen.

Hell’s Last Issue

One of the reasons why Niven is so generally respected isn’t simply for his astonishing career on screen, nor the fact that he witnessed some of the great moments of twentieth-century cultural history. It lies in the fact that, unlike a fair amount (though not all) of his contemporaries, Niven had a respectable military career.

This is especially notable at the turn of the World War Two when he dropped his lavish life in California and came back to fight. This resulted in various operational work, including some very hush-hush service in the still mysterious A Squadron of the GHQ Liaison Regiment, known more famously as Phantom. Niven’s military career started far before this, however, and it is this pre-Hollywood military career that provides the first clues regarding his debut tailoring commission.

Niven’s desire to join the military came from two sources. The first was that his family had a distinctive military history. His father William (though this statement in itself is a murky area with some debate as to Niven’s real biological father) was a member of the Berkshire Yeomanry regiment of the army and died during the Gallipoli Campaign when David was just five. Equally, on his mother Henrietta’s side, there was an even longer military line. His grandfather, Captain William Degacher, died at the Battle of Isandlwana in the Anglo-Zulu war, later dramatised in Douglas Hickox’s Zulu Dawn (1979), while a member of the South Wales Borderers (or 24^th Regiment of Foot). Equally, Niven’s grandmother on this side, Julia Caroline Smith, was the daughter of James Webber Smith; a distinguished soldier who fought under Wellington against Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, among many other campaigns for which he was heavily decorated.

Beyond this family influence, Niven was led towards the military from his time at school. He was sent to board at Stowe, and the natural military leanings there quickly decided him on his apparent future. Niven’s housemaster there was Major Haworth, previously of the Lancashire Fusilers and company commander at Sandhurst. According to Niven in his autobiography, The Moon’s a Balloon (1971), Haworth was the one who convinced him to follow in his family footsteps: “My long-term goal, thanks to some pretty nifty salesmanship by Major Haworth, became the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, followed by a commission in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.”

His training was tough and not without difficulty. But perhaps this difficulty is best summarised by the regiment he eventually found himself commissioned in (and long before his more celebrated days in the war). His initial desire was to join the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders as already quoted. As his biography continues, this was seemingly his destiny. As he wrote, “When I sat for the final exams I discovered with pleasure mixed with surprise that they came quite easily to me and as I had also accumulated a very nice bonus of marks for being an Under-Officer, my entry into the Argylls seemed purely a formality.”

However, as in many parts of his life, he was not to get his own way:

“Just before the end of term, all cadets who were graduating were given a War Office form to fill in: ‘Name in order of preference three regiments into which you desire to be commissioned.’ I wrote as follows: 1. The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders 2. The Black Watch and then for some reason which I never fully understood, possibly because it was the only one of the six Highland Regiments that wore trews instead of the kilt, I wrote. 3. Anything but the Highland Light Infantry. Somebody at the War Office was funnier than I was and I was promptly commissioned into the Highland Light Infantry.”

The irony, and aspect of interest to this article, is that Niven’s initial dismay was distinctly tailoring-based: it was the Highland Light Infantry’s wearing of “trews” that was the main focus. The trews were a long-held custom in the Highland Light Infantry. Before diving further into this, there should be a brief explanation and history of trews and how they help our hunt for the tailor who eventually made Niven’s.

The trews, tartan trousers essentially, were distinct to the Highland Light Infantry, and certainly distinctive enough to require Niven’s first trip to a tailoring house. The regiment, sometimes known as Hell’s Last Issue, had long worn trousers as opposed to kilts in a very fetching Mackenzie tartan.

The regiment itself was a tough one, formed in 1881 after merging the 71^st Highland Regiment of Foot with the 74^th Highland Regiment of Foot, and drawn in particular from the rough-and-ready men of Glasgow. It was initially this factor of Lowland men that played a role in the decision to wear the trews rather than the more typical Highland kilt. Either way, the trews were an essential component of full dress and made the unit distinct.

Niven went on with his military career, in spite of his mother not being all too happy at his failure to join the Argylls. “I had, however, a sizeable problem explaining to her, when I displayed my uniform, why I was wearing ‘those funny striped trousers instead of a kilt’.” He further wrote:

“After reading up the regimental history of the Argylls for eighteen months I was woefully short of material about the H.L.I., but I did remember hearing that this, the second oldest Highland regiment, had so distinguished itself at some point in its history that the men of the regiment were paid the supreme compliment of being allowed to dress like the officers in the other Highland regiments – in trews – the kilt being, they were told, the symbol of serfdom. An unlikely story, I always felt, particularly since the H.L.I. insisted on wearing white spats with their trews to make quite sure that nobody confused them with the Lowland regiments, and a campaign to be allowed to wear the kilt was always simmering on the regimental hob. It finally came to the boil soon after I joined and the kilt was restored to us.”

The most interesting aspect of this, however, is when Niven, accepting his regimental lot, talks about actually going to have this uniform made. As with so much of Niven’s life, there are parts of it that provide clues about the real details, and other parts that feel distinctly flowery, perhaps even fictional.

Nessie and the Tailors

Niven’s write-up of his visit to the tailors for his various military attire is plagued with uncertainty as to how much is really true. This uncertainty stems from someone he apparently took with him. Perhaps my research will eventually show his uniform to be from just a small military tailors and this whole series will have simply been an excuse to explore the houses Niven favoured generally and other clothes that they made for him. But, in The Moon’s a Balloon, Niven, makes a point of highlighting the high-end nature of the tailors (namely the money they charged him) and other establishments he had to visit for one simple reason: the presence of his friend, concubine and Dickensian-ish Cockney prostitute, Nessie.

The earlier chapters of his biography are dominated by Nessie, the enjoyably rough-tongued woman of the world who educates a very young Niven, as well as generally showing him a good time around town beyond the stuffy confines and standards demanded by his upbringing. In fact, Nessie is the very first person or subject that Niven talks about in his book’s opening line. “Nessie,” he wrote in his tone-setting first line, “when I first saw her, was seventeen years old, honey-blonde, pretty rather than beautiful, the owner of a voluptuous but somehow innocent body and a pair of legs that went on forever. She was a Piccadilly whore. I was a fourteen-year-old heterosexual schoolboy and I met her thanks to my stepfather.”

Niven supposedly first made contact with her when actually following her around town at a curious distance, finally watching her go about her business from her premises on Cork Street. Even more appropriately, the flat was “above a tailor’s shop, was small and smelled of cabbage.” He began sleeping with her as soon as she spied him but, more than that, they became great friends, visiting him (even at Stowe) and generally being a confidant for the naïve young man.

In Graham Lord’s Niv: The Authorised Biography of David Niven (2003), he details some speculation that Nessie may have been one of the actor’s more elaborate tales. “Some of Niv’s closest friends are cynical about this classic story of the Golden Hearted Whore… but many of his friends reckon Nessie never existed and was either a romantic invention or an idealised composite of several young tarts whom David enjoyed in those years.” He goes on to interview various old school friends who claim, in one way or another, to doubt the existence of Nessie.

However, another biographer, Michael Munn, put the same question to Niven himself when he was alive, later writing about it for his own biography, David Niven: The Man Behind the Balloon (2009). The actor even indulged in a questionable attempt at Cockney in the telling. “Over the years since The Moon’s a Balloon which introduced Nessie to the world,” Munn wrote, “there has been much speculation over whether she was an invention, or maybe a composite of several prostitutes.” However, he managed to give credence to Niven’s tales when interviewing one of Niven’s friends, Ann Todd:

“I discovered more about the authenticity of Nessie when, in 1985, I interviewed the actress Ann Todd… and she told me she actually met Nessie. ‘He brought her to see a play I was in,’ she said. ‘He’d never mentioned her before and he just turned up at the theatre with this girl and said “Ann, this is my dear friend Nessie,” and wondered how dear she was to him. When I read The Moon’s a Balloon, I found out.’”

This should allay any doubt as to the point of trying to tie this character to Niven’s first visits to the tailors. There would have been little point in doing so if she had never existed. Luckily she did and, as we shall see later, was pivotal in actually documenting Niven’s early tailoring via photography.

While I won’t linger further on the saucy, sometimes lurid, details that Niven divulges in his biography, Nessie is key to Niven’s history with tailoring. This is because, much later when finally getting fitted for his Highland Light Infantry attire, Nessie accompanied him. He details the visit as follows:

“Nessie accompanied me to various pompous tailors and bootmakers in London while I was being outfitted and eyebrows flew up and down like lifts at some of her observations. ‘Don’t like that fuckin’ black bonnet at all, dear. Makes you look like a bleedin’ judge ’andin’ out the death sentence.’ ‘Better not sit down in them tight trousers, dear, or you’ll be singin’ alto in the fuckin’ choir.’ When one considers that the most expensive tailors in London at that time charged only fourteen guineas for a suit, it must have come as a bodyblow to my mother to receive bills for £250 for tropical clothes all ‘suggested’ in a list provided by the Adjutant. Salt was doubtless rubbed into my poor mother’s financial wound when I handed over my ‘clothing grant’ from a grateful Government – £50.”

Aside from being one of the book’s funniest moments, this is certainly a tantalising glimpse into who Niven’s first tailors could have been. Though he differentiates where he had to go for his uniform from “the most expensive tailors in London”, the likelihood is that it was a named tailor of some kind. The question is: who?

There are two other points to note before ending this first dip into the vast subject of Niven and tailoring. The first is that, adding credence to the story, Nessie apparently took Niven to have his photo taken in his new uniform. “Nessie took me in uniform to a photographer in Piccadilly called ‘Cannons of Hollywood’ and had me preserved for posterity.” This is absolutely true and the photo does indeed exist. Here’s Niven wearing his new dress uniform.

The second point to note is that, while Nessie was (naturally) a secret kept from his mother, the uniform eventually brought the two women together when both were saying farewell to Niven at the docks as he left for his first posting to Malta:

“In the event it was my spats that brought them together. I put on my outfit, Glengarry, cut-away short khaki jacket with one ‘pip’ on the shoulders, Makenzie tartan trews and my mother took me, with a mound of tin mothproof uniform cases, in a taxi to the docks. Far from hiding behind a packing case, Nessie was very much in evidence standing by the barrier wearing a little beret over her fair hair and a very short white tightly belted raincoat that took nothing away from her fabulous figure and long slim legs. She was doing a very poor job of pretending not to look in my direction; she looked ravishing and I realised with a lurch of the heart just how much I was going to miss her. As my mother and I walked towards the barrier, a noise like castanets came from the region of my shoes. A few heads turned in our direction and suddenly Nessie doubled up with laughter. ‘Christ, yer fuckin’ spats are on the wrong feet.’ My mother caught Nessie’s laughter and I caught hers and in the ensuing hysteria, I introduced one to the other… I have always been embarrassed by long drawn out farewells: once I have got to the point of departure – like an operation – I want to get the damn thing over. We had all agreed that there would be none of that business of smiling bravely and waving while swearing dock-hands wrestled with gangplanks so the last I saw of them was walking away through the damp, dreary Customs Shed. Nessie was holding my mother’s arm.”

Even if Niven was initially unhappy with his regiment and its expensive tailoring requirements, I doubt he begrudged it in hindsight, simply because it seemed connected to several moments of utter happiness and joy in his early, tricky life. He may have had to embrace trews rather than a kilt, but few uniforms in history are likely as linked with such happy abandon as Niven’s was.

With all of this mind, then, where did Niven have these made? To find out, I began to approach many of the archives of tailors on Savile Row, along with other experts. This ongoing hunt for Niven’s tailor, however, will continue in the coming months.

Part 2 coming soon.

Never one to break form lightly, I managed to find exactly what was needed: a light-weight, unstructured double-breasted jacket from Richard James (£130). Not only was it in the same size as my previous jackets from the house (and, ergo, a good fit) but this one was of a lovely light grey and perfect for the summer months ahead. The other great thing about the jacket is that it essentially manages to retain the same general silhouette and form of my others, in spite of its lack of lining. It was, in hindsight, an essential purchase. It also quietly reminded of this lovely suit worn by Cary Grant (though his is a 3x2) for a publicity photo in the late 1940s (though I wouldn’t dare compare it beyond a very general likeness… I’m not quite that deluded).

In spite of it undoubtedly getting alarmingly warm at times this quarter, I spotted this lovely Huntsman silk scarf online (£50) and couldn’t resist. Thankfully, with the weather up and down (admittedly more up, though that hasn’t stopped me) I’ve managed to enjoy wearing it on a few outings and it works a treat as one of those under-the-jacket scarves that adds texture and colour without bulking up the neck and pushing out into a collar gap. It’s also my first piece of Huntsman. Fingers crossed something else in my size and price range by them comes my way soon.

Ever since writing about Peter Bowles’ shirts, I’ve had the urge to get one similar to those that he often wore; namely the bold stripes with white cuffs and collars. While I’m generally not in favour of dressing too much like Gordon Gekko or Patrick Bateman, looking into Bowles’ wardrobe showed that such a shirt could work wonderfully well, provided it was styled in a more classical manner rather than in a modernist 1980s vision (unless that was what you were going for, of course). The fact that Ascot has also just passed, and a variety of these shirts were spotted nestled among ill-fitting, hired morning suits, compounded my desire to find one and make it work.

Bowles wore bespoke examples of these by Harvie & Hudson, and this was originally what I was looking out for in the second-hand market. Richard Harvie told me that they were down to only producing one example of these shirts off-the-peg per season and that they usually sold around Ascot time anyway, so I didn’t hold out much luck of finding one before the event had finished. Finally, however, in the ever reliable Notting Hill Exchange, I came across one; pristine, beautiful and in my size (£30, free with vouchers). It was not, however, by Harvie & Hudson, but instead by their Jermyn Street rivals, Turnbull & Asser. It’s easily the best thing I’ve found in that shop since the bespoke Henry Poole shirt a few quarters back.

I can’t decide what it is about such shirts, but there’s something about the glaring white of the collar and the rich blue of the material that brings out a fine red tie. This is generally the colour I look for anyway; the more dominant it is in the design, the better. A few days after finding the shirt, a beautiful, red Turnbull & Asser tie came up on Vinted (£28) so I snapped it up. This was especially nice as my last few T&A ties have been of their heavier silks which can sit a little awkwardly on the thinner collars of some of my shirts. This was not one of those and it makes for a lovely match to the shirt.

A few months ago, a small but annoying tragedy occurred. I was mooching around my old stomping ground of Herne Hill when I lost one of my favourite pocket squares. It was a lovely, deep navy affair by Dunhill, made incredibly distinctive by a ridiculous design of lemons and limes. I was gutted when I realised it had gone astray on the streets of South London so I instantly went online and began to look for a replacement. While I sadly couldn’t find one like it, I decided on simply getting another blue pocket square. After loving the last one purchased, I opted for a lighter blue edition of another by E. Marinella (£27) which, while not quite having the eccentric flourish of my lost Dunhill one, is still a lovely item. I live in hope that the Dunhill one may somehow one day find its way back to me. I miss it dearly.

Every quarter, I invest in a number of tailoring-related books for research. I’m often hunting out the coffee table books made in tandem with the historic Row houses. I don’t really buy them to sit on any particular coffee table but to actively read them cover-to-cover, make notes and find little nuggets of information that may go towards future articles on here. Going into the actual houses on the Row and buying them has also made for a good introduction to various people in said houses with considerations as to future archive visits and queries. This quarter, then, my sights were set firmly on Henry Poole & Co.

As evidenced by my recent article on Dame Joanna Lumley, Poole’s history has been of great interest to me. In light of this, I bought one vintage book and one more recent book about them: Henry Poole: Founders of Savile Row by Stephen Howarth (£6) and Henry Poole & Co: The First Tailor of Savile Row by James Sherwood (£35). Howarth’s was incredibly helpful, with the military historian’s penchant for detail and clear, informative writing providing a wealth of inspiration for future articles. Sherwood’s, while a beautifully put together book with some stunning bits of archive photography and artwork, was less helpful and is essentially a collection a short biographies of some of Poole’s famed clientele. No doubt it is aesthetically pleasing but, in comparison to Sherwood’s other books (his Turnbull & Asser tome is great), it was lacking in depth.

Finally, as the months warmed up, I thought I’d better get a more summery pair of shoes. Around two years ago, I sold a wonderfully bizarre pair of brown Christian Dior 1980s slip-ons with a rise made out of some kind of alligator skin. I deeply regret this and decided this quarter to look for a vaguely similar pair to replace them. In the end, I opted for my first pair of shoes by George Cleverley (£85). While nowhere near as eccentric, these more than made up for the idiotic decision to sell my previous Dior pair. Their quality and robustness is already proving useful as I wander an increasingly sweltering London garnering looks more typically reserved for lunatics and the ill. It matters very little, however, when the confident clip of a Cleverley heel is audible next to the sad silence of a sea of trainers.

Stamp became part of the famed coterie of regulars at Hayward’s, joining luminaries such as Michael Caine, Roger Moore and many others in the tailors/clubhouse venue on Mount Street. As detailed in this article from earlier on these pages, his relationship with the tailor was front-page news in the 1960s, the pair sharing it together for The Daily Telegraph Weekend Magazine at the height of the Peacock Revolution; wearing a daring array of the most wonderful, attention-grabbing clothes money could buy in the period. As Anderson & Sheppard creative director (and personal friend to Stamp), Audie Charles, suggests in the short film put out to detail the upcoming auction, “I came to live in London through love, meeting my husband, and Terry and Doug Hayward were amongst our group of friends.”

Though he eventually moved on from the dandyish end of tailoring as his career progressed, this did not mean that he left behind the traditional houses of the Row. On the contrary, his style continued to evolve in conjunction with his screen roles, and he still relied on the craft and traditions of many Row houses. This is epitomised in the array of clothes on offer at the upcoming auction at Bonhams. While there are certainly pieces by Hayward up for auction, the real highlights come from the actor’s relationship with Anderson & Sheppard. As with so much of A&S’s history of dressing some of the greatest big screen stars, there was, naturally, a filmic connection. And it stemmed from a film that today isn’t unfamiliar to writing on tailoring and film culture either: Oliver Stone’s Wall Street (1987).

Wall Street

Stone’s Wall Street is arguably famous for several reasons. It highlighted the Yuppie culture of the 1980s; especially the ethos of “Greed is Good”. But it also defined the general style of the period; the sort of tailoring and fashion tastes of the real Wall Street brokers. There’s little doubt that the main figure of the film is Gordon Gekko, played with marvellous brutality by Michael Douglas. Though he acted somewhat as an ironic inspiration to many who missed the point of the drama, that inspiration arguably also translated into style thanks to Gekko’s clothing which took the trends of the period and defined them.

Gekko’s visual of sharp pin-striped suit, white-collared and cuffed blue shirt, red tie and long, trench or great coat almost became a uniform for the period’s bankers and brokers, and certainly became shorthand in hindsight for that kind of character in the era (see Patrick Bateman in the 2000 adaptation of American Psycho by Mary Harron). In the credits of Wall Street, Italian designer Ermenegildo Zegna is famously thanked for his input into the film’s tailoring, and Gekko’s wardrobe was put together by Alan Flusser. But there was another strand to the film’s suits thanks to the presence of Stamp. Stamp plays Gekko’s English rival, Sir Larry Wildman, and it is fitting that his tailoring is distinctly English by comparison.

While certainly concocted to be an English equivalent to Gekko, still driven by greed but with a typically English frostiness and quietude, the difference between the two characters is best exemplified by their clothes. Brokers in 1980s London, while enamoured by the likes of Armani and Ralph Lauren who dominated in the earlier part of the decade, had started returning to the Row.

As explored in my article here on Lord Lichfield and Dame Joanna Lumley’s campaign to jump-start business for the Row in the face of various difficulties in the decade, by the end of the 1980s, power-dressing was certainly bringing attention back to many Row tailors. With this in mind, it’s unsurprising to find Stamp (and/or his character in the film, depending on your perspective) to also be a customer to the Row. It fell to Anderson & Sheppard to dress Stamp but this was only the beginning of their relationship.

A&S were still actually on the Row itself at the time of production on Wall Street. Though today their beautiful bespoke house is on Old Burlington Street, for Stamp’s visits for Wall Street it was still at number 30 Savile Row. While it was undoubtedly down to the production of the film that meant Stamp approached the house, there are several interesting things to be gleaned from their books. Firstly, the log book.

It’s surprising to find that Stamp hadn’t worked with A&S before. Considering their cinematic heritage, and their dressing of several of Stamp’s peers, it’s unusual to find their collaboration occurring so late on. Yet, this is undeniably a product of Stamp’s earlier mentioned role in the Peacock Revolution which A&S were certainly not a part of.

According to the log book of his sizing, Stamp’s account was opened on the 10^th of April, 1987. This in itself is interesting as principle photography on the film started that month as well. Considering it finished shooting in July of that year, it would be tempting to think that Stamp’s various moments wearing the eventual suit they made for him were towards the very end of the shoot. However, with the label of the finished suit showing it ready for collection on the 22^nd of April, it’s clear that this was an incredibly quick turnaround for the house; far quicker than their usual eight to twelve weeks of measurements, cutting and multiple fittings.

There are several other interesting bits and bobs to be gleaned from this log book entry alone. The first is that it shows Stamp to still be living on the ground floor of The Albany; the famed Georgian mansion block adjacent to The Royal Academy which saw such famous tenants throughout history as as Lord Byron, Sir Kenneth Clark, Sir Terence Rattigan and Bruce Chatwin to name but a few. Rattigan is especially poignant as he, too, was an Anderson & Sheppard customer, but the reason why this location is interesting is that it shows the likely explanation for the quick turnaround. It’s barely a minute’s walk from the Row and so fittings for the suit would have likely been possible at very short notice.

Aside from the usual interesting aspects of Stamp’s measurements and general tastes in tailoring (in this case his desire for double-pleated trousers and a buttoned fly, for example) the other interesting piece of information comes in the form of his reference. While the need for references has since been phased out, even in the 1980s it was still desirable if possible. When looking at A&S’s archive for research regarding Peter Bowles, his entry simply had “Chance” written into it, though his actual reference was Henry McGee as detailed on a separate card. However, in Stamp’s case his reference is in the log book and comes in the form of none other than celebrated shoemaker, George Cleverley.

This is unsurprising considering Stamp’s famed obsession with shoes. In fact, Stamp’s relationship with Cleverley was reported in the Evening Standard in the late 1990s. According to the article and interview by Ros Drinkwater, published on the 7^th of August, 1998, Stamp was introduced to Cleverley by Douglas Hayward. As Stamp admitted in the interview, “the time had come to step out of Clarks, Dolcis and Saxone and into the handcrafted specials I had so coveted as a boy. Even so none gave me the comfort and elegance I sought. Until Mayfair tailor Doug Hayward introduced me to George.” Over the years, Cleverley made over thirty pairs of shoes for Stamp, though the article was published in line with their sale at auction due to no longer fitting the older actor who had hurt himself through stiletto wearing for Stephen Elliott’s The Adventures of Pricilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) and damage to his general alignment from the harness work of Richard Donner’s Superman (1978). Naturally, a master bespoke shoemaker such as Cleverley would have worked with and known many of A&S’s customers so made for an excellent reference.

To the suit in question then. The suit made for the film was, in contrast to those worn by Michael Douglas, made in a beautifully firm Prince of Wales check wool. Its jacket was double-breasted with generous lapels, jetted pockets and a 3x2 button formation, but still retaining that slightly soft outline at the shoulders as has been the tradition at the house for decades. The trousers are double-pleated, giving a beautiful drape, high-waisted and with a fairly wide turn-up which clearly weights the material firmly to give a lovely relaxed shaping when moving. It certainly epitomises Stamp’s character in the film; that mixture of obvious English tradition with just a few hints and details showing the sharper, luxurious and powerful turn of the decade.

The suit is, at the time of writing, about to go up for auction at Bonhams on the 25^th of June. Thanks to the auction, several other gems have been shared from the archives including a wonderful photo of Stamp at the house wearing the finished suit whilst stood among their many bolts of fabric. As detailed in the video shared by Bonhams, however, this wasn’t the end of Stamp’s relationship with A&S.

Beyond Wall Street

Stamp evidently loved the suit that Anderson & Sheppard made for him. This isn’t only evidenced by the fact that he kept it after the film (hence why it’s up for auction among a variety of his personal effects), but in the fact that only a year later he went back to the house on his own for another commission. In April the following year, Stamp returned, this time to have a suit made to his own unique tastes. However, his Wall Street character had clearly rubbed off on him as the suit had several aspects that Sir Larry Wildman would have no doubt been pleased with.

The suit conformed to the requirements detailed in the original log book, which may have admittedly had some input from the film’s various producers and costume department who likely had some requirements for the character. Again, it was double-breasted with the addition of no slits. With few other details in the order book, it’s safe to assume that it had the same general detailing as the previous suit.

However, the key difference is the material. This was a far more casual commission as it was a summer suit, one made in a Royal Glen Blue linen. This is undoubtedly one to be worn, not on the frosty streets of New York, but in warmer climes. It was finished on the 15^th of April, 1988, so logically could have even been commissioned with warmer festivals like Cannes in mind (not that Stamp attended Cannes that year).

However, Stamp appears to have not been snapped wearing it until well into this side of the millennium. As detailed on Bonhams website, he wore it to the premiere of Paul Andrew Williams’s Song for Marion (2012) and was photographed variously wearing the suit on the red carpet that night. However, he also wore it for a CBC interview in 2013 with George Stroumboulopoulis not long after.

Being a neighbour of the Row, it’s unsurprising that Stamp was drawn to it. Through kick-started by a film project, his relationship with Anderson & Sheppard clearly developed into a fruitful one that resulted in several beautiful suits that the actor kept until his death only last year. With the chance to own some of these suits being a mere click away, it may require some firm commitments (from myself at least) to be somewhere without Wi-Fi on the day of the auction. Who in their right mind could resist owning such beautiful tailoring, with such craft and cultural prestige, worn by one of the most striking actors of the last century?

Throughout the film, Godard slowly captures the Stones in the studio as they put flesh onto the bones of one of their best songs. While this in itself means that many wonderful and interesting moments of pop music history are captured for posterity, the moment that has stayed with me is of a somewhat different nature.

Throughout the studio sessions, Godard’s camera pans around slowly and patiently, almost to the point where it seems to go unnoticed by the band and their coterie of engineers, session musicians and friends. The take that interests me is an unusual one. It shows the band trying to decide on the song’s original groove. Mick Jagger is playing some kind of tabla, turning to camera briefly to ask Godard, “Ça va?” Brian Jones is sat with a huge Gibson acoustic, already having followed the noise out of the room as he smokes a cigarette without a care. And a shoeless Keith Richards is unusually playing bass. The camera tracks across this scene until it ends up with only Jones from the band in shot. He’s not, however, alone.

There’s a man sat on an amp watching on ominously. He’s in a dark, razor-sharp suit: a three piece with a tie and black leather shoes. He’s the epitome of everything stylistically contrary to the madcap colours of everything else worn in the room. The man watches the band for a few more seconds before he gets up and wanders causally off behind the sound booths. His walk is nonchalant, almost above what is happening around him. He could be an executive at the record label with the power to pull the plug at any moment, so confident is the stride away from the band’s rehearsal. In reality, he was an actor, one who was in the process of dangerously inhabiting the character of his latest film. The stylish man was British actor, James Fox.

Part of the famed and successful Fox acting dynasty, James Fox was one of the most stylish young men to grace British cinema screens in the 1960s. Like his brother Edward, he had a knack for upper-class roles, whether as the private school champion running against Tom Courtenay in Tony Richardson’s The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1961) or having rings run round him by gentleman’s gentleman Dirk Bogarde in Joseph Losey’s masterful The Servant (1963). In many of his roles, Fox dressed as the distinct English gentleman: classical, aristocratic, debonair.

Though often classically suited, towards the end of the decade his film work allowed him to embrace several stark and very different trends evolving in menswear in the period. This is tracked explicitly across two films made one after the other (even if one was only released two years later in 1970), but unusually they work in hindsight as a pair that comment upon one another as the decade soured, its optimism died and a creatively vibrant darkness descended. Those films were the poorly received Duffy (1968) by Robert Parrish and the masterful Performance (1970) by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg. The latter is why Fox is there in the studio with the Stones; working alongside Mick Jagger in the film, and seemingly still in character.

The films are connected by Cammell, who wrote the former and co-directed and wrote the latter (and Fox who starred as lead in both, obviously), but are also represented in that single moment in Sympathy for the Devil. The worlds of foppish, psychedelic hair-down freedom and the incredibly masculine, modish sharp style clearly had some dialectic in the culture and in real life. Fox was at the heart of this, on screen and off, so the story of his clothes in these films captures a distinct and unique moment in pop culture and menswear.

Duffy

The first part of the story revolves around Duffy, and Fox’s turn as the hip and happening rich kid who wants to rob his father (James Mason) of money as a diversion from the tedium of being wealthy and bored. The film was a critical and commercial flop at the time, seen as a deeply inauthentic attempt to capture the increasingly druggy, carefree culture that certain echelons of 1960s society briefly enjoyed (in spite of being based on a vaguely true story that occurred in the mid-1950s). The really interesting element of the film, however, came not in its jet-setting action scenes or enjoyably dated faux-swinging dialogue, but in Fox’s attire which was left to the devices of one of London’s most radical and interesting designers.

One of the most important denizens of the Peacock Revolution, Michael Fish matched craftsmanship with some of the most lavish and unusual designs ever likely seen in English menswear. Originally working for several Jermyn Street shirt-makers, he quickly and loudly revolutionised Turnbull & Asser in particular; opening their shop to the possibilities of ready-to-wear as well as introducing a vast array of colourful and dandyish designs aimed at a younger crowd than their usual Pall Mall clubland customers. He was perhaps the most appropriately-named designer in menswear history considering his role and development of that most Post-War of fads, the Kipper Tie.

By the time production on Duffy had begun, Fish had left Turnbull & Asser after nine years of learning their craft. He opened up his own shop, Mr Fish, at 17 Clifford Street in 1966 and almost at once attracted a lucrative, hip clientele of the rich and famous. Most of the frilly shirts seen on the celebrities of the day were likely by Mr Fish. This was not least down to the automatic exclusivity of the clothes on offer which, by the standard of times, were incredibly expensive. However, this isn’t to diminish Fish’s eye for outlandish, maverick design. Similarly to the team behind Granny Takes a Trip, Fish married the skill and craft found in the traditions of English shirt-making with the burning of any and all rulebooks in regards to what was acceptable. Dandyism didn’t cover Fish’s work; his clothes, even those off the peg, were a full frontal assault on the ordinary, quiet nature of men’s style.

There was, naturally, a reasonable crossover between Fish’s clothes and the world of Duffy. However, the designer was evidently rather taken with the foppish Fox. The actor, like many of the young stars in the period, was already a customer of Mr Fish, so the jump to wearing his famously frilled shirts and various large, colourful ties was a natural one. While Fish’s shirts were certainly attention-grabbing, his dressing of Fox for the film went the extra mile. Throughout the film, even in the sunny climes of Andalucía, Fox is seen wearing an array of extravagant attire by Mr Fish. Besides an abundance of frilly shirts and colourful dressing-gowns, Fox is especially distinctive in Fish’s own take on the Turnbull Turtle. I’ve written about these in depth here as they were also favoured in real life by many swinging young chaps, but, essentially, they were silk shirts that had a roll-neck and cuffs but no buttons and no shirt collar.

However, the most obviously peacockish piece that Fox wore in the film is one that came to define this first, swinging period for the actor. In fact, it’s the first thing we see Fox wearing on screen and, in spite of not wearing it again after the opening scene – where his character is humiliated by James Mason playing darts – it’s the most distinctive bit of clothing in the film. The item in question is an evening jacket but this description doesn’t do it justice.

Said item is a white silken evening jacket with peak lapels and jetted pockets. It’s unusually a 2 x 1 double-breasted, with black buttons and a low button stance, too. All of this added together would certainly make it stand out but Fish went further in wanting Fox’s gambling character of Stefane to stand out from the crowd. To achieve this, he used a material made with a texture of overlapping dominos. In the film, this doesn’t quite register on camera. It looks rather like it’s been designed to look faintly like a bright, white Edam. However, still photos from the film highlight the sheer detail and distinct peacockishness of the item.

The real coop of the item is that, with all of these dominoes lining up, the general shaping of them is essentially pattern matched as closely as possible. The dominos on the lapels slot nicely over those on the chest, and the same for the pockets. Even on the arms, the sides of the dominos are generally where the material has joined the shoulder rather than oddly cut in the middle of them. Planning out the cut must have been doubly difficult to the usual pattern matching, never mind if there was an attempt to somehow try and keep to the theme of the dominoes in game. It’s as outlandish an outfit that Fish made while still conforming in some way to the traditions of menswear (i.e. not putting men in dresses as he would do not long after with David Bowie and Mick Jagger).

Having been a great admirer of Fox’s work over the years, I wrote to him about a number of clothes worn by the great actor and he very kindly responded. In this letter, he discussed a variety of films which I’ll save for future articles, but, suffice to say, the item which really stood out for him from his film work was this jacket by Mr Fish. “Mr Fish,” he wrote, “I can’t remember the details but I did go and shop there and liked it.” And what about the jacket? “They supplied for Duffy an amazing white dinner jacket. There’s a photo of it in my autobiography.”

The promotional still of him wearing the jacket is indeed in his biography, Comeback: An Actor’s Direction (1983). But it wasn’t simply because Fox wore (and liked) the jacket in the film. On the contrary, the actor wore it in front of the flashlights of the premiere circuit and evidently kept it after the film. In 1967, the British premiere of George Roy Hill’s Thoroughly Modern Millie took place at the Odeon in Central London. The premiere heralded a new renovation of the cinema and Fox, who played Jimmy Smith in the film, naturally turned up to the premiere, albeit with Deborah Dixon by his side. This in itself is interesting as Dixon, a high-flying model and general swinging London mover and shaker, was the then girlfriend of Donald Cammell; Duffy scriptwriter and eventually co-director of the other film in question, Performance. Dixon even worked as a costume consultant on Performance but more on that later.

More importantly, Fox was wearing the Mr Fish jacket for this premiere. It’s worth comparing the other outfits worn that night just to show how dandyish a move this was. More typical black tie looks of the period can be seen on almost every other male attendant, from Roger Moore to David Hemmings. Only songwriter for Thoroughly Modern Millie, Lionel Bart, gives Fox and his jacket a run for his money in the league of dandyism, and even then the sheer craft of Fish’s jacket and outlandish bow tie edges it (as well as Fox’s still conforming to actual black tie standards; Bart, in contrast, looks like a Sergio Leone extra).

It would be tempting to wonder what Fox wore to the potential premiere of Duffy. This possibility presents several confusing mysteries. The first is that I’ve yet to find any evidence that the film actually had some sort of flashbulb and red carpet premiere event. Perhaps the famed unhappiness for so many involved with the film meant that it ended up not garnering a big press night. The second is that some photos of Fox have been attributed as being of him at a Duffy premiere. Further research, however, revealed an interesting difference as well as an interesting connection in regards to these photos.

In Geoffrey Aquilina Ross’ seminal book, The Day of the Peacock: Style for Men, 1963-1973 (2011), he features one of these photos of Fox and suggests that he’s at the premiere for Duffy. The photo shows Fox in a frilly shirt, a floppy bow tie, a show-stopping brocade jacket with a braided trim and a very fluffy woollen coat. However, this is an error in the book, which suggests that it was a shot of the Duffy premiere, shared apparently in the Daily Express in January 1968. Actually the photos of Fox in this outfit are from the premiere of Peter Collinson’s Up the Junction (1968).

The reason for this error, however, is understandable for one simple reason: the whole outfit is absolutely and unmistakably once again by Mr Fish. The frilled shirt is an obvious giveaway, but equally so is the experimenting with evening wear that results in the East Asian influenced brocade jacket. Everything is as “peculiar to Mr Fish” as you could get, so the labels of his clothes famously stated. Either way, in all of these outfits, Fox epitomised that turn in menswear and tailoring in the period, embracing the madcap, the psychedelic and a mishmash of whole eras and epochs into a new colourful whole.

Fox, however, wasn’t simply the embodiment of the period in his peacockish turn in Duffy. As already mentioned, Duffy has often been spoken of unfavourably in comparison to another film with a psychedelic edge that Fox starred in: Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg’s Performance (1970). Unlike in Duffy, the foppish frivolities were mostly left to Mick Jagger in his turn as washed-out rock star, Turner. By contrast, Fox instigated a startling, brilliant but ultimately damaging transformation into his London underworld character, Chas, and embodied the other side of 1960s British menswear: the hard-edged world of modish suiting. And, just like in Duffy, and with the help from some very interesting characters indeed, he looked to the sharper end of 1960s tailoring in order to inhabit this terrifying villain.

Part 2

Quintessentially, Lumley did this in a variety of high-end evening wear; donning various cocktail dresses and spectacular outfits while fending off earthly and unearthly villains. This is unsurprising considering Lumley’s background. Her career, after all, began as a fashion model in the 1960s. In particular, she was a muse for designer Jean Moir and was photographed by a variety of the era’s greatest photographers, from Brian Duffy to Terence Donovan. Fashion in the general sense played a huge part in her creative life, arguably coming full circle with the deliciously vicious fashionista Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous (1992-2021).

In 1981, Lumley became a surprising hero, not for saving government secrets or the souls of dead airmen, but for a large-scale campaign to help British tailoring. Her support for the crafts of Savile Row have since been unwavering, but the essential point is that, throughout the campaign, Lumley became one of the first high-profile women of the Post-War years to become an advert for some of the Row’s most exclusive, historic and male-dominated tailoring houses. Like Sapphire and Purdey, Lumley was a trailblazer; albeit of women’s tailoring on the Row.

A Lordly Campaign

The early 1980s was an unusual time for Savile Row. On the one hand, suits of high quality were arguably subject to a new demand by the increased image of industries such as the financial services and the turn towards power dressing. However, there’s little doubt that dressing down was, after the 1950s and 1960s, here to stay. The rise of casual dressing in jeans and t-shirt was unstoppable. And, even in terms of suits, the momentum was not necessarily on the Row itself but in more worldly influences; whether in the decade-defining influence of Armani (especially post-Richard Gere in American Gigolo) or the growing influence of Ralph Lauren who opened his first shop outside of the US in 1981 on Bond Street.

With this range of competition, as well as the increased growing ready-to-wear sector in London, Savile Row was facing a tough climate. Over the backdrop of this, the Row saw a huge level of reorganisation, suggesting that manoeuvres (even consolidation) were required. Tommy Nutter fled Kilgour, French and Stanley and opened up his new shop at number 19 on the Row in 1983. The break-up of Nutters after Edward Sexton and Nutter’s split later led to Chittleborough & Morgan forming in 1981 at number 12. Davies & Sons came back to their place on the Row in 1986 at number 38. And godfather of the Row, Henry Poole & Co, finally returned to number 15 in 1982.

All of this bolstering of the Row helped it reassert itself as the traditional base for the highest quality tailoring; and yet rent was rising and the public relationship to the bespoke suit was undeniably changing. The Row needed public help, something to raise its profile and show that it was still moving with the times, even if not at quite the breakneck pace of the period. The early 1980s saw the Row find a new advocate and champion of its crafts and qualities in the form of Lord Patrick Lichfield.

Patrick Anson, 5^th Earl of Lichfield, may have been cousin to the late Queen Elizabeth II, but he was a profound influence in Post-War British fashion as well. Lichfield is better known behind the camera in regards to fashion. The aristocratic, dandy figure came to fashion at exactly the right time in the 1960s when leaving the army in 1962. He initially worked as an assistant before graduating to photographic work very quickly indeed. From the mid-1960s, Lichfield was in high demand, especially for Vogue Magazine. He’s arguably most famous for a range of celebrity images, in particular the just-married photos of both Mick and Bianca Jagger in 1970 (wearing Tommy Nutter, as it happens).

Lichfield was almost as striking in front of the camera as behind it. He became one of the definitive fops of the Peacock Revolution, photographed regularly wearing the latest hip fashions while hanging out with various beautiful people (my own personal favourite being a rather camp biker shoot with then girlfriend, Britt Ekland, photographed in 1970 by equally legendary Terry O’Neill). In the period of the campaign itself, Lichfield was even voted the most stylish man in Britain, which certainly help bring further eyes onto his eventual tailoring campaign.

Care was always at the heart of Lichfield’s work; care towards British craft and style. His photoshoots for Burberry over the years, sometimes featuring himself, attest to that. “The English look is the Burberry look”, as one advert suggested; adorned with him modelling the latest mac and perfectly encapsulating his own stylistic concerns.

Lichfield clearly cared about English craft and so, looking towards Savile Row in the early 1980s and seeing the difficulties it faced, the photographer sought to help. With aid of the Merchant Taylors, across 1981 and 1982 Lichfield organised a campaign to promote the skills, craft and style still on offer in many of the Row’s most prestigious and historic houses. This consisted of a number of things, largely press stories and photographs, culminating in a showcase event of the tailoring as well. Lichfield, however, couldn’t do it alone.

Going against the predominance of men’s tailoring, Lichfield chose Lumley for his muse and companion to embody Savile Row chic and elegance. I spoke to Dame Joanna about the campaign and the tailoring made for it. As she recalls, “It was a campaign led by Lord Lichfield to highlight the importance of Savile Row tailoring. Fashion had become a bit slipshod and slapdash, too unstructured to charm or impress. As I was both a friend and an often-used model of his, he kindly asked me to join him. He abandoned his camera and became a very natty male model in the twinkling of an eye.”

Lichfield and Lumley’s friendship went back to the 1960s, with the former having first photographed the latter in 1965 for an advertisement for swimwear. They were in a relationship together for a number of years as well, and Lumley became a staple of Lichfield’s shoots. He photographed her on beaches, draped in couture and went so far as to appear with her in one of his own Burberry campaigns. One of his photos of Lumley is now even held in the prestigious collection of the National Portrait Gallery.

Equally, Lumley had a detailed consideration of men’s fashion and tailoring. “There is no doubt that a perfectly tailored suit of clothes improves the appearance and, I would suggest, the behaviour of a chap, beyond description. My husband is sartorially minded and delights in the excellent clothes specially made for him. Having been a house model for the great Jean Muir, I have an eye and a nose for the very best. Sometimes a fellow’s coat thrown over the shoulders of an evening dress is all that you need to make a statement of elegance, nonchalance and taste. I love men’s ties, too.”

Lumley wasn’t a stranger to transgressing masculine tailoring. In fact, for Lichfield’s own wedding to Lady Leonora Grosvenor at Chester Cathedral in 1975, Lumley stole the show by wearing top and tails (with one of the most wonderfully wide pair of trousers I’ve ever seen, almost reminiscent of Bowie’s Kensai Yamamoto’s striped creation from the same period). Considering all of this, Lumley and Lichfield made a perfect match for the tailoring campaign, not simply for general fashion photography, but for Lichfield’s own vision of how to bring new eyes to the work of Savile Row.

The Press

Lumley, too, heard the call to save Savile Row from its seemingly gloomy future and so became the poster for Lichfield’s campaign. The photographer’s gamble paid off with Lumley’s presence dominating the headlines, here and abroad. A 1981 Spanish edition of Hello! Magazine (“Hola!” in case you were wondering) was especially smitten with the campaign, writing of Lichfield’s show that it highlighted “the importance of preserving traditional tailoring techniques in the face of growing industrialisation in clothing production. According to the organizers, bespoke tailoring remains a symbol of distinction and quality.” However, much of the word count naturally concerned Lumley’s presence:

“Joanna Lumley, known for her role in “The New Avengers,” added a touch of glamour to the occasion, appearing alongside Lord Lichfield in several of the outfits showcased. Both embodied the spirit of refinement and sophistication associated with Savile Row.”

The article concluded by perfectly summarising Lichfield’s aim. “The exhibition confirmed”, so the journalist wrote, “that, despite changing trends, London continues to be a global reference point for men’s fashion, particularly in the realm of tailored suits.”

British media was equally smitten with Lumley adorned in Savile Row’s finest, though admittedly went for more colourful interpretations. Writing in the Business & Money section of the Sunday Express on the 9^th of May 1982, City Editor, Kenneth Fleet, wrote the headline “Cor! Miss Lumley!” followed by what can only be described as an unusual inner monologue. “Not every Savile Row suit looks as fantastic as the dining suit worn by Joanna Lumley”, he wrote. “Very few customers have Miss Lumley’s actress figure and, with rare exceptions, Savile Row suits are made as understatements for men who prefer to appear discreet.”

He went on, suggesting that getting a Savile Row suit might not “only… give me a conversation opener should I have the good fortune to find myself dining at the same table as Joanna (you see, first name terms already!) it would also last through the next boom, and the subsequent recession.”

In his book Henry Poole: Founders of Savile Row (2002), author Stephen Howarth rather diplomatically called this article “somewhat inelegant”. However, the interesting aspect of the article that is worth mentioning is that Fleet sat down with the director of one of the tailoring houses in question, namely Angus Cundey of Henry Poole. As he wrote, “Having studied Miss Lumley’s picture and having talked with Angus Cundey, I believe a Savile Row suit at £500 could prove an excellent investment… ‘A Savile Row suit,’ Mr Cundey confided, ‘is designed to be let out in all critical areas, by as much as four inches.’ Mr Cundey controls and masterminds the tailors after whom Savile Row would have been named if it hadn’t already got its name Poole.”

The Daily Express were equally left breathless by the campaign, though there’s little to add from what they said. The overall coverage was excited, both to see English tailoring back in the limelight and to see Lumley adorned in it.

Which, of course, brings us to exactly what Lumley had made for the campaign. In the photocall where Lichfield joined her, she is seen sporting a matching hunting set in tweed of plus 4’s, Norfolk jacket and stalker hat, made distinct by matching with a set worn by Lichfield and further highlighted by the distinctly un-country-ish surroundings of Brutalist London.

“It was such fun to see these photos!” Lumley told me. “Huntsman made the tweed suit.” These tweed creations were made by the tailors at Huntsman when Colin Hammick was still at the helm, though I’ve yet to verify who was charged with making them. However, the real coop of the campaign was in a specific and distinct relationship with the aforementioned Henry Poole, whose magnificent work was seen not just in this photocall but also in other parts of the campaign.

Sapphire & Poole

Henry Poole & Co possesses an atmosphere akin to an ancient library. It has the distinct air of an establishment created for the pages of Arthur Conan Doyle; part exlusive, quiet club, part refined historical archive. Its walls are littered with a cacophony of royal warrents, whose writing flows and curls in a manner their luxurious fabrics mimmick. Time feels as if it passes at its own relaxed pace there.

Often considered the godfather of the Row, the tailoring house has seen more royal heads than the blocks at the Tower of London and more historical figures than Who’s Who. Their history has filled several books, with likely the most prestigious clientele of any tailor on the Row, even today. This isn’t to be the article that explores Poole’s history in extensive detail (though they’ll be a regular presence of these pages) but, suffice to say, they catered to some incredibly important and unusual people throughout history, from Emperor Napoleon III to Buffalo Bill.

Poole’s are a natural choice for any campaign promoting the Row. As part of the campaign, Lumley and Lichfield were made complimentary outfits by them, showcasing the possibilities on offer to both men and women. While the tweed commission from Huntsman was more typical in that Huntsman had made ladies riding attire for many years, it is in Poole’s commission where the real, radical reimagining of a Savile Row outfit came to life.

In fact, according to Poole’s themselves, it was Lumley rather than Lichfield who approached them to be part of the campaign. I spoke to one of its directors and master tailors, Keith Levett, to find out more. “We still have a photo of her wearing the dinner suit,” he tells me. “She wrote to Angus [Cundey] and he was very taken by her, obviously! She charmed him and he charmed her, it was all very lovely.”

Dame Joanna remembered her first visit to Poole’s with ease. “It was very thrilling to enter Henry Poole’s for the first time,” she recalls. “It had already been determined that they would make me a dinner party suit, which at the time was still very daring. Women had only just become acceptable wearing trouser suits, as they were called; Yves Saint-Laurent had started the trend in the Sixties.”

Indeed, this is the crux of Lumley’s tailoring and why it’s such an important moment. While Saint-Laurent had certainly started the trend a few years earlier of putting women into dinner suits and trouser suits, the Row itself had yet to fully catch up; with perhaps the exception of Tommy Nutter and Edward Sexton’s radical work a few years earlier (that Lichfield photo of the Jaggers earlier has them both wearing Nutter suits for the wedding, much to Mick’s chagrin at the time).

This is especially poignant as, in spite of the common Americanism of calling such an jacket a tuxedo, the heritage of this kind of tailoring directly stems from Poole’s themselves and their work for Edward VII. Also worth noting is that Lumley joined an exclusive list of historical women to enjoy Poole’s services. As Howarth wrote in his book, “Lumley appeared in a Poole’s outfit, an event fully in keeping with Henry Poole’s clothing beauties such as Lillie Langtry and Catherine ‘Skittles’ Walters…”.

The suit itself was cut by one of the most talented of the Row’s tailors of the last century, Phillip Parker. “Being fitted by Philip Parker was like being in the hands of a Rodin or a Michelangelo,” Lumley continues, “the quiet care of the measurements, the infinite attention to detail, the grave perusal of cloth, the decision made and approved…. I couldn’t wait to see the final outfit which was, of course, utterly stunning.”

Evidently Lumley made an impression on Parker as well as, when listing the range of work for Poole’s in an interview with Port Magazine many years later, it wasn’t the crowned heads he had certainly worked with that came to mind. “During my career,” he said, “I’ve cut thousands of garments, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s livery for court, a tuxedo for Joanna Lumley, a business suit for an ordinary man off the street, the best part of the job is always the same.”

And what a suit Parker’s creation was. Lumley wore it first for the photocall for the press with Lichfield adorned in his own dinner suit. Both are classic black tie in a sense, yet the proportions have a distinct 1980s flair. The cut of the trousers has a perfect drape whose razor creases sharply continue into the toes of her heels, creating a silhouette that’s only missing John Steed with his bowler and umbrella adjacent to it. The jacket, meanwhile, has incredibly structured, roped shoulders with the silk lapels equally sharp completing the shaping. The silk continues creating the strong lines, even with the lining on the pockets. It’s almost akin to a luxurious armour.

Comparing the way the suit sits on Lumley to Lichfield really highlights what Poole’s was offering. Both use similar techniques but work for different body types. However, the real difference is highlighted in what’s worn with the tailoring. The sharp lines of the suit allow for Lumley to be brazen with some of the extras. This doesn’t just result in a dominating silk bow (black in the official photo, white in the press call) but also a white rose worn in the lapel. It may be one of the boldest bits of power tailoring seen of the period, and Lumley embodies much of her biggest characters at this point in her career while wearing it.

If Lumley left an impression on Parker and Cundey, then the campaign itself certainly left its mark as well. It was undeniably a huge success. The press promoted it no end and though the Row still had difficulties to face, the raised profile was just right for the young decade. It’s telling that an array of rock stars began to visit (and in some cases revisit) the Row for work, and the customer-base likely benefited from being reminded that traditional tailoring and style could still be worn, and not simply be imported from the new European and American houses who were doing such good business.

The story comes full circle for Lumley and Poole. In 2013, she returned to the Row to award the Golden Shears Awards for its 50th anniversary alongside David Gandy. The winner was Emily Squires, an apprentice then at… Henry Poole.

Finally, I asked Dame Joanna about the suit today. Does she still have it? “Wretchedly, although I wore it again and again, all the clothes I took away from this glorious and wildly successful campaign I soon had to give away to open hands begging for charitable donations. I don’t have any of them left. Also, if the truth be told, I seem to have mislaid my erstwhile sylph-like figure.”

Lumley may not have the suits today, but she joins esteemed company as one of the customers of the Row’s most historic tailors, alongside the ranks of kings and emperors. As she concludes, “I am content to say that once I walked in the same paths as the fabulous ones and was dressed by Henry Poole.”

In the last two chapters of this series, we’ve explored the tailoring most favoured by Peter Bowles. There has been input from several of Savile Row’s biggest houses, with an array of beautiful suits discovered; in particular those made by Anderson & Sheppard. Many more questions could be asked in regards to Bowles and Savile Row, but these are likely impossible to answer, with much of the paperwork no longer existing or with information locked away in the archives of television studios and other Row tailors. However, there is another, final avenue to explore in regards to Bowles: namely his shirts, coats and taste in accessories.

If Bowles had excellent taste in tailoring, then his taste in everything else certainly matched it. His shirts were especially confident, to the point where they sometimes used to draw attention away from the subtleties of his suits. Equally, his ties were classical yet playful, while a range of accessories added to many of his final looks, on screen and off. With this in mind, we return to his wife, Sue. As it turned out, Bowles was a not a devotee of the Row in this regard, but its great fellow traveller in all things menswear, Jermyn Street.

Shirts

Initially when sharing images of Bowles for the earlier articles, a handful of replies mentioned that the shirts and ties he was wearing were distinctly of the famed shirtmaker, Turnbull & Asser. I concur that this is undoubtedly the case, with several ties in particular being overtly T&A in design. However, with little access available at the time of writing to their archive, I could only confirm it in the general sense. Of course a gentleman of Bowles’ character and taste would frequent Turnbull & Asser. However, Sue had another name in mind for shirts when I asked her about her husband’s favourites.

“Peter bought his shirts from Harvie & Hudson,” she told me. After extensive research and conversations with the team at Harvie & Hudson, a great deal became clear about the kind of shirt that Bowles more often than not favoured. First, though, a short, appropriate story from Bowles himself from the very early stages of his career.

In 1962, Bowles was filming a great crime thriller for director Ken Annakin called The Informers (1963). Being only a few years out of RADA, it would have been usual for Bowles to toe the line with pretty much any aspect asked of him; a debut role on the big screen playing a small but memorable villain, the wonderfully-named Peter the Pole, opposite some of the greats of British drama including Nigel Patrick, Harry Andrews and a positive smorgasbord of character actors (Brian Wilde, Colin Blakely, Derren Nesbitt, Frank Finlay, George Sewell, Allan Cuthbertson, the list goes on). But Bowles stood his ground creatively, and this manifested most strongly in, of all things, his clothes.

Bowles recounts this particular story in his autobiography. “My very first film was a British gangster film called The Informers,” he wrote. “I had been cast as one [of the mob], a rather lowly one with few lines. I had been cast, I gathered, because of my height. I hadn’t quite been cast, however, as I had to have a camera test, not so much for my acting but just to see how I looked.” The story continues in detail, showing how he defiantly stood his ground when it came to his clothes:

“I was sent to Nathans, the big film costumiers, which was then in Leicester Square. The lady who was head of costumes for the film said after our introduction ‘Oh yes, you’re playing one of the gangsters, so it will be the usual – black jacket, dark shirt, white necktie and any trousers that fit.’ My difficult gene immediately came into play. I felt I was being treated as a cliché, a common or garden gangster type – based not on life but on other British film gangster type clothes. On a spur of the moment I said ‘I want to have a three-piece pinstripe suit, a striped shirt with a stiff white collar and a bow tie.’ The costume designer’s mouth was beginning to fall open. ‘Oh yes, and I’ll wear a bowler hat and carry an umbrella.’”

To cut a long story short, the costume lady was worried that Annakin would be furious with Bowles going against the brief, but the actor insisted anyway. He did the camera test in his desired outfit and his instinct had been exactly right. “I expected to get a bollocking. Instead, Ken Annakin absolutely loved the costume and congratulated the costume designer on her originality of mind. I stayed mum.” This is essentially how Bowles would work in the future, as the previous two articles have shown, and it worked wonders for him. It seems as if this incident earlier in his career set the tone of approach to costume but also his general tastes as to what he thought worked for him on screen. In suits, this naturally manifested in an endless stream of two and three-piece pin-stripes, as well as a variety of hats. But the most consistent element is the similar bold striped shirt, especially those with white collar and cuffs.

Now, we return to Harvie & Hudson. According to Sue, this is where Bowles went for bespoke, extravagant and bold shirts. Harvie & Hudson are a classic of Jermyn Street shirtmakers. The shop started in 1949, founded by Thomas Harvie and George Hudson. This makes their meteoric rise in the history of Jermyn Street all the more astounding as it very quickly established itself as one of the bastions of English shirtmaking. They soon gained prestige for their array of shirts and ties in particular, first on Duke Street just off Jermyn Street before moving a few years later to their beautiful premises at number 97 where they are still based today. With Bowles favouring distinctly English style and tradition, this choice is more than a little appropriate. As Jonathan Sothcott writes in his volume, The Jermyn Street Shirt (2021), “Of all the shirtmakers on Jermyn Street, Harvie & Hudson feels the most distinctly English.”

The house has an established pop culture and historical heritage, from the actual shop featuring early on as a location in the Cliff Richard film, Two a Penny (1967), to clientele such as Frank Sinatra, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth. Even Winston Churchill clearly had his loyalty to Turnbull & Asser challenged by Harvie & Hudson, famously stating that a “gentleman buys his hats at Locks, his shoes at Lobb, his shirts at Harvie & Hudson, his suits from Huntsman and his cheese at Paxton & Whitfield.” Bowles was, therefore, in good company.

I paid a visit to the shop to discuss Peter with joint-owner of the firm (and son of Thomas Harvie), Richard Harvie. While Bowles was undoubtedly a customer in the years before Richard followed in his father’s footsteps and started working in the firm, there were many memories to share from when Richard also catered to the actor. “I do remember serving Peter,” he tells me on my visit. “I started in 1985, and it was probably the 1990s when I first met him. He was a very pleasant guy, no airs and graces. A real gentleman who had a natural eloquence. He was pretty tall as well, at least six, two! Very much an actor and a really nice guy. Peter was always impeccable. He would walk in on a Tuesday in beautiful shoes, beautiful suits, just amazingly well turned out. So I’m sure he bought clothes for both himself and for his work.”

This was evident in the case for Bowles’ shirts as well as there was straight away a connection established to some screen work. “We did the shirts for To The Manor Born,” Richard continues. “I’m absolutely sure of that. He would go for this sort of thing here. This was his style, very bold.” On the visit, Richard dug out the earliest surviving fabric board for Harvie & Hudson. At this moment, when talking about Peter’s tastes, he pointed to number 39 on the board pictured below.

Compare it to the photos from To The Manor Born, and it’s clear that this is one of the H&H shirts made for Bowles in that series. However, Bowles was even more specific and idiosyncratic in his shirt tastes, going all the way back to that first costume decision in The Informers.

“He favoured the white collar and cuffs,” Richard remembers. “They would have been made for him specifically. We only did white collars and cuffs for Ascot but those shirts were still quite plain. He’d have had to specify those bolder designs. I always saw him in those and that’s how I remember him: very much a bespoke client.” This is evident in any number of pictures of Bowles in television series and films at almost any point in his career, as well as off screen as well.

The combination of such bold material with white collar and cuffs was explicitly a bespoke option at H&H. However, Bowles wasn’t the only man on television to favour this look. “It was relatively unusual to ask for the white collar with a bold stripe,” Richard tells me. “The only other clients I can think of who asked for it were the Two Ronnies. There was a wardrobe lady called Mary Husband who was really well known at the BBC; a lovely, giant character. And she used to do all of the buying for them. So if you see photos of the Two Ronnies, they also had similar very bold stripes from us.”

Bowles continued with this look for the rest of his life. Sometimes the whole shirt would feature the bold stripes, while other times he would favour the distinctiveness of the white collar and cuffs, just like his first big screen villain, Peter the Pole. “The interesting thing is that he pretty much dressed the way my dad dressed,” Richard concludes. “He always wore white collar and cuffs, and spots in woven ties. Their clothing was quite similar. It’s very British, English even. It’s an extension of the stiff collar. They would have both worn them in spite of them being a pain!” In other words, Bowles continued a tradition that was being gradually replaced; his look, in spite of its flamboyance, was arguably very traditional.

The Final Touches

One of the most striking things about that first, rebellious outfit chosen by Bowles for The Informers is his insistence on wearing a bowler hat. Just like the pinstripe and the striped shirts, hats would play a role in Bowles’ wardrobe. In fact, I can think of few actors who so consistently wore a hat, on screen and off. Bowles had very particular tastes in hats, favouring either blue or brown fedoras. Even more appropriately, he bought his hats just a little further down the street from Harvie & Hudson.

“His hats were from Bates,” Sue told me. Bates is one of the three celebrated luxury milliners of St. James’s, the other two being Lock & Co and Herbert Johnson. Just as with Herbert Johnson, which is now part of the Swaine, Adeney and Brigg family, Bates is part of Hildtich & Key on Jermyn Street. Bates have been around since the very end of the nineteenth century, and have had a range of similarly showy clientele, most notably David Bowie whose various Bates hats are now held in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s collection.

Bowles had a particular model that he favoured from Bates; the Berkley Fedora. This is one of their showier models, with a distinctive, wide brim and a much wider, more flamboyant ribbon which boasts a bow. The actor is seen mostly wearing them with coats, usually at cold winter premieres.

There are few kinds of hat that the actor didn’t try throughout his career, certainly considering the various period roles that he played; whether the bowler hat of The Irish R.M. or the panama hat of The Jewel in the Crown. The point to make is that hats in Bowles’ personal life were often paired with big, heavy coats, which is where we’re to end our excursion into the wardrobe of this fine, stylish performer.

As mentioned earlier on, Sue gifted the majority of Peter’s wardrobe to Angels Costumes and, since they have no cataloguing process in regards to where their vast array of clothing has actually come from, much has been lost in the warehouse among the many items that they loan to modern productions. I was curious, then, to ask Sue whether she actually kept anything of Peter’s. “He also bought the most lovely full length Alpaca coat from Simpsons, which I still have.”

Simpsons of Piccadilly was a huge, luxurious department store where the rather bizarrely spacious Waterstones now sits today, courting footfall from both Jermyn Street and Piccadilly. It specialised in fine attire and had an array of clothes from both S. Simpsons and DAKS, and was built in a lavish Art Deco style in order to rival Austin Reed’s vast shop on Regent Street. Bowles evidently visited the shop with coats in mind as he’s pictured variously in two different Alpaca coats; a dark one and a light brown one. I believe it is the latter that Sue has kept.

The reason is that the light brown (or tan) Alpaca has seen Peter through almost forty years of wear. He was first seen wearing it in the early 1980s for the press photos of his beloved pet project series, Lytton’s Diary. Here he is wearing it outside El Vino’s on Fleet Street; appropriate considering his continuing role in Rumpole of the Bailey and the comforting presence of Pomeroy’s wine bar (which was based on El Vino’s).

However, Bowles wore it religiously in winter months and, especially later in life, failed to attend a cold premiere without its warm protection. It feels a deeply appropriate item for Sue to have kept; seemingly large and imposing, yet one of undeniable craft - eccentric yet traditional simultaneously - and of a lasting quality. It goes without saying, as we have seen in this series of articles, that the rest of Peter Bowles’ wardrobe embodied all of these characteristics. But evidently, they embodied the man himself, in his work and personal life. The stylish quality of British television lost a great stalwart when he passed, and his standards have rarely been replicated since.

Thanks to Sue Bowles and Richard Harvie

Cultural depictions of the 1960s seemed to split by the end of the 1980s, with some still buying into the groovy colour defined by everything from flower power to Granny Takes a Trip. The other half, in stark contrast, focussed on a faded, bricks-and-mortar version (I think the truth of the decade is likely housed somewhere between the two), and there are few better examples of this than Bruce Robinson’s Withnail & I (1987).

Set in 1969, the decade has taken on its toll on the two out-of-work actors at the centre of the story: the upper-class drunk, Withnail (Richard E. Grant), and his paranoid, timid acquaintance, Marwood (Paul McGann). In almost any other film, their world would have been splashed with psychedelic colour; their flat a kaleidoscopic funfair, their lives carefree, and their trips variously sunny and swinging. Instead, the decade has brought them into Dickensian poverty, a decrepit gentility even, while housed in a Camden flat collapsing under the weight of rubbish. Only an accidental holiday to the rain-sodden Lake District offers a glimmer of (false) hope.

No doubt much of the film’s bite comes from Robinson’s own experiences of the decade, but the one aspect where this distinctive and refreshing characteristic is present most in the film is in its costumes. Withnail and Marwood are the most unswinging pair imaginable, in spite of getting smashed and high throughout. Marwood favours a leather coat and some general jumpers and jeans. The really interesting clothing choices are, however, in the more obviously aristocratic Withnail. As Withnail proudly proclaims to the drug dealer Danny (Ralph Brown) when the ominous man notices that Withnail is wearing a suit, “This suit was cut by Hawkes of Savile Row!”

Withnail is one of the great exponents of sprezzatura, the philosophy defined by Italian courtier Baldassare Castiglione in his The Book of the Courtier (1528). As he wrote, his philosophy was “to avoid affectation to the uttermost and as it were a very sharp and dangerous rock; and, to use possibly a new word, to practise in everything a certain ‘nonchalance’ that shall conceal design and show that what is done and said is done without effort”. The point of Withnail’s outfit is that it looks great yet effortless; unsurprising and natural for such a chaotic character. Each individual item may be in itself (supposedly) high-end, aristocratic and good quality, but the way each part is worn adds to a successful, nonchalant whole.

Withnail doesn’t wear the suit from Hawkes throughout the entirety of the film. When on holiday, and in several segments in London, Withnail actually wears a pair of green corduroy trousers which work perfectly with this philosophy. In fact, the only part of the film where he’s fully dressed up is to visit Uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths) with the intention of impressing (or perhaps pimping) his way to a few days at the rich man’s holiday cottage in Penrith. One obvious item of clothing, however, accompanies Withnail on all of his travels, even when not wearing much else such as when he covers himself in Deep Heat to keep warm, or when he’s fishing with a shotgun: his coat.

The coat is one of the most famous items of men’s clothing to grace British screens; so distinctive and utterly attached to the character who wears it. If the film really is the ultimate of cult films (a description I’ve always found frustrating and undermining of its real qualities), then Withnail’s coat is the item that ultimately defines it. Withnail’s coat has had an appropriately convoluted and strange life, one far beyond the story of the film itself.

Creating the Coat

Withnail’s coat owes its creation to the film’s costume designer, Andrea Galer. Galer was immersed in the cultural world that Withnail & I sat within as she told me in a lengthy interview. “My journey to that point followed a childhood in Cambridge,” she recounts, “growing up with David Gilmour, Syd Barrett, Roger Waters and Storm Thorguson. I met Julie Christie when I was twenty years old in Cambridge when she visited her brother, Clive, who was at that time doing a degree at St. John’s College. I moved to London when I was twenty-one, and I built my skills in making and cutting theatrical costumes in Derek West’s workshop in Charlotte Street. I lived in Holland Park which led me to a certain social milieu and to my relationship with Alan Aldridge. His work with The Beatles, Ink Studios and with George [Harrison] setting up HandMade Films were all relevant to being asked to be costume designer on Withnail.”

There’s a lot to explore here, but the first question after this took me on a slight filmic tangent. Galer’s earliest work actually came out of this same social scene, namely working in wardrobe on Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973). Though she is credited online as working chiefly on Christie’s costume, I did want to briefly ask about Donald Sutherland’s distinctly tweedy outfit for that film, especially as some of the styling of Sutherland’s heavy coat seem echoed in Withnail’s costume. “Donald’s coat was also of Harris Tweed but that was reflecting his character as an academic man.” As Withnail was far from being academic, I left the point there.

The coat’s real purpose is to give Withnail his dramatic silhouette. It’s imposing, dramatic to the point of Shakespearean, and moves in a way that is highly stylised and arresting. In some ways, the coat expresses Withnail’s own view of himself; elevated beyond his lowly position as a struggling actor. The coat’s most famous scene exemplifies this. As he and Marwood walk back to Crow Crag after being threatened with a dead fish by Jake the Poacher (Michael Elphick) at The Crow & Crown, Withnail rails against the world, mostly in silhouette. “Bastards!” he cries to the heavy Cumbrian skies. “You’ll all suffer! I’ll show the lot of you! I’m going to be a star!” The scene is heightened by the beautiful swaying drape of the coat as it swirls around him like a coterie of dark spirits.

Galer explains how this scene influenced the coat’s development. “The idea behind the Withnail coat evolved from a combination of discussions with Bruce Robinson,” she suggests. “We wanted to create something which was intentionally designed to move like it does in the iconic ‘I want to be as star’ scene. It should almost have a life of its own – as if it’s Withnail’s best friend.” Galer absolutely achieved this, but where exactly did the coat come from? It’s certainly not of the kind that was popular generally in 1960s London.

In fact, Withnail’s outfit as a whole feels a hang-up of the Pre-War gentry, a subtle implication that it may perhaps be the character’s father’s. For reference, here’s a jacket that Hawkes & Co of Savile Row, who Withnail claims made his suit at least, made in the era of the film’s setting. The suit was exhibited under the title of “Rude Boy UK 1960s” at an exhibition in 1994 which further compounds the difference to Withnail’s style. If Withnail’s suit feels contrary to the slimmer proportions, then the coat – beyond the obvious Peacock-ish turn for older, military paraphernalia in a somewhat Post-Modern hat-tip to the past – feels positively taken out of time. What was the thinking behind it?

“It was when I was researching ideas for Withnail’s coat,” Galer continues, “that a friend showed me the Nineteenth-Century frock coat which belonged to her great grandfather who was a member of the Scots Guards. She told me it was exclusively woven for them, so I attempted to get the fabric woven exactly like it. However, there was only six weeks at that stage before we began filming, so my only option was to buy fabric already woven. We ended up using the single width tweed for the Withnail coat which was bought from Liberty’s at that time.”

The fabric plays a huge part in the history of the coat’s revival but more on that later. Suffice to say, there is an obvious military bearing to it which, contrary to the irony of the adaption of military clothing in the 1960s (arguably at the height of anti-war sentiment in the country), clearly signals Withnail’s background as much as his other aristocratic traits. “Withnail and Marwood would be dressed to reflect an elegance,” Galer concludes on this point, “avoiding the ‘Granny Takes a Trip’ look which had evolved in the music business and started in the Kings Road in 1969, albeit not worn by poets, artists or academics.”

For the production of the film, Galer and her team had to make three separate coats in various states of disrepair. “We needed three personally cut and then we broke the fabric down by washing, scrubbing and even greasing the material to give it a well-worn look, hence why the fabric is seen differently in different photos and images.” For reference, the fabric eventually obtained from Liberty’s was a tweed called Heather Brown. This certainly explores the aims and production of the coat, though its story beyond the film would prove equally fruitful for detail.

Withnail at Auction

Withnail’s coat/coats have had as strange a journey outside of the film as they did in the narrative. After the film, according to Galer, many of the costumes found their way to Berman’s costumiers, though imagining anyone else earnestly wearing Withnail’s coat in another, totally different production is mildly amusing, if not absurd. However, this is where the history of the coat becomes incredibly convoluted. Beyond loving the film, it was partly this messy history that drove me to want to write about and research the coat, if only to unwrap it all.

“When I asked if I could produce the coat for the tenth anniversary,” Galer said, “all the costumes had disappeared in Berman’s.” The production of the coat that Galer is still involved in today will be discussed in detail later but Galer initially lost touch with all three of the coats made for the film. They ended up in what is now Angels costumiers, and were still there, albeit lost in their vast warehouse, by the time Galer wanted to remake copies of the coat for the film’s tenth anniversary. Luckily, one of them was eventually found at the costumiers and reproductions were made in 1996/97.

Later in 2000, Richard E. Grant organised a charity auction as part of the “Withnail for Waterford” campaign. On the 7^th of February that year, the film was screened at the Odeon in Leicester Square along with a Q&A with most of the cast and crew, as well as (most importantly) an auction of various paraphernalia connected to the film. The aim was to raise money for the Grant’s former school, the Waterford-Kamhbala School in Swaziland. The event was highly publicised and attended by a wealth of celebrities (the most unusual in my opinion being David Beckham; the event’s Jeff Wode, if you will).

Interestingly, when one of the original coats was sold at the auction, it was suggested as a donation to the charity auction by Galer. “Andrea Galer,” according to Grant’s website, “costume designer from the film Withnail and I recently donated the original coat to the Withnail for Waterford charity.” Perhaps this was part of the continued campaign Galer was running to promote made-to-measure replicas of the coat after the tenth anniversary reproductions.

As famously reported in the newspapers, the coat was eventually won at auction by TV and Radio presenter, Chris Evans. He bought it for a £5000 donation (supposedly egged on by fellow DJ, Danny Baker) and then, aside from buying Marwood’s leather coat as well, bought an appearance from Grant himself for the following week’s episode of the Channel 4 show, TFI Friday.

Evans subsequently wore the coat religiously. The press picked up on his obsession with it from the off, not least because of its eye-catching, dandyish character (though the DJ would usually wear it dressed down).

First, he wore it to the premiere of Danny Boyle’s film, The Beach (2000), with then-partner Melanie Sykes, at The Empire in Leicester Square, over the road from where the auction he bought it was a few days earlier.

Mere days after that was the episode of TFI Friday that Grant appeared on as part of a further donation to his charity. Once again, Evans wore the coat, though shared it for a time on the show with the real Withnail. Then, not long after, Evans wore it on the catwalk of a charity doo in Dublin for Marie Keating Cancer Awareness. After walking said catwalk, he still kept the coat on for the afterparty, sitting in the no doubt very warm tweed while sat next to Anna Friel (in his regular outfit rather than the clothes he was earlier modelling). It’s fair to say that Evans was very fond of the Withnail coat.

Rumours circulated a while ago that Evans had accidently damaged the coat when crashing a quad bike. I’ve yet to find any evidence of this beyond envious rumblings on various cult film forums. However, looking at the photo of the coat in a few paragraphs time with Bruce Robinson, there clearly was some damage to the right arm that looks a little more than the work of ravenous moths. Either way, during the pandemic, and after twenty years of owning the Withnail coat, Evans put it up for auction again. This time, the coat was raising money for Scrubs Glorious Scrubs; a million pound charity auction designed to raise money for making pandemic-essential PPE.

Evans asked permission from Grant (though I’m uncertain as to why as the earlier auction donation was from Galer), but Grant was reunited with the coat once more so that he could sign it. “I called him yesterday to make sure he was OK with my putting it up for another extraordinary cause”, Evans wrote at the time, “and having already heard what we’re up to, gave us his solid platinum blessing to raise as much cash as humanly possible for Scrubs Glorious Scrubs.” The coat was also signed by Paul McGann, Bruce Robinson and other members of the cast, though Grant in particular took to Instagram once more adorned in the coat to raise awareness of the auction (in which other lots included an afternoon’s cake and fine wine with him, Holly Willoughby and Rod Stewart at Fortnum’s).

Equally, the auction meant that, in order to sign the coat, it was also reunited with the film’s original director, Bruce Robinson. A photograph was taken by fashion designer (and son of Laura), Nick Ashley, of Robinson standing next to the coat at an unspecified location. This is where the damage to it is obvious.

This time, the coat sold for over £25,000 and came with a letter of explanation from Galer about the coat’s history. This means that the Withnail coat has technically made over £30,000 for charity over its time, not including Galer’s own work which we’ll come to shortly. One thing to note is that Evans highlighted the unique nature of the coat at the time when, in reality, three were made rather than one. It’s just that two disappeared into the labyrinth of Angels (I’ve had a similar, unsuccessful search for Peter Bowles’ suits there as detailed here; they do not keep records of where they source their vast collection of items). From here on, the coat went into private hands, but that’s not the end of the story. Throughout this history of the Withnail coat, its time at auction has ran in tandem with Galer’s own replica project which has several equally interesting dimensions.

Withnail Replicas

The sale of the Withnail coat evidently brought it back into the public consciousness, even beyond the tenth anniversary recreations. It’s understandable as, considering the era when it went up for auction, similarly long, lavish coats also came back into vogue (I’ve seen several women’s equivalents appear on the catwalks of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano in the period). However, when the tenth anniversary of the film came up, and Galer wanted to recreate coats for a bespoke clientele, there was a problem.

“When I asked if I could produce the coat for the tenth anniversary,” Galer tells me, “all the costumes had disappeared in Berman’s [eventually Angels]. I then discussed with the Harris Tweed Authority the best way to reproduce the original fabric.” This is in reference to the earlier detail in which Galer mentioned that the Heather Brown tweed came from Liberty’s. Obviously, even ten years after and with the precarious state of Harris Tweed production at that point, finding the material to make potential replicas was a problem. It was really thanks to an intervention in the mid-2000s from HRH Prince Charles (as he was then) that Harris Tweed itself didn’t disappear entirely. Galer, however, was ahead of the curve in understanding the danger that Harris Tweed production was in.

“I went on the overnight train from London and visited friends in Aviemore,” Galer recalls. “I then got a coach and ferry to Stornaway to the island, arranged my stay on the island and went to the McKenzie Mill with their design team. We set about recreating that lighter weight Harris Tweed fabric on the double width loom which was then woven to produce the first run of the coats.”

The coats were evidently a success and helped Galer set-up her main flagship store in Belsize Park. In an issue of Vogue in 1997, Grant wore the coat for a photo-shoot to advertise the fact that Galer was starting to make replicas. He even modelled them for Galer’s company. When the genuine one was sold, Grant was also given a replica from Galer according to his own website. These coats also had a distinct advantage over the original: they “don’t smell of deep heat – REG has one.”

Even with Charles’ intervention with Harris Tweed in the 2000s, Galer’s work is still pivotal to the crofters today who specialise in this very particular design and fabric. “Now in 2026, the tweed is commissioned by me and woven on a single width loom on the Isle of Harris to support one of six remaining crofters on the Island. However, they are not given the chance to specify a date that their fabric will be finished which is a huge problem for Withnail orders, for the coat and the historical methods of cloth manufacturing.”

This hasn’t stopped the Withnail coat becoming an incredibly desirable item all the same. Not only does Galer now do them in both single and double-breasted editions (Withnail’s was the former, but the latter look absolutely stunning) and made-to-measure, but various coats have made their way into the public realm. As recently as 2025, actor, writer and member of the League of Gentlemen, Reece Shearsmith had a Withnail coat made for him by Galer. He had it made as an outfit for his appearance on the television show, Taskmaster, and no doubt kept it.

Shearsmith bought the coat after it clicked that the one he planned to wear for the show bore a resemblance to Withnail’s. “I looked online,” he told viewers in a short film, “and found the website of the lady that designed the coat. Andrea Galer, she’s called. I went and started having lots of costume fittings, and she made me another outfit. This is the exact design of the Withnail coat. It’s not practical in any way, as I’ve discovered, but nevertheless, it looks nice and I’ve got the coat, so mission accomplished.” The actor is one of a number of people who now exclusively have a Withnail coat, with Galer being very particular about who gets to have one made. Shearsmith evidently loved it as he wore it in the series, in the photo-shoot for the series and the promotion of the series.

“The current batch woven [of the tweed] is for Withnail fans who have ordered a coat”, Galer concludes. “This provides a promotion campaign where I link the work of the traditional craftsperson to the cult film, and to what has become the most famous coat in the history of entertainment.” Indeed, it’s almost surreal to see images of young models wearing the coat today as adverts for the service that Galer provides.

So, if next winter you’re going on holiday by mistake and may possibly face being threatened with a dead fish, there’s only one coat required for such a perilous scenario.

Andrea Galer’s work can be found at www.andrea-galer.co.uk

Before continuing with the essay, here are some updates on the ongoing research about the mystery tailors that Sue remember Peter using mentioned in the previous article. In the last part, it was suggested that Huntsman was the probable candidate due to the country connection of To The Manor Born. After further archive investigation, it turns out that Bowles did not use Huntsman, nor did he use Henry Poole either. The hunt, therefore, for the second mystery tailoring continues!

Anderson & Sheppard (Continued)

Peter loved the suits from Anderson & Sheppard. While he wore his navy wide pinstripe more than most – in Perfect Scoundrels and beyond – it wasn’t the only one from that first commission that he enjoyed. Other shots from the series show him wearing several of the other commissions and, like the navy wide pinstripe, it would find a use beyond the series. One shot from the series, following him walking alongside Richard “Uncle Monty” Griffiths, shows him wearing the equally stunning grey Glen Check with the blue undertone from that first order.

As with all of the suits from this batch, the trousers were made by long-term trouser specialist for A&S, Demos Apostolou, who still works at the house today. Demos was adept at just the kind of trouser Bowles favoured, with that wonderful, timeless drape afforded by the extra material of its double-pleats and high waist. They make for a fine sight when Bowles is walking, whether in the series or on the red carpet, and A&S certainly lived up to their reputation as “pioneers of the English Drape” in this suit in particular.

This Glen Check was another favourite for Bowles to wear when out and about for events. Here he is wearing the suit on numerous occasions from beyond his time in the series. Whether on sunny days or late nights, it appears to have again been a preference for the actor and suitable for seemingly any occasion.

In a rather poignant turn, the photo that adorned the Order of Service for Bowles’ funeral and remembrance in 2022 was of him wearing this suit. It’s understandable as to why. The classical style, the quiet but meticulous craft, the utter Englishness of it. These were all qualities of Bowles as an actor and, if every memory of him I’ve read or heard is anything to go by, of the man himself.

Before getting too hung up on this single commission of suits, it’s worth noting that the other sartorial gem from the order was a pair of separates. Bowles wore separates a great deal on screen, especially in To The Manor Born (the country setting and the character’s desire to embody a country gent somewhat accounts for this, with a variety of tweed sports coats combined with trousers and jodhpurs). The order for Perfect Scoundrels specified a blue serge blazer with grey worsted flannel trousers. It’s an especially Bowles-esque look, one that calls him to mind more than most, in spite of the fact that I can find few photos of him indulging in such a classic, more casual combination. He certainly steals the limelight from that episode’s guest star, Lulu, when wearing it.

Beyond the huge Perfect Scoundrels order, Bowles had three other commissions from Anderson & Sheppard over the years. With the contacts on his card being from a variety of television production companies, the chances are that some of these orders also had a tie to a show. In fact, it’s certain. In 1990, on the 6^th of August, Bowles had a single suit made once again by the house: a double-breasted dark blue affair with white stripes (though this time not wide like his favoured suit of earlier discussions but a more subtle pinstripe). While I could profess to intensive detective work to discover the television connection to this, I fear I would be in contempt of court as, under the detail in the order book is the purchase order number with an extra reference for Thames Television.

Bowles was in only one production around this period made by Thames Television and this was, of course, as the wonderful reoccurring character of Guthrie Featherstone in the majestic Rumpole of the Bailey. By this time in the series, Featherstone had graduated from being head of chambers, after a failed attempt at politics, to the hallowed realms of the bench as a judge. While Featherstone’s career was at its height, this was in the very final days of Thames Television itself which finished broadcasting in December 1992. This makes me think that, considering the amount of different roles Bowles had been in for various series produced by the company, perhaps this was a small thank you from them before closing up shop.

My other theory is that he liked a similar (but not so perfectly cut) example that he wore as the same character in the series in the early 1980s (see the photo above). Laura Nightingale was the costume designer then but Bowles clearly liked the suit’s style at least. The one Anderson & Sheppard eventually made for him was very similar but fitted perfectly and had that extra quality of drape afforded by the several fittings required at any Row tailoring house. The other thing to note is that Bowles only wore the suit on screen for two episodes, “Rumpole and the Summer of Discontent” (1991) and “Rumpole and the Miscarriage of Justice” (1992). In the former, he’s only seen wearing it for two scenes, but he wears it a great deal in the latter episode.

This suit would later be another favourite of the opening nights and awards circuit. Here he is wearing it at an actor’s function in 1993, at the memorial service at St. Bride’s for journalist Stewart Steven in 2004 (a likely influence for his series Lytton’s Diary), and even as recently as 2017 at the Evita press night. Again, not a stitch looks out of place on the man.

Off Screen

Bowles continued his relationship with Anderson & Sheppard for the next few years. The order book has two more orders though, as these have been difficult, if not impossible, to identify photos of, there’s little to add to what details there are in the books. However, there are a couple of interesting aspects to note about these later orders. Namely that, with the previous orders covering all of the usual traditional bases that Bowles required, he started to branch out to more unusual suits (at least for him).

Later in 1990, Bowles had a sports jacket made of “Fawn Fancy Donegal”. Alongside this, clearly in the mood for tweed, was a suit jacket and waistcoat of the same material, and a pair of trousers made of brown covert, a kind of light twill. I was particularly interested in the fawn Donegal so Max at A&S got the sample book out to show me a close modern equivalent. “It would have been close to one of these and quite distinctive,” he said. After weeks of trawling through photos of Bowles, however, I’ve yet to find any of him wearing it. Perhaps it was reserved for more casual, rural retreats than the red carpet or nights out on the town. Either way, it was a series of interesting commissions, not least as it went against his previous tastes and was even single-breasted. This was a trend that was to continue in Peter’s final order.

Peter’s last order from A&S was in 1992. On Tuesday the 3^rd of November, he ordered a single-breasted grey herringbone in Cheviot Suiting, with the usual pair of matching trousers. I have yet to identify a single photo of him potentially wearing this exact suit either (he wore plenty of grey suits in his time), nor have I managed to identify the potential commission that led to the BBC’s contact presence being on the contact card either (the only BBC production he was in during this period was a Screen One adaptation of Simon Gray’s Running Late (1992) which has him wearing some distinctly odd suits evidently at the bequest of the costume department). But I think there’s enough here to show that Bowles took meticulous care of his tailoring, on screen and off. Few of his peers frankly match his tailoring on screen.

As a denouement for this particular excursion into the tailoring of Bowles, it’s worth considering where all of these suits have ended up. After all, though Peter had two sons, he was certainly of a distinctive build and his tastes were very much idiosyncratic to him and his generation. I had to ask his wife Sue what happened to these Anderson & Sheppard classics.

“I gave all his suits, shirts, coats and ties to Berman’s, the theatrical costumiers,” she told me. “Whether they have itemised them I don’t know.” Berman’s were one of the historical stage and screen costumiers for decades, that is until they were taken over by Angels Costumiers; ironically in the year of Peter’s last commission from Anderson & Sheppard in 1992. It was Angels where most of Bowles’ wardrobe ended up so I emailed them about the suits in particular.

I ended up hearing back from Christine at Angels who, like Sue, had some very interesting information. “I was in contact with Sue and we did indeed take in some of Peter’s suit collection,” she replied to my query. “I am afraid we hold no catalogue due to the changing nature of our stock, and the suits will have been integrated into the relevant decades suit sections. We have no way of specifically identifying which suits they were.” Interestingly, there was one suit that Christine remembered Sue initially getting in touch about to donate: the grey Glen Check that was seen on Bowles’ Order of Service. “Sue sent me the below image of one of the suits we took prior to our pickup, but I am afraid we don’t have photo records of the rest.” The image in question is the one shared earlier of the Order of Service.

After leaving the query with Christine for a while, I followed up to see if they had been able to find any of the suits. “One of the costume team have had a wee look,” she said, “and nothing so far. We do have a lot of productions out at the moment, so a lot of the items may very well be out on hire.”

There’s a quietly fitting circularity to this: Peter’s beautiful suits are likely still seen on stage and screen. Angels may not have catalogued their treasures, but they certainly have them and lend them out regularly to whoever they may fit for film, television and stage; precisely the sort of projects that allowed Bowles to have them made by the finest craftsmen of Savile Row in the first place. If you’re a tall actor working on film or television and you happen to be wearing a particularly beautiful double-breasted suit, have a peek in the left pocket and see if the names “Anderson & Sheppard” and “Peter Bowles Esq.” are printed on the label. If they are, then treat it as evidence of both the quality of the suit and the previous wearer.

This, however, is not the end of the story of Peter Bowles’ wardrobe. His suits may have been the best that money could buy, but it takes more than just a suit to make an outfit. And, in terms of shirts and accessories, Bowles was equally astute in choice of style and maker.

Part 3.

While summarising the play is difficult, it centres around Rylance’s Rooster Byron who lives in a caravan on rural patch of Wiltshire threatened with the development of a new housing estate. Byron was a performance daredevil when younger but gave up after injury. Now, he makes money from donating his rare blood type and dealing drugs to the local youth; he has a kind of Green Man reverence among the area’s youth far beyond the “whiz” he supplies them with. Byron has been banned from the most of the local pubs and, as a coterie of characters flitter around him wanting to celebrate the day – from Morris Dancing to spitfire flypasts - he avoids facing the realities of his imminent eviction. Instead he seemingly draws upon a kind of Albion rising to fend off the council’s lackeys as they serve him with notices, while local man Troy is on the warpath after his stepdaughter, Phaedra, found solace and sanctuary with Rooster.

It may seem unusual to be discussing such a play on a site dedicated to tailoring but there’s a surprising connection thanks to Rylance himself. Images of Rooster most widely shared are usually of him wearing his more typical attire; a tellingly green vest barely taking the strain of a puffed-up chest, or a cobbled-together mélange of paraphernalia such as a spiked military helmet, absurd aviator cap or a Sam Browne belt made of police crime scene tape. However, in the third act, Rooster dons a suit as he faces the council’s minions, as well as angry locals after his suspected harbouring of the missing girl.

Considering Rylance ends up beaten and wearing only the bloodied trousers by the end of the final act, banging the drum summoning the spirits of Gog and Magog, it may appear clutching at straws to attach some importance to a suit in such a complex and already thematically rich play. But the suit does play a unique, subtle role; one heightened in the play’s last run in 2022 at the Apollo Theatre. The run was a limited one of sixteen weeks, but the suit here was elevated in importance, and the reason connected to Rylance’s film work and one of Savile Row’s most prestigious houses.

Butterworth’s lead character, and the setting of Flintock and its assorted villagers, didn’t simply appear out of nowhere. They were excavated from the soil of the real Wiltshire; Pewsey to be precise. As reported by the BBC, Rooster was based on a real man, a retired builder called Micky Lay who similarly lived in a caravan and caused a ruckus in the local pubs. In fact, he passed away only a few years after the play’s initial success while waiting for his local, the Moonrakers, to open. Rylance visited the man, though only got anywhere on his second attempt aided by a bottle of whiskey. From his meetings, he managed to clock Lay’s rhythm and patterns of speech from him; there’s a reason why he eventually gave his Tony Award for Best Actor to Lay in 2011.

However, Rylance didn’t only draw upon Lay’s character, but also his style. A photo of Lay wearing a suit at the horse races from 1970s was seen and this eventually led to the inspiration for the costume of the play’s third act. However, it was not until the 2022 run that Rylance managed to bring several elements together to pay further homage to Lay; this time in the form of Savile Row’s finest tailoring. The original run’s designs from its earliest days was by Ultz (for which he won an Olivier and was nominated for a Tony), though it was in 2022 when this one aspect of the play’s costume design was opened to others. Those others were Huntsman & Co.

However, this is jumping the gun slightly as, like the original play’s setting and characters, the connection didn’t simply happen randomly. In what is perhaps one of the few occasions when Chicago played a role in a depiction of Wiltshire, Rylance’s film work proved pivotal to the eventual change (and commission) of the suit. Around the time of working on the new run of Jerusalem, Rylance was also working on a film. That film was The Outfit (2022) by Graham Moore. It tellingly followed Rylance’s tailor character as he tried to disentangle himself from gang warfare in 1950s Chicago.

Playing a tailor, Rylance looked to Huntsman, not simply for inspiration to help ground and base his performance, but also for the costumes he would wear on screen. The film’s costume designer Sophie O’Neill turned to Huntsman for help with several of the suits, Rylance’s especially. “The suits are so integral, they are the story really,” she said of the eventual suits. Rylance even spent a week at Huntsman learning some of the crafts and skills of being a cutter (and learning the English tradition), as well as being measured and fitted for what would be his own costumes. Aside from the experience obviously being a positive one, Huntsman then had the actor’s measurements on their books and it evidently inspired him in his other project at the time which was, of course, Jerusalem. Who better, then, to make Rooster a new suit than the tailors who had already inspired the actor in his film work?

The tailoring was evidently not going to be as straightforward in The Outfit. Whereas Leonard in the film is an English tailor from the 1950s, whose clothes must conform to very particular codes of proprietary, the same can obviously not be said for Rooster; a rebellious Pan figure if ever there was one. And while Rooster may certainly be a product of rural England, he’s not of the same rural England as Huntsman either. The historic tailoring house is very much To The Manor Born to Rooster’s Penda’s Fen. Being Huntsman, all of this was taken into account and a suit was made in 2022 with several unique and distinguishing features.

Rylance explained the initial thinking behind the suit in an interview that Huntsman themselves put out during the run of the play with head cutter, Campbell Carey. “He doesn’t dress very smartly most of the time,” the actor suggested, “but for the last act I wanted him to be dressed like a picture I’d seen of the man he was modelled on when he went to the horse races, a proper old vintage suit. Which is why I’m wearing this lovely thing you’ve made for me out of vintage material.” Lay’s vintage suit was likely a 1970s Burton’s-ish affair but the point to raise first is that, in spite of being made in 2022, the material used for this suit had a similar vintage to the one that inspired it. The project itself was explicitly the project of Carey as well, which shows how important it was considered. “Campbell worked exclusively on the suit,” Johnny from Huntsman’s own archive confirmed to me.

The cloth used for the suit was a brown triple-stripe with its second lines made out of a rough blue-ish material called Clay Blue yarn. “The vintage fabric used was sourced by the costume department for the production and provided to us,” further confirmed Johnny. Far from being one of the luxurious fabrics that the house specialises in today, this was a vintage bolt sourced by the play’s costume team. It’s of the kind that I imagine is very difficult to reverse engineer if wanting to recreate it (something Huntsman have mentioned before in talking about a similar blue yarn used for Gregory Peck’s coat made for Richard Donner’s The Omen (1976)), but, as Carey suggests in the same interview, “We were lucky to find an intact length of ten metres; it’s actually dead stock from the 1970s. It’s a wonderful cloth.”

Equally, the cloth had a practical role to play as Rooster ends up being put through the mincer in the final act. He’s beaten up by Troy for harbouring his step-daughter, with implications that she’s been abused by the latter and possibly seduced by the former. The fight inevitably featured stage blood, but the tough, vintage material helped matters with such practical effects. “With the designer Ultz,” Rylance continued, “we had to make two pair of trousers as he gets beaten up in the suit. We had to carefully disrobe the waistcoat and the jacket… and then come out in the trousers and fall around in the grass and the mud here. [The material] handles it really nicely.”

Considering that Huntsman could have cut the material to Rylance’s on-record measurements, it’s telling that they understood the creative impetus of the play; how wrong it would be for Rooster to have a Savile Row-tailored suit that fitted like a glove. Instead, the house used Rylance’s measurements and, in parts, worked against them to create a more believable suit for someone living in a caravan in Wiltshire. “We were lucky to use the pattern that we’d worked on with you on The Outfit,” Carey said to Rylance. “We used it as a starting point but it’s a different cut to what we do today. Fuller in the chest, more drape. But here, we had to make it slightly not fit, a little bit longer than normal.”

There was a more intriguing, thematic reason for cutting the suit in this way. The core of the main character is that he is deeply aware of his own lineage; a family connection to the land that he draws psychological and esoteric power from. In the third act’s final monologue, a fair chunk of it even name-checks the forefathers of Byron many generations back. The suit is meant to reflect this lineage, as it’s meant to look handed down. The extra length is meant to reflect that it was likely once an older relative’s, with some aspects naturally fitting, such as the chest, while other aspects, such as the legs and arms, being just a little longer than a tailor like Huntsman would normally allow.

“We had the idea that he might have inherited it from his father or grandfather,” as Rylance put it. This ties nicely to the theme of inheritance throughout the play, manifesting most overtly in the previously mentioned family tree recitation but also in the line “The same wounds of their fathers.” Same wounds, same suits. If Rooster is to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous town planners, he may as well don the suit of his father as he defends old(e) England.

The other irony is that suits themselves become somewhat symbolic of the kind of bureaucracy that he’s up against. As in Rooster’s exchange with Davey, the council workers threatening him with eviction notices are summarised uniquely by their suits and clipboards:

“DAVEY. Bloke and a bird coming through the wood. Suits. Clipboards.

JOHNNY. Oh, them. Them’s MI6. They want to know if I’ll join the Cabinet. I told them to fuck off, I’m busy today.”

The suit in this sense is an important element of the climax because of its almost-armour like qualities, worn by both sides heading into spiritual and literal battle. He’s meeting them on the closest terms to theirs that he can, though his is more powerful: theirs is likely off-the-peg high street work-wear while his is inherited Huntsman. They never stood a chance.

When Rooster is introduced in the third act, the stage instruction is as follows:

“JOHNNY appears from the trees, watches them walk away. Another Spitfire flies over.”

It’s evident from this direction alone that the character is now on the warpath, ready to defend his land from the interlopers of the local council. “As soon as you put that suit on you stand tall right,” concluded Carey in his interview with Rylance, “and you’re ready for battle.” In spite of only wearing the trousers and dripping with stage blood by the play’s climax, there’s still a sense that Rooster dressed for the occasion. In donning his Huntsman, he may as well have worn a ritualistic pair of stag’s antlers; appropriately a famed association with the Huntsman brand after a customer left a pair of stag’s heads in the shop in 1921, never returning for them, and long-since placed as a point of pride on either side of the house’s fireplace on Savile Row.

Rylance’s connection with the suit didn’t end with the play’s final curtain call, however. He professed his love for it, even in the interview with Carey while the play was still running, saying “It’s got the lovely high waist which is more flattering when you have your shirt off. I love high trousers. I love the look of those fashions when the men wear suits like that regularly, like Bob Mitchum.” He even hinted at the possibility of wanting to keep it. “I might get this one at the end of the show if I beg well…” he admitted. I decided to write to Rylance and see whether he got his wish.

“I will say I did keep Rooster’s Huntsman suit”, he kindly wrote me, “as I hope to come out and play in it again as Byron when I am 70!” In the letter, he also confirmed that the suit was inspired by one worn by Lay in an old photo and that the suit’s role in the play’s conclusion was that he “felt Rooster knew it was the end and the beginning and dressed appropriately.”

Huntsman, in hindsight of all of this, really was the perfect house for Rooster and his fight for Jerusalem. If ever there was a country suit to be worn when walking “upon Englands mountains green… On Englands pleasant pastures seen!” as William Blake wrote in his original poem, it would undoubtedly be cut by Huntsman. The house embodies perfectly the strengths of English craft and lineage, all the while adhering to Gustav Mahler’s belief that “Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.” Or perhaps, as Rooster puts it while wearing his best Huntsman trousers in the play’s final moment, “Come, you battalions. You fields of ghosts who walk these green plains still. Come, you giants!”

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The first real gem of the year came online courtesy of Vinted. E. Marinella is a purveyor of simply designed but incredibly well-made ties, pocket squares and other accessories. A regular of the Burlington/Row area since the early part of the twentieth century, the shop’s goods are a perfect bridge between English and Neapolitan craft. Essentially the beautiful patterned and printed silk is made in Macclesfield, but the material is then shipped to Naples where the skill and craft of the Neapolitan cutters produces a beautiful and timeless series of designs. In my case, I found a brand new pocket square (£40), still sealed, which was a remarkably cheap find by the standards of the brand. I love their repeated patterns which are often small enough to blend into a texture but detailed enough to allow for an eccentric flourish up close (the little notches on mine weirdly remind of the metallic grooves found on the floor of Pret a Manger).

Talking of accessories, I managed to obtain my first article by the legendary Kent & Haste. While my tastes ideally mean I’d be getting full suits from there every other month (I’ve seen enough Kirby Allison videos to now want future trousers cut by their incredibly skilled trouser cutter, Suyamba), but for now I’ll have to do with second-hand accessories. In this case, it was a beautifully textured, yellow/gold tie (£25). This was really bought in anticipation of summer, though I’ve already had some wear out of it. The texture makes it feel durable for more seasons than its bright and cheerful colour insinuates. I just need to head to Hornets and raid its array of second-hand Stephen Lachter shirts now…

The other little find in this area was a pair of Turnbull & Asser socks (£12). These were (of course…) new, but bought second-hand. I’m trying to move away from my usual black Ralph Lauren kind which remind somewhat of the conversation the blackest of black socks in an old episode of Father Ted, and these seemed a good buy, rather than splurging at the London Sock Company as is to be expected. T&A also provided one of the best finds of the year so far.

I’ve a few vintage T&A shirts but one picked up this quarter was especially lovely. It’s a crisp off-white, special edition Kingsman shirt (£32). Hand on heart, I’m not a fan of the film (beyond the clothes and beautiful use of Huntsman’s premises on the Row, naturally), but this shirt is beautiful. It has a classic T&A collar but, essentially, it has the double French cuffs rather than the traditional three button cuffs that shirts in the rest of the series had and which are a staple of the house.

Talking of Huntsman, I finally got my hands on Tom Chamberlin’s coffee table book about the tailoring house (£36). It’s a beautifully designed book with a great intro from Nick Foulkes, some fantastic scans of archive imagery and detail (the gems shared casually are, at times, astonishing), and it’s generally very nice. I’d have liked a little more detail considering the access to Huntsman’s vast and monumental archive (something I’m currently doing myself), but it had enough info to send me scurrying off on research tangents, and I felt like it got the balance right. It certainly left enough questions hanging about classic tailoring from the house, hinted at or shared in passing, to inspire several future posts here.

In this quarter’s Richard James find (it’s already becoming tradition), I ended up sourcing another of their double-breasted jackets (£170). I was a little annoyed about this find initially as I originally saw it on Vinted for £40 before it was bought and re-uploaded on another site for the price I eventually paid for it (confirming the old adage of buying things you like straight away online). Still, after months and months of keeping an eye on it, I couldn’t resist anymore and it was a wise decision. The photos of it online didn’t do the jacket, or its beautiful thick wool material, justice. It managed to have that perfect Richard James fit, as mentioned about a jacket in my last round-up, while also doing something different. It feels simultaneously structured and unstructured; there’s no lining but the sheer weight of the fabric means the cut holds a firm silhouette. It’s utterly lovely and another win for me from house. Here’s hoping I find a lighter jacket from them for the coming warmer months.

On the topic of jackets, my usual visits to the Notting Hill Exchange proved fruitful. The most exciting find was a vintage Gieves & Hawkes velvet smoking jacket (£60 or £0 with vouchers). This jacket was from before 1974 when the house was simply Gieves, and it was certainly a beautiful item. I’m talking about it in the past tense as I sadly accepted defeat with it after a week or so. It fitted like a glove but there was a problem not detected in the shop; it had fifty years of sweat in the cotton lining. No doubt it could be dealt with over time with professional cleaning but, with the Favourbook jacket I got in the last quarter still hanging in the wardrobe, I couldn’t justify spending, so I sold it (it’s now for sale for £260 on Ebay from another seller and has likely been cleaned). I also found a Dege & Skinner shirt in the Exchange (£25 or £0 with vouchers) but because it’s so similar to the previously discussed Turnbull & Asser shirt (with the exception of its cuffs which have D&S’s usual reverse button design), I thought there was little point in showing it off. It was a great find all the same.

Finally, a rather impulsive buy. One of the most pleasurable pieces to research so far for this site was the exploration of John Mills’ wardrobe. In it, I shared information regarding an online auction in which the tails made for Mills by Sullivan, Williams & Co. (worn to the premiere of the film Beau Brummell in 1954) were for sale. I looked at the item almost daily after finding it, not with a desire or intention to wear it (Mills was of an entirely different build and the item had some slight moth damage), but with a sadness that a great piece of film and menswear heritage was languishing online. Well reader, I bought it (£120). The tails now hang in a protective bag in my wardrobe. Madness. No one can doubt my (utterly irresponsible) commitment to the clothes I write about after this.

Bowles was a character actor of repute ever since graduating from RADA in 1956. He’s one of those actors whose Curriculum Vitae reads like a potted history of British film and television; a familiar presence whose skill, variety and (most importantly) style made him a regular for several generations of cinemagoers, theatregoers and television viewers (especially the latter). Such is the range of this fine actor that there’s little point in trying to convey the breadth of his work. It’s more befitting of a book-length volume. Suffice to say, there is little that the great man hadn’t done by the time of his passing in 2022.

Of interest here is not Bowles’ catalogue of work but instead his relationship to tailoring and style more generally. Unlike many of the figures celebrated for their style on the small screen, Bowles took an active interest in his attire; often collaborating with various directors and costume designers, usually with the result that he either wore clothes that were his own or, in fact, commissioned them from the tailors he favoured as part of the production. In fact, Bowles had a remarkable and detailed relationship with Savile Row, one evidenced regularly on screen. “I have been fortunate to have many of my suits made by a Savile Row tailor”, so he wrote in his autobiography, Ask Me If I’m Happy: An Actor’s Life (2010). “These have all been for TV shows I have done.”

From To The Manor Born (1979-81) to Rumpole of the Bailey (1978-92), Bowles always looked impeccable. He was natural in roles playing denizens of the upper-echelons, and more than looked the part at almost all times. Even when playing more villainous, non-establishment characters (the bounder in The Bounder (1982-83), a range of villains in series such as The Avengers (1961-69) and The Saint (1962-69), or the distanced manager in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966)), he still exhibited a style above and beyond the usual performer. With Bowles sadly no longer with us, it felt like a huge missed opportunity to ask the man about his, no doubt considerable, wardrobe. This series of articles is a correction to that. So onwards in our exploration of the wardrobe of the late, great Peter Bowles.

Tailoring

Even considering the social background of a great many of his characters, Bowles’ tailoring played a remarkably prominent role in his screen persona. I can personally think of few actors who so consistently wore the most obviously lavish, sometimes radical, but ultimately impeccable tailoring.

Bowles was certainly most famous for playing successful figures in business, law, journalism and the like. This meant that he naturally required a constant supply of suits, and there was clearly a point when a decision was made by him to simply create his own style, such was the necessity of tailoring for his work. There’s little doubt that the most famous character he played was Richard DeVere in To The Manor Born, and in this series, Bowles wore several stunning suits. Considering the high ratings for the series (over 23 million for the first series’ final episode as an example), Bowles’ tailoring could argubaly be said to be some of the most widely seen of the decade in Britain.

So far, little has been found out about the suits worn in the series, other than that the design (or approach to the suits) was likely in the hands of costume designer Rupert Jarvis; a designer best known for work on the Graham Williams era of Doctor Who (1963-89) as well as Blake’s 7 (1978-81). However, Bowles evidently learned something while working on To The Manor Born: that his input to the character, including the tailoring he wore, was essential. As he wrote in his autobiography, DeVere was really a blank page and it was down to his own tastes as there was little direction from the team, even down to his suits:

“Oddly enough there was no discussion about all this, I had to make my decision myself. I thought of Robert Maxwell. He was a Czech who had come to Britain and was now presenting himself as the quintessential Englishman, beautiful Savile Row clothes, and no accent.”

Even at this point, Bowles evidently had a tailor on the Row. It made sense to bring that personal experience to his roles on screen, only keeping the suits afterwards. The earlier quote from his autobiography was part of a more detailed recollection in which he discussed witnessing a particularly odd commission with his tailor for another client, later using it as sleazy inspiration for his journalistic role in Lytton’s Diary (1985-86):

“On going in for a fitting one day I noticed a long cloak in deep purple and covered in frogging and gold braid, hanging up in a plastic bag. I asked the tailor if he specialized in military or ceremonial wear. He told me he didn’t, this was a special order, and was in his view a little strange.”

The point to raise here is that Bowles was working with tailors as soon as finance was available. I’m pointing this out as much of the detail in this article is about Bowles’ later commissions and tastes. With the detail present, I’m willing to wager that the tailor here is probably Huntsman (who else would be right for the businessman turned country gent than Huntsman?), but I’ve yet to verify this.

The problem with trying to ascertain the wardrobes of those departed is that such details are often lost. Luckily, Peter is survived by his wife, Sue, and with her kind permission and help, she gave me information that led me to a much more detailed appreciation of Bowles’ tailoring.

Anderson & Sheppard

I messaged Sue to ask about Peter’s wardrobe more generally and the level of detail given was not only useful but astonishing. Peter clearly shared his love of clothes with his wife as a point of discussion. “Tailors Peter used in private life were Armani, Ralph Lauren and Tommy Nutter,” she told me. “He also bought off the peg from Cordings of Piccadilly, Grey Flannel and Ermenegildo Zegna.” While a great deal here is to be left to ponder due to the likelihood of not being able to confirm details beyond the basics, the mention of Nutter is interesting as some of my favourite photos of Bowles showcase distinctly Nutter-esque flamboyance.

However, one house was absolutely certain in its connection to Bowles. “The tailor that Peter used most was Anderson & Sheppard,” Sue continued. “He did use another tailor, but I can’t remember his name unfortunately. I think Anderson made the suits for To the Manor Born and Lytton’s Diary.” I’m willing to bet that the tailor mentioned in Peter’s writing is the missing one (possibly Hammick-era Huntsman as mentioned before), but the information about Peter using Anderson & Sheppard opened up a huge wealth of information.

Anderson & Sheppard, henceforth A&S, are one of the most respected and historic tailoring institutions on the Row. Admittedly they are not technically on the Row now, instead in the peaceful, adjacent Old Burlington Street (of course, Savile Row really denotes the collection of streets around it and some even beyond it). They have certainly been a Row staple since 1906. Their clientele is one of the most celebrated of any of the big houses, still being the choice of tailoring for HRH King Charles III, while the list of the rich and famous who wear their suits is endless: Bryan Ferry, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Fred Astaire. The list could go on, and even include clients whose presence show it to be the place where the movers and shakers in fashion go for clothes – Tom Ford, Calvin Klein, Kate Moss etc. – but the point is made. Bowles was, therefore, in good company.

Wanting to know more about what A&S made for Bowles, I contacted them about information in their archives. I was eventually invited in to inspect the order book and other information they had. It was a rainy day when I ventured to Old Burlington Street, and the warm, friendly welcome from the house was testament to a tailors who hold a royal warrant. I was first introduced to Max, a coat cutter at A&S. He directed me to an array of paperwork that the team had dug out for me.

The first interesting thing to note was Bowles’ contact card. Aside from showing that Bowles lived directly opposite the household of Jon Pertwee in Barnes (imagine the dinner parties), the card had an array of other contact details for people at the BBC, Thames Television and most interestingly, the production office of the TVS/ITV series, Perfect Scoundrels (1990-92). According to the books, A&S made the suits for this series rather than those earlier ones. The earliest approach from Bowles in their books was the opening of his account on the 22^nd of May, 1989. More on this later but, suffice to say, Bowles stayed true to his word when he mentioned having suits made through the production of his various screen projects.

The other interesting thing about this simple information card is that it showed who Peter’s recommendation was. Even in living memory, many tailoring houses required recommendations before accepting commissions from clients, sometimes requiring several (Huntsman used to require two before even allowing an interview). By the mid-1980s, this was simply down to one recommendation at A&S. In Bowles’ case, his was the actor, Henry McGee. While McGee and Bowles would go on to work together on stage in Molière’s School for Wives under the direction of Peter Hall, I’ve yet to actually discover the connection between the men before then, bar working as guest performers (albeit in different episodes) in The Saint, Rising Damp (1974-78) and The Avengers. On a side note, in the next volume shown to me, in which Peter’s basic sizing information and general specifications for bespoke details is kept, the following page had suit information for the French director, Frédéric Rossif. Interestingly, his recommendation came, according to the book, from none other than Donald Sutherland.

As in many tailors, A&S’s set-up consists of one master book in which the measurements and general requirements are stored, and then many separate individual ledgers that detail specific orders with material, dates and other such things. Max was helpfully on hand to decode some of the interesting detail in regards to the former book.

Some things were pretty obvious in regards to Bowles’ tastes. The first is that his trousers were almost always double-pleated and high-waisted; if a commission required otherwise it would say so in the order ledger (it, however, rarely did as far as I could tell). Peter also had a slight drop shoulder, as do many of us, but the most interesting thing was Peter’s taste in pockets. “They were requested to be very deep, indeed,” Max suggested as he pointed to the measurement. On the page below, that’s “13 ½ down”. Perhaps he required them for props, script pages or other bits and bobs but, either way, it was an idiosyncratic touch to the suits they eventually made for him.

On Friday the 16^th of June, Bowles placed his first order, and it was, by any standard, an enormous one. Five suits were ordered along with singles of a blazer and a pair of trousers. To cut a long story short, this is the order dealing with the suits that Peter would eventually wear in Perfect Scoundrels (this is likely the big television series order that Sue remembered rather than To The Manor Born).

All of the jackets are double-breasted and in a range of very distinctive materials. With this information they were easy to spot from stills from the series. As a great example of 1990s A&S tailoring, there are few better examples than the astonishing blue with wide, white pinstripes. Here is Bowles wearing it in a promotional shot for the series, stood alongside co-star, Bryan Murray.

In spite of having this large, wardrobe-defining order of clothes, Bowles is seen wearing this pinstripe more than any other suit in the series. Perhaps it defines the swath, bounder-esque character he’s playing, but it undoubtedly suits him (and was far from the first time that he wore such elaborate pinstripe creations). My theory is that he liked a similar suit worn in the slightly earlier series, Executive Stress (1986-88) and this may have inspired his own A&S suit.

A question may be arising; while this suit and others by A&S are beautiful, are they not simply lavish costumes? Well, no. Bowles may have worn these suits on screen, perhaps their creation was even part funded by the production offices of ITV, the BBC and the like. But these were his suits; made to his explicit specifications and tastes. This was his character, and he certainly wore them throughout his life after filming. As I was led further into the archives of A&S, this time by Martin who has overseen the front shop for many years, I suggested that the order of so many suits was interesting in its sheer volume (and no doubt equally sheer price). “Sometimes that may be all you need,” he said to me. “Bespoke suits do last a lifetime when properly looked after. So, while customers may try different houses over time, others simply stick with one and have their wardrobe made in one or two orders.”

Bowles certainly did stick with the suits. That very distinctive, wide white pinstripe suit was the one he most favoured after the series. Bowles wore it on many occasions in real life, usually at premieres for shows and films, seen as recently as 2012.

He clearly loved this Anderson & Sheppard masterpiece, but it wasn’t the only suit he wore after finishing the series. Far from it.

Part 2.

One person to notice McKellen’s distinctive character was Vogue magazine, specifically their chief Menswear Editor, Erica Crome, who did more than most to promote many of the young designers that were creating new styles after the explosion of the 1960s Peacock Revolution. Crome is already a reoccurring name on these pages, but the main thing to say about her contribution to menswear (and English tailoring in particular) is that she found, supported and promoted some of the more radical voices trying to make ends meet on the Row, as well as helping redefine the older houses there and on Jermyn Street. Essentially, however, for the July 1973 issue of Vogue UK, Crome enlisted McKellen for a double-page spread, with the actor wearing the very latest in 1970s English tailoring. The results, even by the heady heights of tailoring during the decade, were rather spectacular.

The photos were taken by noted dance photographer Anthony Crickmay, who often worked in black & white and created beautiful, impressionistic shots of some of the great dancers of the period. He also worked with several of the biggest names in the arts, photographing the likes of Sir Laurence Olivier, Montgomery Clift and Dame Vanessa Redgrave as well as HRH Queen Elizabeth II and the Queen Mother (the latter arguably his favourite non-dance-related subject). My personal favourites of his photographs, beyond these of McKellen, are several of Sir Cecil Beaton, pictured below in an array of gloriously outré menswear.

As friend, Robert Cohan, said of Crickmay’s work (quoted in The Daily Telegraph), an image by Crickmay was “not just a photograph of a dance, but a photograph about dance.” In other words, his images had a kineticism in contradiction to the still form. I feel this way somewhat about these images of McKellen’s tailoring as it seems as if the drape has been brought to life by the camerawork, almost in motion and gliding around the image.

I first read of this shoot when reading Lance Richardson’s House of Nutter: The Rebel Tailor of Savile Row, in which it’s mentioned in passing due to one of the suits being by none other than Tommy Nutter (and, ergo, Edward Sexton). “By the close of 1973,” he wrote of one of the Row’s most daring tailors, “Nutters remained a darling of the London glitterati, worn most recently by Ian McKellen in the pages of Vogue and by Cilla Black during her eight-week stage spectacular at the Palladium.” While it’s probably best to avoid considering the terrifying possibility of an eight-week Cilla Black stage spectacular at the Palladium, the information about McKellen wearing some of Nutter and Sexton’s early creations sent me scurrying online to find the images. I was not to be disappointed.

However, something didn’t seem to chime with both of the images. Namely, while Nutter’s styling was all over one of the looks, the other was distinctly different, even taking into account some shared aspects from the era’s general tastes and themes. Instead, it took ordering a copy of the original edition of Vogue to find out more. The result was more interesting than I’d realised.

The Tommy Nutter Number

McKellen’s Tommy Nutter suit may be one of the most Nutter-esque creations produced by the house in the period. Though it had only been open for a few years by the time of this shoot, Nutter and Sexton’s designs had seemingly conquered pop culture overnight with its broad shoulders, pinched waists, vast lapels and firm silhouette. The by-line describes the suit as follows:

“Jacket, single breasted with single horn button closing, jetted pockets, no vents, double-breasted style lapels inset with white piqué; trousers with straight pockets , turn-ups; piqué horn-button waistcoat with welted pockets. £155, made to measure at Nutters.”

For further reference, McKellen’s shirt in this shot is a bespoke commission from Turnbull & Asser – “a light grey fine voile shirt with white satin pin-stripes, black clipcord bands of small squares, white piqué collar and cuffs” – and his watch (admittedly unseen in the photo) is apparently a gold fob by Vacheron & Constantin.

There are several interesting things going on with the suit, beyond Crickmay’s natural photographic flare giving it a distinct sense of movement. The main point of interest is in the keynote of white piqué, which is shared between the Nutter suit and the T&A shirt. This allows an unusual blending to occur in terms of shapes. But the aspect to highlight is its presence as an inset on the lapels.

This is one of the earliest instances I can find of Nutter and Sexton adding this unusual touch, one that requires the much wider lapel more commonly found on a double-breasted jacket in order to not turn them into a clownish amusement (not that such an aspect would stop Nutter later on). Interestingly, Nutter explored this same aspect that very year when he had, of all things, a tailcoat made for himself; a kind of foppish Artful Dodger outfit. The tailor was photographed wearing the creation in September 1973 for After Dark magazine by Justin de Villeneuve. It’s worth sharing the image to compare to McKellen’s.

There’s something especially Dandyish about this addition. In both outfits, it allows a kind of blurring of the shirt, creating the illusion of differing joins. In Nutter’s own tailcoat, it almost looks as though his shirt collar is drifting down beyond his already flamboyant polka-dot cravat , joining to a lining of white piqué at the very top of his waistcoat so that it looks like a satirical take on the black tie bib. McKellen’s creates equally unusual shapes, though this is due to his waistcoat and the shirt collar, rather than the shirt itself. The result is something akin to a wonderful, Dandyish armour.

The single button is also an unusual touch. Much more common then on black tie jackets, Nutter and Sexton made a point of using the single button to dramatic effect on their single-breasted jackets. Here is one that went to auction recently that also deployed the single button. It seems to firm up the front-shaping of the material much more, heightening the dramatic lines and emphasising the darts.

McKellen, of course, wore several Nutter-esque suits during this era. While I can’t be 100% certain if any of the others are definitely Nutter creations, they certainly fit the bill proportion-wise. However, Nutter is not an unusual choice for McKellen. There’s something deeply theatrical and showman-like about Nutter and Sexton’s work, so of course a leading Shakespearean would be fitting for his tailoring-as-artwork ethos.

The other suit, however, is distinctly different, and is very much not a Nutters creation, a fact obvious even before buying the original magazine to confirm the information hidden by its tiny print. For that suit, Crome and McKellen would look to the work of another Tom, but one who was very different to Nutter.

The Tom Gilbey Number

Like Tommy Nutter, New Cross-born Tom Gilbey was a working-class lad. Leaving school as soon as was possible, he quickly worked and studied almost every aspect of menswear. From working with tailors in the East End to studying textile manufacture in German mills, Gilbey was fascinated by seemingly every possible detail of clothing and attire. Like Nutter, there was even a Beatles connection. Whereas Nutter had, somewhat by chance, dressed three of the Fab Four for the cover of Abbey Road, Gilbey designed the capes worn by the lads on the cover of “Help!” in 1965.

A year after his Beatles coop, Gilbey opened his first shop on Sackville Street at number 36, all the while going from strength to strength. He worked with several other British Invasion bands (notably The Kinks) and pioneered the re-invention and popularisation of the safari suit (before Roger Moore’s Bond even got a whiff of a tropical clime).

He even dressed the Hurricane himself, Alex Higgins, on several occasions, when, much to Higgins’ dismay, his clothes meant he sweated profusely; especially in games abroad. “All I wanted to do was get the frame over and go outside and cool off,” he wrote of wearing a Gilbey suit in his autobiography. That’s tailoring for you. Here are some photos of Higgins enjoying the cooler climes of Sackville Street in some of Gilbey’s creations.

Back to Gilbey’s outfit for McKellen then. It makes a nice pairing for the Nutter, with Gilbey’s approach being not dissimilar in irreverence. Gilbey saw himself as a Men’s couturist as much as a tailor, and there’s a sense of fashion to his work beyond the typical skill, craft and tradition usual for the Row. Here’s what the description in Vogue says about Gilbey’s outfit for McKellen.

“Eau de nil linen… double-breasted jacket, new shorter length, with green buttons, one fastening, angled patch pockets, no vents; wide-cut trousers with double front pleats; lapel rose, pale green organza with cloqué cotton leaves. £155. Sage green fine silk shirt, £27. Heavy satin cotton waistcoat in cream, flower-patterned in greens, £37. All made to measure at Tom Gilbey.”

The only aspects of the look that Gilbey didn’t make is the slightly obscured black crepe cravat, which was Turnbull & Asser, and the velours hat which was by Herbert Johnson (in the days before he was amalgamated into Swaine, Adeney and Brigg). Otherwise, everything else is by Gilbey. In comparison to the Nutter (although I personally much prefer Sexton’s style), Gilbey’s suit feels much more modern. The bright buttons feel similar to the equally bright buttons found on the jackets of Brunello Cucinelli; the shorter jacket is itself the norm in most high-street menswear today, and the trousers look a little slimmer at the top, as is again the modern norm, in contrary to their description of being wide-cut (perhaps it’s the angle of the stance and photo).

Unlike Nutter’s jacket, Gilbey’s is actually double-breasted, though its shorter rise lessens the shaping compared to regular double-breasted jackets. The real flamboyance of the outfit, aside from its cravat and hat accessories, is in the waistcoat, and this is essentially a Gilbey special. For Gilbey, the busy-patterned waistcoat became somewhat of a staple, so much so that, when deciding to move from Sackville Street in the 1980s, he arrived at 2 Burlington Place just off Burlington Street where he opened The Waistcoat Gallery. While I’ve yet to find any photos of said shop, I imagine it being a forerunner to Oliver Spencer’s Favourbrook in Piccadilly Arcade, at least in regards to the kind of items it sold. Either way, the shop closed in 2000 and Gilbey stepped back from menswear altogether.

It’s perhaps fitting that Gilbey’s future was there in McKellen’s shoot. There’s something deeply anachronistic about much of the look, especially in comparison to the Nutter suit which looks so 1973 that it’s possible to hear faint echoes of The Sweet’s “Block Buster!” in the background. This, however, wasn’t the first time that Gilbey and Nutter appeared together. For a (still unidentified) article, Nutter and Gilbey were shot walking down a street (likely in the area of the Row). It was taken by Robert Aylott on the 18^th of March 1972, so was likely for one of the fashion periodicals of the day. My bet is that the hand of Erica Crome is once more in play, and that the pairing here eventually led to McKellen’s wardrobe that following year for Vogue.

A final little tit-bit then. I wanted Sir Ian’s input about this shoot; so evocative, distinctive and high-end for an actor treading the boards and yet to reach the heady heights of world domination via wizardry and mutation. I wrote to him to ask if he could recall anything about the shoot and, in particular, if he was allowed to keep the suits. His note back to me is below.

“I do remember wearing a rather snazzy suit for a photo session at my home in Camberwell”, he wrote. “At the time, I couldn’t afford to buy anything from Savile Row, favouring jeans and home-knitted sweaters!” So, there we are. The shoot took place in his own Camberwell pad, but he sadly didn’t get to keep the suits. To end, then, here’s a photo of McKellen in his self-confessed finery of home-knitted jumpers. Whether dressed in Tommy Nutter, Tom Gilbey or his own home-made garments, McKellen always looked as dramatic and wonderful as his work on stage and screen.

A performer arguably most famous for his leading role in the fashion-orientated Blow-Up (1966) by Michelangelo Antonioni, Hemmings wore the turtleneck for a press photo while stood outside of the shop that made it on Jermyn Street. That company was famed shirt and tie-maker, Turnbull & Asser. Already, upon seeing the photograph, several questions came to mind, not least the recurring one which was why did this garment cause a stir? And, more importantly, why did such a classical outfitters such as Turnbull & Asser turn towards daring, at times evening-ruining, attire? To find out required some research into the source of the photo, its connection to Hemmings and, finally, the thinking of the men who made it.

Telegraph Peacocks

One of the great chroniclers of the pleasingly-named Peacock Revolution that dominated the menswear of the Sixties was Geoffrey Aquilina Ross. Eventual lecturer at Central Saint Martin’s in fashion, as a journalist and editor Aquilina Ross found himself at the centre of a huge cultural shift in how men approached every aspect of their dress. Eventually the first male fashion editor at Vogue, Aquilina Ross collected his thoughts on the style whirlwind he experienced in his 2011 volume, The Day of the Peacock: Style for Men 1963-1973. Essentially, however, he also wrote about it at the time in a variety of articles and columns for several of the period’s leading magazines.

While it’s fair to say that the Peacock Revolution lasted around a decade or so, there’s a very particular day that marked both Aquilina Ross’ career and the revolution of frills and fops really entering the mainstream. That day was April the 5^th 1968, a Friday as it happens. While the more obvious youthful audience were already lapping up frilly shirts and colour, largely influenced by what was going on in music, it was this date that brought such style to a more conservative, everyday audience. This is because Aquilina Ross started a column for, of all things, The Daily Telegraph Magazine. Among the articles exploring the dilapidation of England’s cathedrals and Cliff Richard’s youthful return to his mum’s house, the column, simply titled “Men’s Clothes” in the contents, was a first salvo covering a return to vibrant colour in menswear for those beyond Carnaby Street and the King’s Row.

“The object of his series”, the magazine’s editor suggests on an earlier page, “is to show how fancy trimmings can add greatly to the appearance of an otherwise conservatively masculine wardrobe.” This is in spite of Aquilina Ross admitting that he himself dressed conservatively: “But I like to see men going around in lots of colour.” This article is where the photo of Hemmings at Turnbull & Asser is from, though, like many of the images taken for it by photographer Hans Feureur, it has been overshadowed by its more famous cover image of Terence Stamp (more on that later).

Feuruer’s role in taking the photo of Hemmings is somewhat ironic considering that he was himself influenced to begin working in the fashion world as a photographer because of Blow-Up. As he told Marion Hume and Tamsin Blanchard for The Independent in 1993:

“When I saw the film, I was not yet a photographer. I became one at the end of ‘67. Without realising at the time, I suppose Blow-Up did influence me. When I saw it, I thought it was a piece of fiction, but I later thought it was quite real. My memories of photographing in swinging London were similar to the film… It all happened unconsciously. I only realised how much it had influenced me when I saw it later.”

So, the photograph of Hemmings in the turtleneck has a kind of circular poetry to it that the other photos in the article do not. It possesses a unique relationship between subject and photographer; a fashion shoot in which a character played by the subject influenced its photographer to take up the camera and begin shooting in the first place.

This was, of course, an accident. The point of the article’s photos was simply to pair one famous man with a company specialising in the smashing new styles dominating late-Sixties London. “We have chosen a number of people who have this element of showmanship,” Aquilina Ross writes in his article, “and who even in their most casual moments look well-dressed. We photographed them where they do their shopping, in the kind of clothes they wear, and with their own additions that make them snappy dressers.”

The cover feature, which dominates memories of the article today, shows equally prominent swinging London actor Terence Stamp hanging out with his tailor Douglas Hayward. The sheer bravado of Stamp’s outfit has rendered this photo one of the definitive images of the Peacock Revolution and the distinctly dandyish turn it embraced.

Hemmings’ photo, however, feels unduly neglected, especially as what he was wearing was so unusual. Perhaps it’s because its daringness is somewhat hidden by the overall outfit, but more on that in due course.

In the article, Aquilina Ross is somewhat questioning of the Peacock Revolution as something specific, writing that “The Carnaby Street Revolution was not so much a revolution as a normal fashion progression that has been going since the Thirties, a bit faster over the last ten years.” This is said to highlight the point that the flamboyance essentially helped more traditional businesses on the Row, Jermyn Street and beyond (as opposed to simply new designers and companies) in finding a younger clientele through a colourful array of ready-to-wear.

Unlike all of the other featured clothes, whose newness is essentially what is driving their place in the article, Hemmings’ turtleneck is, by contrast, considered an older item. As the caption of the photo reads, it was “originally designed by Turnbull & Asser many years ago.” The dating of the item, however, is barely a few years before the photo was taken which goes to show how brutally quick styles came and went during the decade.

For me, Hemmings’ choice of clothing is the most interesting as, in spite of its radical nature not being too obvious, the turtleneck did indeed cause a stir. Whereas the various aspects of the other parts of the shoot faded into the general noise of quickly-dated swinging decadence, the turtleneck here was, even by those standards, an oddball. Appropriate, perhaps, considering the career of its wearer.

Turnbull Turtleneck

By 1968, David Hemmings was at the height of his career. A childhood star with an astonishing musical career as well as an acting career (from working with Benjamin Britten to his own solo albums), it was the aforementioned Blow-Up that eventually catapulted him to the role of leading man. Hemmings became a cipher of a very particular kind of 1960s British lead that went some way to subverting the norms of what was deemed suitable in a leading man. Like Stamp and other contemporaries, Hemmings’ career veered between a daring array of projects, from big screen classics to subversive arthouse cinema. This is partly why his choice of shopping at Turnbull & Asser feels appropriate to his own career; though naturally beset by the traditions and the prestige that came with being a long-held business, by this point in their history, T&A were daring to break out of what tradition dictated was possible. Hemmings’ turtleneck was a definitive example of this.

So what does the article say about Hemmings and his Turnbull & Asser outfit? Well, not a lot. “David Hemmings is in The Charge of the Light Brigade and plays a conman in Only When I Larf, coming in June. Here he wears the newest smoking coat, lightweight, in navy-blue velvet trimmed with black. The coat is long and very slim, the pockets are deep and buttons high, 45gns.” However, most importantly is the information about the Turnbull Turtle. “Pink silk crepe shirt, 12 gns, roll-neck as originally designed by Turnbull & Asser many years ago.”

The point about the turtleneck is that, unlike the kind that can be bought in any number of shops today, it was still technically a shirt. Aside from being made of a high quality silk crepe, the arms had shirt cuffs; in other words, it was specifically designed to be worn for the kind of functions that had silk shirts as their staple. This is arguably where its controversy stems from. Not everyone was onboard with this radical shift in shirting, not least as it meant formal occasions that demanded a tie of some kind were left lacking.

The history of the shirt is somewhat convoluted. In the photo, Hemmings is stood next to the team at Turnbull & Asser who made it. Aspects of its production are detailed at several points in James Sherwood’s excellent book, Turnbull & Asser: Made in England 130 Years (2016), who incidentally is one of the writers who labelled the item “infamous”. One segment featuring an interview with craftsman Kenneth Williams (who can be seen in the photo standing to the left of Hemmings, along with Paul Cuss who held the company’s Royal Warrant), suggests that the original shirt was made a few years before at the bequest of the famous Queen magazine and its fashion editor Erica Crome.

“We didn’t court the film or fashion industry in the 1960s,” Williams said, “but they found us and liked what we were producing. Queen magazine fashion editor Erica Crome was a great supporter of Turnbull & Asser. We made our famous silk turtleneck for one of her shoots and developed the Cossack look when the fashion industry picked-up on our designs for Doctor Zhivago. Of course, Omar Sharif was already a customer before he filmed Zhivago.”

The creation ended up being featured in the December issue of Queen magazine as part of a series called “Dressing Up”, modelled in this instance by Ted Dawson. The shirt took off straight away, not least because it felt like a challenge to the dress-code of the kind of venue and event that required a silk shirt in the period. It was a distinctly Peacock rebellion.

According to Williams, as quoted by Sherwood from the Dallas Morning Herald in 1982, “We’d only made a few for special people as we figured they were the only ones who could get away with them. Within ten days we had 2,000 orders. Within a year, we’d sold 10,000. The turtleneck shirt put Turnbull & Asser on the map.” According to Sherwood’s book, many in the jetsetter class fell for the Turnbull Turtle as it was known and marketed. Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor supposedly had several “his & hers” matching sets made, while a variety of photos of Warren Beatty showing off the garment are still around online.

However, the most vital bit of history regarding the Turnbull Turtle concerns David Frost and Lord Snowdon, and shows precisely why it was controversial. According to Sherwood:

“On one of their overseas trips in 1968, Princess Margaret and Snowdon were photographed with actress Patricia Neal in New York’s Rainbow Room at the top of the Rockefeller Centre. Snowdon wears a dinner suit and Turnbull & Asser’s famous white silk satin turtleneck that was arguably the most directional look in men’s tailoring in 1968. It was on this night that Snowdon and journalist David Frost were refused entry to the Running Footman club because both were wearing the T&A turtleneck… It was not recorded at the time where Princess Margaret was or whether the doorman kept his job.”

The Turnbull Turtle forced the wearer to risk their nights out being cut short. But that evidently didn’t stop their popularity (though the earlier quoted interview from the Dallas Morning Herald does also have Williams suggest that, by 1982, the shop only had six left, showing that their popularity had more than waned), not least for Hemmings who had several made beyond the vibrant pink one seen in his Telegraph photo.

Plenty of photos exist of the actor wearing it after that shoot, and he often wore it when out and about with then wife, Gayle Hunnicut (as if the item was the ultimate staple of the counter-culture power couple). He wore a white one several times, for example as seen in 1969 when attending the premiere of “Oh! What a Lovely War!”. Most of it is hidden under his tunic, however.

This is an especially interesting look due to the unusual Mandarin jacket Hemmings is wearing; somewhat resembling another that T&A made later for Katharine Hepburn who also wore it with nothing other than a white Turnbull Turtle (incidentally to present at her only appearance at the Oscars in 1974).

The following photos by Art Zelen, in contrast to the outré Eastern-styled outfit, show Hemmings wearing the number in 1970 during a visit to New York. In this case, he styled it with a lovely houndstooth-check sports jacket which actually makes the more casual nature implied by the lack of traditional collar really work.

In spite of all of this, it seems that the Turnbull Turtle didn’t survive the onslaught of the 1980s. The item became a collector’s item, and finding a surviving one today is difficult. Online, I found one that was sold on a vintage website some years ago, for what was likely a very cheap price of £200. Luckily, the photos show the detailing of the item which, handily, bears a striking resemblance to the one Hemmings wore in the photos above.

Williams suggests in Sherwood’s highly recommended volume that “When you wear Turnbull & Asser doors open to you.” Even when worn by stars such as Hemmings and other jetsetters, this was one historic instance where, in spite of the obvious flamboyant brilliance of the item, this was far from guaranteed.

Bowie arguably never looked better wearing a suit than in these photographs, though the singer was never conventional in his relationship to tailoring. When the time was right, he worked with tailors and stylists who took the suit to its most extreme, avant-garde ends, usually in reflection of his music. This is the Bowie that has most often been posterised; naturally so considering the many unique outfits that have become ciphers of their own particular eras. Think of the Freddie Burretti “Life on Mars” suit, Tommy Nutter’s Pin-Ups suit, or Kansai Yamamoto’s “vase” jump-suit. All are radical, unique, bizarre and beautiful.

When times moved on and the glam days were dying in the face of safety-pins and leather, Bowie returned to the classical suit, arguably for the first time since his youthful Mod era. Re-embracing tailoring became newly radical for him in the 1970s. Because of the context, this was just as overt as his earlier extremes; when such a statement in clothing was itself a rebellion against the various subculture movements of the decade. In a similar vein to Bryan Ferry, Bowie wore tailoring to provoke.

The suit, whether the one worn in Haddi’s photos or the many others Bowie has worn over the years, expresses the inherent contradiction at the heart of the singer’s public persona. He was ever-changing and distinctive, yet almost constantly likened to a “chameleon” by the press and critics. “I’ve always felt bemused at being called the chameleon of rock”, he told Esquire in 2004. “Doesn’t a chameleon exert tremendous energy to become indistinguishable from its environment?” It was never an accurate description of the singer. In one sense, the suit should have allowed Bowie to indulge this apparent chameleon-ish ability. Yet he stood out, not least because of the kind of suits he chose to wear.

There’s a roundabout irony to all of this: that Haddi’s photo-shoot was a good decade or so after the earlier periods in which Bowie explicitly returned to tailoring, especially in his Berlin Years which were dominated by a kind of Weimar-ish louchness. I wanted to know more about the suit worn in the Haddi shoot because there seemed to be a cinematic quality to it beyond the usual reference points for the deeply filmic singer. A rabbit hole quickly opened revolving around cinema, an auction and one of Hollywood’s most famous costuming houses.

The Haddi Shoot

Haddi’s shoot was originally commissioned to illustrate an interview with Bowie for the May 1993 issue of Interview Magazine, and was conducted at the swimming pool of the Peninsula Hotel. The interview for the magazine was itself conducted by Hanif Kureishi, and the photos chosen for the final print were mostly the colour variants rather than the more widely-shared black & white images.

Later, Bowie wore the same suit on the cover of the single “Black Tie White Noise”. This connection is appropriate as Haddi played a part in bringing Bowie together with his eventual wife, Iman. The song is about this relationship, and was released later that year on the 1^st of June, 1993. This is where the suit itself has retroactively picked up its nickname online, in spite of not being traditional black tie attire.

I tracked down Haddi to see if he could recall anything about the shoot and the suit. It turned out that the themes were deeply cinematic to begin with, stemming from Haddi’s own tastes and Bowie’s choice of clothing. “I spent a lot of my intellectual life in Paris when I was growing up,” he told me. “On Sunday nights at midnight, we had specific movies from Italian cinema; a lot of Neorealist films and American cinema from the Forties. Luchino Visconti, because he spoke French and did a lot of theatre in France, was very well known there. The French loved him. I discovered Visconti’s work when I was very young. When I moved to America, I had that knowledge of cinema but, in Los Angeles, a lot of actors didn’t know what I was talking about. Some directors did, but not many actors.”

It was this cinematic heritage that he drew upon for his own creative work, but also the influence that allowed him to bond with Bowie for this specific shoot. “Anyway,” he continues, “Ingrid Sischy of Interview Magazine asked me to go to LA to work with Bowie. When he arrived on set, it was just like he was coming out of a film. He had dressed similarly in Just a Gigolo a few years before as that was set in the Forties as well, but he always loved the slick attitude of suits from that period. They wore those same kinds of suits in Visconti’s films and in Roberto Rossellini’s films. When I saw him, I said ‘What the fuck?’ So I started to break the ice and said that he looked like he’d just come out of a Visconti film. He was very happy that I knew where he was going.”

Haddi continued explaining in detail the filmic influences of the shoot:

“The movie I mention all the time is Rocco and his Brothers. There’s Alain Delon, Renato Salvatori, and Roger Hanin who played the part of a boxing promoter. Look at the way he’s dressed, look at the way they’re all dressed, and the same style is there. When I saw David, I said I was going to make him a poster-boy for Visconti and Rossellini. If you look at all the people in, say, Death in Venice, or even Jean-Louis Trintignant in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist, they were slick and powerful. My reflections were based on all those movies. They have these pinstripe, fitted suits. It’s very Italian tailoring.”

The filmic quality of the photos is arguably the most important aspect in exploring the suit on its own terms. Alongside the films mentioned by Haddi, consider the following stills of Massimo Girotti in Visconti’s debut, Obsessione (1943), if the point needs highlighting further.

But the filmic connections didn’t end with just the stylistic desires of the photographer and a star wanting to indulge in a shared love of Italian film. For the suit itself also had a filmic career and its history linked explicitly to cinema.

The “Black Tie White Noise” Suit

Considering Bowie wore many suits that were evidently his own, where did the “Black Tie White Noise” suit actually come from? A few years ago, the suit came up for sale, and the information surrounding it was incredibly interesting. It was sold in December 2017 by the Gotta Have Rock and Roll specialist auction site. Incredibly, for a suit not that associated with Bowie beyond his real hardcore fans, it sold for $21,000. Here’s the suit as photographed by the auction house.

The auction listing had mixed information about it, including the incorrect detail that the suit was worn for the Black Tie White Noise album photoshoot (an entirely different shoot by regular Bowie photographer Nick Knight that same year) as opposed to the single shoot. It does, however, tell us several key details about it. A “two piece 1940’s vintage suit… of a grey pinstripe double breasted coat with peak lapels, slash pockets, two-button cuff, and matching flat front pants with two-button zipper fly…. The suit jacket is a 34 R and the pant waist is 30” with a 34” inseam (these are 1940’s pants which would have been worn high on the waist).” So according to the website, the suit was a genuine Forties piece, but looking at their photos, further unlisted details were evident from labels pictured inside of the suit.

While the tailoring label of “G.F.” has so far provided no leads, the really interesting aspect of the suit is that it was sourced from the Palace Costume Company. The famed costume and rental house has a long established history with celebrities in particular, as well as being one of the most respected costumiers in Hollywood. It was the first true vintage and antique shop on Melrose Avenue when it was known as The Crystal Palace, and gained a reputation for the astonishing historic clothes that its owner, Melody Barnett, collected together.

From loaning vintage clothes to Lady Gaga, to the costume department buying vintage clothes for Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974), Palace has been at the forefront of dressing some of the world’s most famous stars in some the best surviving historic clothes. It has since become a Mecca for fashion stylists, with those in every kind of costume-related industry demanding their services. I was curious about the connection between the house and Bowie’s suit, not least because Bowie evidently ended up keeping it which is an unusual concession for the company. Firstly, I contacted the original stylist on the Haddi shoot, the equally legendary Kim Bowen.

Bowen has worked in every conceivable capacity as a stylist, with shoots for Bryan Ferry, George Michael, Janet Jackson and John Galliano to name but a few. What did she recall of Bowie’s suit? “Yes, the suit came from Palace,” she wrote to me via email. “I can’t tell you anything about ‘G.F.’ unfortunately. I would also venture a guess that those initials might refer to the designer who worked on whatever film the suit was created for. Additionally, but less likely, they could refer to the initials of whichever actor wore the suit.” This is really the key point: that the suit was almost definitely made as a costume for a Hollywood film between the Thirties and Forties; appropriate considering the earlier Neorealist comments from Haddi. The cut alone, along with the material, could have given its filmic background away, but it seems doubly fitting considering Haddi and Bowie’s conversation about Visconti. “David loved that suit,” Bowen concluded, “and as you already know, he loved it so much that he kept it!”

Unlike many later rentals from Palace, Bowie was actually allowed to keep his suit. While originally a sales company, it was on the advice of Chinatown costume buyer, Anthea Sylbert, that they became rental only. Bowie’s purchasing, therefore, appears to be a relative rarity in the period of the shoot. This little fact came from the excellent Palace Costume: Inside Hollywood’s Best Kept Fashion Secret, a comprehensive volume exploring the house’s history by Mimi Haddon. I decided to explore this side of the suit’s history further by asking her about the sourcing of Palace’s clothes.

“Melody, who is the owner of Palace Costume,” Haddon tells me, “has [her] sources, and still finds vintage clothing from thrift stores, estate sales, the Rose Bowl flea market, and there are some shows and films’ [costume designers] who have given her large stock after production as a trade.” So, really, the suit could have come from anywhere, at least that was my first thought. “Bowie’s stylist might have purchased the piece from Melody, which is very rare, or perhaps it was purchased when she was still selling retail (now they are rentals only). Sometimes, celebrities fall in love with certain items and purchase from them. But it is a gorgeous suit and exciting that it was worn by David Bowie.”

The final point of call in exploring Bowie’s pinstripe was to ask Palace themselves about it. After all, the label not only had Palace’s name on it, but also several reference numbers and even a barcode. However, it was to prove slightly tricky to get any detail from them. After contacting the house about the suit, I got a minimal reply from someone there called Lee. “That suit is a vintage suit from the 1930s,” Lee said, and that was all initially all I got. This was in itself interesting as the auction site had listed the suit as being from the following decade.

But a final point to end on is something even more interesting. According to the concise Lee at Palace Costume, this wasn’t the only suit of its kind. “I do have an exact double of that suit,” Lee admitted though he wouldn’t provide further details. The likelihood is that it was the suit of a performer on screen for one single film, and several copies were, as standard practice in the industry, probably required for a long shoot. Therefore, if in the future a glamorous Hollywood star desires to be photographed in a classic, Neorealist-style pinstripe suit like Bowie’s, the possibilities are there at the Palace Costume Company. Looking as good as Bowie did in Haddi’s shoot, however, is sadly less of an option.

With this in mind, it’s unsurprising to find the man’s tailoring similarly reflecting the various changes and trends unfolding as the decades rolled on. However, unlike his peers, this quietly stylish man has gone under the radar; a man who wore the most perfect of Savile Row tailoring in its heyday, but also indulged in the counter-cultural dandyism of post-1960s style, in spite of being in his sixties when such style was in vogue. This is natural for a man whose life virtually spanned the entirety of the century (and who died only a few years shy of reaching one hundred in 2008).

As with many figures of interest to me, not a great deal has been written about Mills’ choice of clothing. He was simply one of those silver screen stars who looked good at all times. Something I’m finding in researching these columns is that, when someone is consistently well-dressed, a kind of assumption presides; in which the detail of what they wore and why it looked good is shrugged off. Research shows, on the contrary, that Mills shopped around, and that his style not only connected with a range of interesting names in tailoring, but that it was also very much passed down. Tailoring was, if you will excuse the pun, very much the family way.

Historic Houses

The first thing to note about Mills’ tailoring is that there is, contrary to every photo of the man showing fine taste, very little information directly available about what he wore. The detail regarding his clothes comes to light almost uniquely because of items sold at auction. The one exception to this comes from the actor’s public relationship with Huntsman & Sons.

Considering Mills often lived in rural places (he died and is buried in the beautiful village of Denham, a plaque now residing on his final cottage there), Huntsman is a natural choice. On their website’s “Hall of Fame”, Mills is represented with a single page and the following photo.

The assumption has to be that Mills is wearing Huntsman in this photo; a nice, heavy tweed with peaked lapels. There’s little else to say about the suit as the photo appears to be an actor’s headshot taken in 1949. At this point in Mills’ career, he’d finally broken through with a string of hit roles so it’s likely a bespoke commission. The Huntsman connection does not end there, however.

In 2023, Ewbank’s auction house sold a lot consisting of several pieces of Mills’ clothing (and one satin jacket owned by Lady Mary Hayley Mills, John’s wife) as part of their Entertainment and Memorabilia series. All the items are of interest, naturally, but the most interesting exhibits the connection to Huntsman again. In the sale was a pair of “tan jodhpurs with suede inner legs”. According to the label, Huntsman completed them for Mills on the 1^st of October, 1954 (a second pair is displayed though there’s limited information on the page about them). The only time I can find Mills wearing jodhpurs on screen is for a much later role in Young Winston (1972) so, along with an earlier photo of him wearing some while riding in 1952, it can be assumed that Mills had them commissioned for reasons beyond filming.

The second item in the lot is collarless, blue and white striped shirt with French double cuffs. The detail on the shirt’s labelling shows it to be a bespoke item, designed for Mills’ 17 inch collar size by T. Hodgekinson of 28 Duke Street in St. James’s, along with the calm advice of “DO NOT BOIL”. Hodgekinson was a gentleman’s outfitters, not dissimilar to New & Lingwood. They held a Royal Warrant from HRH the Duke of Edinburgh in 1956, though the outfitters had been trading from various premises on Jermyn Street (number 112, roughly where Jones Bootmaker is today) and what was once King’s Place, since the turn of the century.

With the address of the shop being Duke Street, the shirt is likely from the mid-1940s. Here’s a period receipt from 1948 for another client of the outfitters, detailing its then address as well as its services, showing it specialising as “Shirt Makers, Hosiers & Glovers.”

The shop was supposedly once in what was Pall Mall Place, too, but moved after the war due to bomb damage. Most interestingly, the auction website suggests the possibility of this being screen-worn for David Lean’s film, Ryan’s Daughter (1970). The shirt certainly seems similar to that worn by Mills’ character, Michael, but the lack of detailed colour photos showing the character in the shirt (coupled with the fact that the shirt is filthy in the film) makes it difficult to confirm. Why would Mills wear his own shirt, bought undoubtedly in the 1940s, for a role thirty years later? Lean’s films were hardly strapped for cash, though the likeness certainly makes it a possibility.

The other item in the lot has a more unquestionable heritage: the kilt. The label is that of M. Berman, a noted costuming house for film and stage. The lot rightly attributes this unique item to Mills in the wonderful Ronald Neame film, Tunes of Glory (1960). The Berman company was active from approximately 1920 to 1969 and, though largely specialised in kitting out actors for the stage, they also made specialist items for screen wear. The Victoria & Albert Museum, for example, hold several screen costumes by them, including a roman costume for Carry On Cleo (1964) and a Cecil Beaton-designed dress for Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady (1964).

However, the interesting detail of this item is the makers of the material, W. Jardine & Sons. The house, which as the label says operated from Forth Street in Edinburgh, was largely a regimental tailors, not dissimilar to the more famous Dege & Skinner on the Row. According to one speculator online, the house was still running in the mid-1970s but, with the Royal Highland Fusiliers changing house to Meyer & Mortimer in St. James’s, it closed in the 1980s. Plenty of photos exist of Mills wearing the kilt in the film, with the narrative following the fallout of his new, tough commanding officer character disrupting a Highland Regiment (played with enjoyable nastiness by the actor). However, the outfit is not distinctive to Mills as most of the actors, including Alec Guinness, wore one in the film.

These are not the only examples of Mills’ screen costumes being sold. One of Mills’ most famous roles is as the grown-up Pip in Lean’s Dickens adaptation, Great Expectations. A few years back, Heritage Auctions in America listed his blue tailcoat worn in the film, though the item failed to sell. Similarly to the Berman kilt for Tunes of Glory, this Victorian-style piece was made by a film costumiers; this time Berman’s rivals, L.&H. Nathan. Whereas Berman dabbled with screen projects, Nathan were one of the most popular of British screen costumiers. Initially a tailoring house from the late 1700s, the following century saw them work with theatrical companies. It was around 1912 when the house finally started working on film costumes.

The period of working on Great Expectations was arguably the house’s most prolific, with British cinema quickly recovering its production finesse after the war, though such work took its toll on their team. Their shop on Panton Street was eventually closed, partly due to nearby bomb damage and, somewhat ironically, is now the spot roughly where the Odeon Cinema stands today. In another twist of irony, Nathan eventually merged with the earlier mentioned Berman in 1971.

In spite of this interesting history, the tailcoat tells us very little about Mills’ taste, as any costume likely tells us about the fictional character more than the actor. Luckily, one of Mills’ personal tailcoats has been up for auction quite recently.

The tailcoat is a typical but beautiful 1950s black tie staple. The label has it as by the historic tailor, Sullivan & Williams, very much a Row regular up until the 1960s when they closed. The date of its finish is the 9th of November, 1953, which places it in quite a specific period in Mills’ life. Sullivan & Williams’ shop was originally at No. 12 on the Row, where Chittleborough & Morgan is based today.

Some information also lists their shop as being later at 18 Conduit Street (where Vivienne Westwood has her men’s clothes shop today, and where the label on this garment suggests the shop was at the time of making) but there’s very little in the public realm about them beyond this story in a 1939 edition of Picture Post.

The item is undoubtedly interesting. Trying to trace the event that resulted in its commission, the closest I initially found regarded Mills’ role in a 1956 Royal Variety performance alongside Laurence Olivier and Vivienne Leigh; in which all three were wearing vaguely similar tails. With photos of the trio quite dark (and the detailing of Mills’ lapels somewhat mismatching, or at least not possible to match from the photos), this is likely not the same tailcoat. At the same time, these were simply promotion photos: the performance that year was eventually cancelled due to the Suez Crisis.

On further research, however, I found footage from an earlier Royal event in which Mills is definitely wearing the Sullivan & Williams tailcoat. It was in 1954 for a Royal Performance screening attended by the likes of Sir Michael Redgrave, Jane Russell, Jack Hawkins and many others. Essentially, it was filmed for British Pathé due to being attended by HRH Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh. Mills can be seen wearing the item at approximately 1:18 into the video. There’s a final aptness to this connection. The film was none other than Curtis Bernhardt’s Beau Brummell; a biographical drama starring Stewart Granger as the original dandy and arguable instigator of men’s tailoring and style as we know it today. Very fitting.

All of this archive musing has, truth be told, so far failed to gain full insight into Mills’ tailoring tastes. We have seen practical needs (horse-riding, filmmaking) and formal needs (black tie for galas) dictating his commissions on the Row, but nothing all that personal so far. The archives seemingly had little left to explore so I turned my attentions elsewhere: asking his surviving family.

A Letter from Hayley

The best way to find out about the tailoring of people sadly no longer with us is undoubtedly by asking their surviving relatives (a growing theme of these pages as the coming months’ articles will show). In the case of John Mills, we’re lucky enough to have several surviving relatives, not least his daughter, Hayley. A famed actress and performer in her own right, I wrote to Hayley asking about her father’s tailoring. This was her reply.

“My father’s favourite tailor was Douglas Hayward,” wrote Hayley. This was surprising in itself considering the period when Hayward was working. But another intriguing point was on the question I asked about any of his suits surviving (beyond those I’d found online). “Indeed, yes,” she wrote, “and they are still in active service, for my two sons and his grandchildren!” There’s a fair amount to unpack from this short correspondence, so let us begin with Douglas Hayward.

Hayward will no doubt be a reoccurring name on this site as it develops. The tailor, who had his house on 95 Mount Street (which became a kind of personal club for the hip and happening young men of the 1960s and 1970s), really was a tailor to the stars. From Roger Moore to Michael Caine, Hayward’s craft was a constant presence, in spite of an initially frosty reception when trying to work as a cutter on the Row early on. In fact, the cultural extent of Hayward’s cinematic influence really deserves its own book (and certainly several future posts on here) but, suffice to say, the tailor is arguably the most important independent tailor in the context of British cinema (whether for on-screen tailoring or the personal tailoring of the biggest screen names).

Mills’ apparent favouring of Hayward is somewhat surprising for several reasons. His tastes were very much for the classical traditions of the Row, but Hayward was somewhat more maverick, a foreshadow perhaps of the revived, partying atmosphere of the post-Tommy Nutter/Sexton Row (in spite of dramatically different styles, it must be noted). More than that, Hayward was, in the 1970s especially, dressing the sharp young men of the screen. Terence Stamp, Steve McQueen, Caine, Moore; Hayward’s distinctive, crisp work defined the generation below Mills (alongside the full, camp extravagance of Nutter which somewhat ran parallel to it).

However, I do not for a second doubt Hayley’s word, and one suit in particular caught my eye for both points she raised. The suit was worn by Mills in a number of photographs taken during the 1970s. In particular, a series of photos from 1979 show Mills wearing the suit; a navy pin-stripe affair, double-breasted with wide peak lapels and structured shoulders.

It may not fit the earlier style of Hayward, but compare it to similar Hayward suits worn by Roger Moore as James Bond in For Your Eyes Only (1981). The likenesses become obvious.

Mix the cut of the navy blazer with the material of the pin-stripe jacket, and the resulting garment would look remarkably like Mills’ suit. A further photo of Moore wearing a similar grey-pinstripe double-breasted is also showcased on the Douglas Hayward website gallery today, but this is an error as it was made by Cyril Castle. However, the error shows that Hayward was, at that point, closer to this style of cut than he was earlier in the 1970s. The fact that the editors of the website assumed it to be Hayward’s is testament to that. So Mills is likely wearing a Hayward suit in these photos.

The second aspect mentioned by Hayley also appears to back this up, as the suit crops up again many years later, worn by none other than Mills’ grandson, Crispian Mills. Crispian is most famous for fronting 1990s band, Kula Shaker though, as Hayley said, he evidently also had a penchant for wearing his grandfather’s tailoring. Virtually every photo of him wearing something tailored begs the question as to whether it was previously owned by his grandfather, though only one or two suits feel absolutely definite. Photos of Crispian taken in 2015 at the Ivor Norvello Awards in London undoubtedly show him wearing his grandfather’s pin-striped Hayward suit.

Crispian wasn’t the only grandson to enjoy his grandfather’s wardrobe. Compare, for example, the beige number worn by Mills for the unveiling of a plaque in honour of Dame Edith Evans (alongside a similarly beige Sir John Gielgud), with a suit later worn by grandson Jason Lawson for a memorial for Mills. The beige is likely another Hayward piece, especially considering the tailor’s extensive work with that colour.

A final conundrum, then, for this excursion into one man’s wardrobe. We have it from the auction houses that Mills favoured a variety of Savile Row tailors, from Huntsman to Sullivan & Williams, and we have it from his own daughter that his own favourite tailor was Douglas Hayward. Where then, on deciding to celebrate his eightieth birthday bash, did Mills decide to have it?

Gieves & Hawkes.

In 1974, Gieves Ltd. acquired Hawkes and became the monumental Gieves & Hawkes. However, the partnership was not only a perfect match of craft and style, but allowed Gieves in particular to occupy arguably the most prestigious address on the Row; namely Hawkes’ premises at No. 1. On the 22^nd of February, 1988, Mills celebrated his birthday there with a large party. The soiree was held inside the vast Georgian shop, and the list of attendees reads like a Who’s Who of film and business from the period. Sir Richard Attenborough, Dame Judi Dench, Sir Richard Branson and more aristocrats than you could shake a stick were present (as was Hayley, of course, pictured below with Bryan Forbes).

This perhaps ends our excursion on a curious point. While a party held in Hayward’s Mount Street shop would have likely been a cramped, impossible affair (though its atmosphere at the height of its celebrity popularity has often been likened to a kind of private bar), it does seem unusual for Mills to have chosen such a distinctive tailoring house to celebrate hitting his eighth decade. Perhaps he also favoured Gieves & Hawkes. Either way, the main takeaway from all of this is relatively simple: Mills dressed in some of the finest tailoring London could offer in every year of his long, successful life, and the expert craft of his attire was a perfect match for his equally monumental work on screen.

And so, to the matter in hand.

One of the best ways to find decent British tailoring, shirt-making and accessories is through the Notting Hill Exchange shops. I often take a bag or so of books that I no longer want and get the vouchers in their book exchange. These can then be used in the nearby men’s clothes shop. Because the shop is very fashion-orientated, the tailoring end of material is often dramatically marked down in comparison; it favours brands such as Raf Simons, Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood (along with the usual household names of Prada, Dior and Louis Vuitton) over Row and Jermyn brands.

On my various trips there this quarter, I was consistently shocked by the amount of gems on offer (all of which I picked up with vouchers so I technically bought the following with second-hand books rather than money…). The main find was a brand new Richard James double-breasted jacket in a lovely shade of plum (£175, or £0 with vouchers). I adore these off-the-peg jackets from Richard James. For me, they are one of the few ready-to-wear double-breasted jackets whose proportions feel absolutely correct and whose sizing does not mean a ridiculously high rise at the back.

This wasn’t the only surprise at the exchange, though I had to gamble with leaving the next item there for a few weeks and keep my fingers crossed that it wouldn’t be sold. Vying for my affections was a Favourbrook velvet smoking jacket. Again, it was surprising to find one at all, let alone one in my size (it’s actually a little oversized but perfect for lounging in and smoking), but the lack of vouchers and the £200 price tag (still cheap for a Favourbrook) meant I had to let my vouchers build again over several trips. Luckily, it remained there for three weeks and I ended up getting it for £20 plus £180 of vouchers. I can now truly live my Bertie Wooster dreams of homely extravagance while smoking, as any ridiculous Young Fogey desires.

The other surprise at the exchange was in the shirt section. The shop is split between its ground and basement floors. The main area of the shop has a range of high-end shirts while the basement, supposedly, has more general stock. It was in the latter where I found the next gem. A quick flick through the rack revealed a surprising amount of Turnbull & Asser and Budd shirts, all for around £20-25. However, I was drawn to something not yet seen in the wilds of London vintage shops: something by Godfather of the Row, Henry Poole.

This bespoke shirt by Poole (tellingly made for a private equity director in 2018 according to the label and a quick Google search) was arguably the find of the quarter (£30, or £0 with my vouchers). Not only was it a good fit for me (second-hand bespoke in general is often made for rotund men to be frank, so this was a surprise), it was also in perfect condition. I have seen the worst of basic Ralph Lauren Polo shirts marked up for much more in charity shops so this felt like a surreal find.

Talking of shirts, I also fell for this lovely Hilditch & Key example (£14, online).

Out of the four big Jermyn shirt-makers (Hilditch & Key, Harvie & Hudson, Turnbull & Asser, Budd), Hilditch seems to be the one whose value doesn’t hold in the second-hand market, so their highest quality shirts can often be bought for less than the general high street brand. I love the double French cuffs of their traditional fare, while I was especially drawn to the unusual colouring of this one. To quote my partner, it allows me the privilege of resembling a tube of toothpaste. For me, it closer resembles some of those lovely striped numbers Peter Bowles wore in 1980s series like To the Manor Born and Lytton’s Diary.

While working in a café on Jermyn Street one day, I popped into Floris in order to find a new scent. I’d recently tired of my loyalty to Dior Homme, and its ever creeping price. Instead, I opted to try Floris’ No. 89, which I was sold on largely by the fact that it was Ian Fleming’s desired fragrance (what’s good enough for Bond is good enough for me). The reason for bringing up Floris is because another scent of theirs sent me scurrying to a shop further down the road.

A few years back, Floris made a limited edition collaboration with the aforementioned Turnbull & Asser called No. 71/72 (which is also lovely). Like No. 89, the number references their respective address on Jermyn Street. However, after deciding on No. 89, I thought I would finally visit the famous shirt-makers down the road at 71/72 anyway, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Turnbull & Asser have an almost unique history of patronage. It has links once again with Bond (who they have made several custom shirts for over years, the models of which can still be bought), shirts and ties for Winston Churchill, and many, many others. The shop is beautiful, rather like a museum or a private club created by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Though I can’t afford the prices of their garments new, I could afford their beautiful 130^th anniversary book by James Sherwood. Bought under the excuse of being good for research for these columns (honest), the purchase allowed me to open an account with said shop which felt a wonderful, if naive, moment on my part. Another reason for bringing it up, however, is the price of the book. The volume retails online for ridiculous sums of money but, enjoy the pleasure of their shop, and you can pick it up there brand new for £45.

While in the shop, I couldn’t help myself in recreating the famous shot of Sean Connery being measured for his Dr. No shirts by equally important shirt-maker Michael Fish (not the weatherman), as well as taking a snap of the famed siren suit of Churchill’s that they keep in a cabinet (made of far more luxurious material than its gritty presence in historic photos and footage does justice to). Anyone who knows my film location work for the British Film Institute will be unsurprised by these snaps.

And, finally, on the subject of Turnbull & Asser, I found several bits and pieces of theirs online. Sticking with Bond, I found their beautiful Dr. No-themed pocket square (£40) on Vinted (reduced due to a tiny blemish that I’ve still yet to find) and another of their ties from Ebay (£4).

The reason for wanting this the tie in particular was chiefly because it was older and wider. This is entirely appropriate because of Fish’s presence in the earlier photo with Connery. Fish eventually founded Mr. Fish and became synonymous with (you guessed it) the “kipper” tie. Not only does this feel more apt for a Turnbull & Asser tie, the fact that this one cost approximately £176 less than a newer, thinner one was also arguably a deciding factor. Being a thicker tie, it would likely suit a nice Windsor knot, even if, as Fleming wrote in From Russia With Love, “Bond mistrusted anyone who tied his tie with a Windsor knot. It showed too much vanity. It was often the mark of a cad.”

I am clearly doomed to caddish vanity it would seem.

While much has been written about Watts’ extensive relationship with tailoring, and Savile Row in particular, one story in recent years about the man caught my eye. This was not least due to the strange disparities in how it was reported by the press. In simple terms, not long after Watts’ death in 2021, a friend suggested to journalists that the drummer bought several suits worn by King Edward VIII, eventual Duke of Windsor, at an auction some years previous. The story blew up, not simply because of the pleasing continuity of style between the two men, but because several photos of Watts at various events and promotions purported to be of him actually wearing the historic suits. On closer inspection of the reporting of the story, however, some things deserve further, more detailed scrutiny.

The Press Story

In September 2021, the story made the pages of both The Times and The Daily Mail. The story itself was a scoop for the Mail On Sunday in which “friends of the drummer” suggested that Watts bought the suits at a sale of the Duke of Windsor and Mrs Simpson’s items at “Sotheby’s in Paris.” According to the source, a friend “tried the jackets on with him but they didn’t fit, so Charlie bought them.” Later, once the source’s story had been shared, a spokesperson for Watts’ estate confirmed it, though their quote was far from detailed. They simply said that Watts “loved a well-made suit” and that his inspiration “was classic suits from Savile Row, the same for anyone growing up in the 40s – both kings and modernists from Wembley!”

The quote confirmed that the abdicated king and the drummer shared a love of Savile Row suits generally rather than actually wearing and enjoying the same suits. But this appears not to be the proof that the articles relied on. Instead, a series of photos comparing two very particular suits was used as evidence that Watts definitely bought suits that were Edward’s. Here are the two comparison photos. One shows a pink, single-breasted needlecord affair while the other shows a double-breasted slate blue Prince of Wales check (more a glen check to my eye without the colour detailing of the photo).

I’ll break down the differences between these suits later on, but, suffice to say, anyone with a pair of eyes can see that the suits worn are not the same. However, this was far from the first inkling that the story was more complicated than relayed by the papers.

The Auction

Watts apparently bought the two suits, and possibly others, at an auction at Sotheby’s. The source suggested that the auction took place at “Sotheby’s in Paris”. However, this is a mishmash of facts. The series of auctions, Sale 7000 as listed in Sotheby’s auction history, actually took place in New York. The reason for the Paris connection is that the items in the sale came from the final Parisian residence of Edward and Mrs Simpson. The auction itself was not held in Paris.

After tracking down and purchasing the huge three tome catalogue of the auction, and reading it extensively, several interesting things came to light. The main aspect to discuss is the detailed account of the items for sale and which of them, if any, could potentially match up with those worn by Watts. But another thing to keep in mind is the actual date of the sale. The Duke’s clothing sale - for it had its own day - was the 18^th of September, 1997 (at 2PM) as part of numerous days of sales from the “Private” collection of Edward and Wallis. Bear this date in mind.

Pink

The main coop of the Watts/Windsor story is a pink suit supposedly identified as worn by both men. The photos earlier were not the only ones taken of Watts wearing the apparent royal suit. The story suggested that he wore this suit of Edward’s for the 2002 launch of a Rolling Stones’ tour. Several photos from the event are available beyond the ones published in the story. Various shots show him wearing the suit as he mills about with the band and the press. Here are a few more.

Edward, on the other hand, is represented by a photo taken at the couple’s villa in Biarritz in 1951. It is, also not the only photo taken on this shoot (credited as being for Photopopper). There are several showing off the suit worn, or, more accurately, the two separates, which is the point to raise.

Edward’s is not a matching suit. The trousers are a much deeper hue of pink, while the jacket/coat is lighter. Looking through the auction catalogue, the darker trousers in the photo were up for auction, as part of a lot which collected a wealth of trousers together. While Watts may have purchased the lot, he is certainly not wearing them in his 2002 photo-call. Spot the pink ones in this photo from the auction catalogue.

The oddities do not end there.

Watts’ suit in the Stones press conference has several overt differences beyond the fact of it being a full matching suit and not separates. The first obvious detail is that Watts’ jacket has peaked lapels while Edward’s are distinctly notched. There is just no way that the jackets pictured are the same. Watts’ jacket also has distinctive gauntlet cuffs. The fabric is folded back into a gauntlet shape on Watts’ sleeves, whereas no photo of Edward’s shows this detail. Combined with the different lapels and the obviously different trousers worn by Edward, and the conclusion is clear. The pictured attire is not the same.

What, then, of the possibility that Watts’ suit was one that the Duke owned but not the one pictured in Biarritz? Well, there is another problem with this idea. Here is a series of photos of Watts wearing the suit taken by the legendary Terry O’Neill. Again, note the detail of the gauntlet cuffs and the peak lapels.

The first thing to discuss is the auction catalogue and what there is within it that could potentially fit the description of this suit. Well, there is very little. One lot is of an “H. Harris lightweight fawn needlecord summer suit, American, 1950. Single-breasted jacket, lightly padded at the shoulders, fastened with brass Quorn Hunt buttons, with three patch pockets; matching trousers with cuffs…”. Is this really an accurate description of the suit also worn by Watts? Perhaps this description is what the press used to confirm their story but it doesn’t hold up. While fawn could, in some shades, tip into pink (especially in the older grain of analogue colour photography), the buttons on Charlie’s are certainly not Quorn Hunt buttons (buttons associated with the famous fox hunt dating back to 1696). The three patch pockets certainly fit, but there is little else. For reference, one of the main shop’s to specialise in Quorn Hunt buttons today is Turnbull & Asser. I popped to their shop on Jermyn Street to photograph one of their jackets and to show how overt the buttons are.

However, there’s a second, more importyant sticking point about Watts’ pink suit: he evidently owned it before the auction of Edward’s clothing. The shots of Watts taken by O’Neill are from a contact sheet taken in 1995; two years before the auction. This is definitely the same suit worn in the 2002 promo photos, and so there is no way this can be any item sold in the Sotheby’s auction.

So, what is this suit? Watts worked with several tailors in the period when he was photographed pretty in pink. The main candidate is undoubtedly expert tailor Terry Haste of Kent & Haste (formally Kent, Haste and Lachter). There are several indications as to why this is. Firstly, Watts was working with Haste extensively during the period. In this interview with Haste, he suggests that when he was “at Huntsman, Charlie Watts followed me there because he was with me at Hackett, too, and he used to like going down to W. Bill and looking through the archives.” For reference, W. Bill was where many bolts of fabric were stored on Burlington Street and later Bond Street (though their first shop was opened in Mold, North Wales). Either way, Watts was working with Haste at the time O’Neill took the photos. Now, take a look at this suit worn by journalist (and best dressed man in the world currently) Nick Foulkes.

Foulkes’ suit shares a number of similarities with Watts’. The material is close to identical. The lapels may be different, and Foulkes has his in a three-piece, but it essentially also has those distinctive gauntlet cuffs. Most essentially, it is a Terry Haste creation from the same period.

Interestingly, Foulkes discussed this suit with Tom Chamberlin (the second best-dressed man in the world) in an issue of The Rake in which there were also several close-up shots showing the similarities to Watts’ suit (though the lighting dims the pink). “Proof positive of the false economy of buying cheap clothing, this pink corduroy three-piece suit by Terry Haste was made in 1998, when Terry was head cutter at Hackett…” wrote Chamberlin. While this is may be a slight mix-up of dates and houses, Watts and Foulkes certainly had their suits made relatively close to each other; they share a number of details (not least, the actual tailor), and it all fits in regards to Watts’ tastes on Savile Row.

The final piece in the puzzle involved actually asking Haste himself, so I contacted him about his work with Watts. “I was making suits for him when I was at Huntsman. The pink one I made [for Watts] when I was there,” he told me after seeing photos of both suits. So, the pink cord suit that Watts is wearing in the photo is indeed a Terry Haste creation from the 1990s, for the wonderful Huntsman no less (appropriate considering only last year the house ran an exhibition of several of their creations made for Watts in honour of his passing and patronage).

One suit solved. The Prince of Wales check, however, is more complicated.

Prince of Wales

The second suit attributed as being bought by Watts at the Sotheby’s auction is a double-breasted, wide-lapelled slate blue piece. Unlike the pink suit, this one was worn for an indoor photo-shoot rather than a Stones press call. Firstly, let us explore the detail from the Sotheby’s catalogue that may have alerted the press as to this being a suit of Edward’s. One lot in particular stands out from the catalogue as a good match for it (though the catalogue has no photos of it):

A slate blue double-breasted Prince of Wales check lounge suit, 1956-57 comprising of a jacket of medium-weight worsted with darker blue checking, of straight cut with very wide lapels, the shoulders substantially padded for shape, black buttons, vents inset to the side seam, by Scholte, London.

If the press and their sources are to be believed, this is the likely suit; a piece made by era-defining tailor Frederick Scholte, whose work with Edward brought in the very styling of drape itself after the Duke’s insistence on a more comfortable kind of tailoring. Some interesting aspects to note from the actual suit of Edward’s: the jacket was finished by Scholte on the 16/11/1956 while the trousers were actually by Harris, boasted an “American-style waistband” and made a few months later with their finishing on 03/03/1957. Either way, this is the lot that, if any of the press researchers did their homework, likely connected up with the photos of Watts.

But let us look further into the photos of Watts in this beautiful piece of tailoring. After some research, it turns out that the photo is one of a number taken by photographer Jack English. The series was taken for the press packet and cover photos for Watts’ solo jazz quintet album, Long Ago & Far Away. Here are a few more of the photos that show various different details of the suit, including one lifted from the press pack itself.

As with the pink suit, the same problem of timeline arises: these photos were taken between 1995 and 1996 for the album’s release in the latter year. This is at least a year before said auction, so the suit worn in the photos cannot, in spite of the likeness to the earlier catalogue description, be the one that Watts wore. Again, the question arises: what is it?

This is a slightly murkier area to the pink one, perhaps because the pink suit was so distinctive. My guess is that the suit is again a Huntsman creation, likely once more with the hand of Terry Haste involved. For reference, compare the cut from the earlier photos to this one of Watts definitely wearing a Huntsman double-breasted creation. Though the material is slightly different, the likenesses are undeniable.

I asked Haste what he thought of this suit as well, but asking a tailor if he remembers making a suit in Prince of Wales check thirty years ago is a bit like asking a chef if he remembers cooking a particular meal thirty years ago. “The check one I have no idea,” Haste admitted. “The only way to tell would be to look on the right inside pocket as there should be a ticket there, but I wouldn’t be able to tell without seeing it.” Either way, the likelihood is that this is not a Scholte creation for Edward, but very much a more modern creation for Watts.

A final question then in regards to this story: did Watts actually buy any suits at the Sotheby’s auction? In spite of the shoddy reporting in the newspapers, I absolutely believe that he did. Many different suits in the catalogue have exactly the proportions that were to Watts’ tastes, and with endless stories of his passion for tailoring extending to even its most obsessive minutiae (especially the quality of material), these classic pieces would have likely appealed to him. Haste himself confirmed this. “Charlie brought some of the clothing up in the auction,” he concludes. “Edward VIII would have been the same size.”

So there we have it. Watts did indeed indulge in some royal attire. His own wardrobe was likely already fit for a king, even before his bidding at Sotheby’s on that late summer’s day in New York. But the details of what exactly he bought that day will, for the time being, remain a mystery. For such a quiet and enigmatic figure, however, this is absolutely appropriate and true to the character of this most gentlemanly of musicians.