Tailoring for Women

MacCulloch & Wallis is one of the last remaining trimming merchants in the UK.   I have been taking the advice of their proprietor, Victoria Connolly, for the past 17 years but strange as it may seem, until now I have not had the opportunity to look closer at their business, and fascinating it is too!

Their property in Dering Street, Mayfair, looks much the same as it would have done in the days when a tailor, seated and cross-legged, would have occupied prime place in the shop window.  The size of their premises are deceptive (three ‘coal holes’ were converted into offices) and hold an enormous inventory of trimmings, threads, haberdashery, fabrics, equipment, milllinery and bridal fabrics. Much of this has been assembled over time and as other haberdashers have closed M&W has absorbed their stock.  They also have a substantial on-line presence.  Often they get access to the cloth left over from some of the high fashion collections and it is incredible to see some of these fabrics away from the catwalk.

They have an equally wide customer base supplying local alteration tailors, independent dressmakers, designers,  and a number of specialist makers who work for film and theatre.  Their staff are generally drawn from the fashion colleges as they reach the end of their degrees, and in many ways working in this environment acts as a ‘finishing school’, supplementing academic studies with practical experience.  Often you will find they balances a part time job with M&W as whilst making the transition to independent designer.

They aspire to be a ‘one-stop’ shop and certainly have never failed me.  They have the air of an old-fashioned shop keeper and in fact the interior is recognised as being of ‘historical interest’, the consequence being that there is a protection order on all internal fittings and architecture.  Well worth a visit, and as you search for your purchases take a little time to appreciate its sense of ‘old world’ charm.

It was a complete delight to go to the Cadogan Hall last week to attend a concert by Mary Carewe once again.  I know I have written about her before, but this was something of a special occasion. The concert consisted of a mixture of cabaret songs drawn from the age when Berlin was the focus of all that was risqué and decadent.  Cutting satirical songs from Kurt Weill to the more exotic and challenging Pierrot Lunaire by Arnold Schoenberg made for a heady mix.

Not only was Mary on stage but the concert was conducted by her father John Carewe,  Sir Simon Rattle’s original mentor, and in the Berlin Kabarett Ensemble was her sister on the cello.  Simon’s son Sasha was playing the clarinet, and throughout the evening three of my own family appeared.  Three concert gowns made over a period of 15 years; a silver beaded gown for Pierrot Lunaire, a black beaded tailcoat for the Berlin songs, and a multi-coloured beaded\netting combination to add a little more spice.  It was certainly the night for beads!

Mary makes her Carnegie Hall debut with Carl Davis next year so with a bit of luck I will be able to synchronise  my next US sales trip with the performance.

Photo: thanks to www.sanctuaryclassics.com

Just a brief post to let you know about an article we wrote for one of the specialist Human Resource (HR) websites; Changeboard.  It is devoted to how our appearance can influence the perceptions of others and came via one of our Canary Wharf clients.  It also started the thought that perhaps we should  contribute a little more to the debate around this subject.  So…..from the end of November we will be starting a series of posts about the ways in which we can all maximise our personal impact in the way we present ourselves.

The Duchess of Windsor said “when it is right there is nothing to replace it”, American Vogue dubbed it the “Ford” because it was as ubiquitous as the automotive, and Coco Chanel confessed, ” a little black dress is difficult”.  It is hard to believe that this perennial which became such a feature for Audrey Hepburn is over 80 years old. In the Daily Express today it made an appearance again, prompted by the new Bond film, Quantum of Solace.

In this instance it appears to be invested with a durability not normally associated with haute couture as it appears to be the garment of choice for the actress Olga Kurylenko as she plummets to earth on a parachute in the company of Daniel Craig.  Aren’t modern fabrics wonderful!

In the same spirit that Pascal said “I am sorry for writing a long letter I didn’t have time to make it shorter”, in its brevity the LBD requires an equal degree of finesse in creating its subtlety of curves and figure-hugging simplicity.  Much of its personality is created in the cutting process which has to be exact. Silhouette, neckline,  and hemline all interact and have to be in balance. It really is garment design in its purest form with no fuss or frills and  little room for error and carries the same degree of risk as the ’shodo’ calligraphers who get only one chance to make their mark on the paper.

I made the dress above for Ute Lemper when she starred in the opening of Chicago in 1998, and it still looks as fresh and alluring as it did when it first went on stage.  It also had a sense of theatre as you can see from the shoulder strap.

So when thinking of reviving your wardrobe remember the words of Christian Dior.  “You can wear black at any hour of day or night, at any age and for any occasion.  A little black dress is the most essentail thing in any woman’s wardrobe”

What an unexpected, and intriguing pleasure it was to meet with Grayson Perry the other night at the opening of the exhibition of works by the artist Kishio Suga.  Suga-san is one of the leading artists of the Mono-ha School (The School of Things); a movement that swept the Japanese art worldfrom the end of the 1960s through the 1970s.  The exhibition was held at the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation in Regents Park and was timed to complement  the Frieze Art Fair.

Grayson is an admirer of  Suga-san’s work and after the initail presentation we had time to chat.  I have long wanted to talk to Grayson, not only about his work as an artist, but more irresistibly, about his passion for cross-dressing and the role he plays in the design and making of his striking garments.  Luckily there was a photographer close by and we were able to capture the moment before he was whisked away.

We talked in particular about the Art of Savile Row and I mentioned its eponymous BBC TV programme when he was featured commissioning a suit from Richard James.   I remember a fascinating bit of perceptions at play between the customer and his tailor which had to be worked through. A kind of ‘Victor/Victoria moment’ came to mind!.

The designer/maker issue came up and how rare it is for there to be a shared understanding of the actual making side. I told him a story about working with a certain feisty French designer who handed me a set of cartoons – over exaggerated, with proportinally distorted figures in ‘anti-gravity’ poses.  To prove a point, our team of makers decided to build one of his Safari jackets to scale and the result was something of a hibrid, somewhere between  Dan Leno and the corps de ballet.

Very pleasant indeed to have such an exchange over a glass of wine…By the way…he has sensational legs………..!

Photos: thanks to www.peopleplayuk.org.uk and www.commonwealthballet.org

I have on my desk a composite reminder from my first days in London almost twenty years ago; a photograph, business card and sketch of an evening tail suit. They came from my first meeting with Harry Helman, the gold medal winner some would call the Godfather of Savile Row.

He was responsible for the training of many of the top craftsmen you find in the trade today and this meeting was arranged by one of his protégées, Malcolm Plews (Welsh & Jefferies).

On our first meeting he asked me what project was foremost in my mind….I said how to make a top notch set of evening tails, and he jumped into action with a piece of paper to start to lay out the basic elements of this complex item.

He had time for anyone who had a passion for the trade and dispensed wisdom, humour and Guinness in equal measure from a chair which carried his name next to the bar in the corner of the Windmill pub. With his brother Burt, Harry ran a business from Bruton Street, Mayfair, with Harry looking after the men’s side of the business and Burt the ladies. When he passed away in 1990 he had been working in the trade for more than 60 years. To Harry, everyone was a ‘good boy’……..even the girls!

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With the current financial turmoil that surrounds us it seems appropriate to talk about price of goods, but on this occasion I intend to do it from the ‘makers’ standpoint.  The reason is that I have been more than slightly surprised recently by some of the prices claimed for ‘high quality, custom, hand made’ suits.

Here in the City  you are either accosted en-route across London Bridge during the morning rush hour by ‘banker look-alikes’ handing out vouchers for commodity-priced bespoke items,  or by low price deals for hand-made suits in the evening papers.  I find this intriguing.  Now that the true definition of the term bespoke has become clouded by a recent Advertising Standards Authority ruling, perhaps there is a lingering hope for clarity in the term ‘hand-made’.  It seems like a good premise until you start to look at the price breakdown.

Let’s take for example an offer for a ‘custom hand-made’ suit I saw the other day.  £179 was the asking price.  leaving to one side the acutal ‘fit’ of the garment let’s look at the maths.

First get rid of the VAT; about £15 in round figures.  That leaves us with £164.

Some time ago I paid a fortune for some brightly coloured Holland and Sherry tartan cloth and made myself a hacking jacket. I loved it to bits and all was fine until I was attacked by a barbed wire fence when out on one of my client’s shoots. One of those awful triangular tears was the result, in full view half-way up the sleeve.

The cloth was discontinued and the only way to put this right was to try to cover it with a patch or call in the ‘emergency services’.

Invisible mending is a highly-skilled, time-consuming service that patches, re-weaves and disguises what would seem to be irreparable damage to cloth. This can include cigarette burns, tears, moth holes, cuts, and perhaps the most catastrophic of all accidents, the slip of a scissor-hand on a finished garment. Every job has to be treated individually, and even seemingly impossible tasks can have miraculous results. The precise method, perfected over generations, involves taking threads from concealed parts of a garment, a ‘hem’ or ‘cuff’ say, and reweaving them over tears. One of the benefits of a bespoke garment is that they have generous inlays from where the replacement threads can be retrieved. Incidentally, there is a similar procedure for leather which involves a clever gluing technique to return the skin to its former glory.

There are two places I know of where one can get this service. One is based in the Midlands but is a closely guarded secret of the trade. The other caters more for non-trade customers and is based in Thayer Street, Marylebone, London. The British Invisible Mending Service is a family concern and has been established in Marylebone for over 70 years and although I have not had occasion to use their services it is well worth taking a tour of their website which has all manner of useful information about the process of taking your garment into ‘intensive care’.

A repair can take a number of days and comes at a premium because of the special skills required, but to this day I marvel that I can’t find the tear in my coat.

Photo: Thanks to Tendring District Council

This recent edition of Monocle (note the tailor on the cover!) contained news that might raise the spirits of craftspeople all over.  Its feature “Craft makes a comeback \Welcome Home” highlights a recent trend for manufacturers to bring their production units back to their home roots and values.  We have seen this happening with other outsourced services too such as call centres.  The reasons cited in this case were twofold; the difficulty in  monitoring and maintaining quality, and soaring logistical costs.

Good news perhaps for all the highly trained craftspeople ‘back home’, and in particular for those in Savile Row which has been hit over the years by a popular misconception that price was the sole determining factor in purchasing a suit.  Depite this homeward bound trend however, there seems still to be have been a recent burst of activity from internet-based suit makers with their own version of bespoke garments manufactured on the other side of the world … it would seem that now even the term bespoke has to be redefined according to the Advertising Standards Authority .

From my daily meanderings through the Square Mile I must admit to having some reservations about the final outcome of these cyber suits.  ‘Distance learning’ is one thing, ‘distance fitting’ quite another.

In this inspiring  article in Monocle, I was particularly taken by the comments made by Martin Frechen, MD of Steiff Teddy Bears (yes…teddy bears!), whose manufacturing base transfers from China back to Germany in 2009.  Clearly passionate about his product he says,

“It has to say take me in your arms, hug me, I’m  here for you, I’m your best friend.  It’s that lifelikeness and friendliness that gives the animals soul, that sets it apart from everybody else on the market.  This can only be achieved with talented and skilful craftsmen.”   This may sound a bit hokey, but I think it is much the same experience a client wants from a hand crafted suit.”

Unfortunately, for copyright reasons I can’t show a copy of the complete article, but it might be worth getting a copy whilst stocks last.

Image:  Thanks to Monocle.  www.monocle.com