Savile Row a British institution, Queens, Kings and tailors expressed their creative freedom in a country rich from the rewards reaped from British colonisation. Surviving countless fashion cycles, consistent styling its saviour and today very much alive. Through the ages a wealth of creators have established styles that have stood the test of time and continue to influence designers, the first school tie, the trench coat, dark blue suit and tuxedo all created centuries ago. If you delight in lashings of toast and marmalade for tea, then you'll delight in the lashings of silk and woollen garments found on Savile Row, heaven sent, just a brief handle will satisfy your senses and you'll trod a well worn path for years to come. The rest is history, here is a textural glimpse.
1789The French Revolution heralds the death of decadent 18th century aristocratic court dress. The Bastille is stormed on the 14th of July and King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette are removed from their palace of Versailles and imprisoned in Paris pending their death by guillotine in 1793. The fall of the ancient regime ends France's cultural dominance of European male elegance. The birth of British bespoke tailoring as we know it today is inspired by ‘honest’ English country gentlemen's riding attire. It is this severe aesthetic that George ‘Beau’ Brummell espouses a decade later and introduces to the Prince Regent's court at Carlton House.
1821: Joseph Ede, who would eventually give his name to Ede & Ravenscroft, assists guv'nor William Webb as Royal robe maker when Prinny is finally crowned King George IV in particularly overwrought pomp and circumstance after enduring years of Regency deputising for his ‘mad’ father King George III. Walter Grant Norton opens his tailor's shop on the Strand. Norton & Sons would relocate to Lombard Street in the City and carve a niche for itself as the definitive City tailor before finally relocating to the Row where Norton & Sons remains today.
1846:James Poole's son Henry inherits the firm from his late father and earns his title of ‘Founder of Savile Row’ when he makes the Savile Row-side workshops of his father's tailoring shop at No 4 Old Burlington Street into a grand, Palladian entrance to a bespoke tailoring Pantheon called Henry Poole & Company at No 32 Savile Row.
1849:Henry Huntsman establishes his tailoring firm H. Huntsman & Sons specialising in riding breeches and sporting clothes. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert become customers as do the vast spider's web of European Royal houses connected to the Royal couple. Five of Queen Victoria's granddaughters subsequently become Queens of Spain, Romania, Greece, Norway and Empress of Russia.
1850:James Lock & Co invents a Savile Row icon: the Bowler Hat. The Bowler was commissioned by William Coke (a relative of the current Earl of Leicester) to be worn by his gamekeepers as protection against falling pheasants and poachers’ sticks. The Bowler is still called a Coke at Lock.
1852:James Gieve acquires a partnership with Joseph Galt (established in 1823 and
Incorporating Meredith); christening the firm Galt & Gieves. His equally ambitious sister Elizabeth independently holds Queen Victoria's Royal Warrant as Dressmaker and Milliner (an honour she holds until her retirement in 1889 a year after James's death).
1858:Henry Poole earns the first of his Royal Warrants from the newly crowned Emperor Napoleon III of France to whom Poole and Baron de Rothschild advanced £10,000 to stage a coup in France to establish The Second Empire. At the accession of Emperor Napoleon and his Empress Josephine, Henry Poole erects an audacious gas illuminated eagle-and-coronet light show above the facade of No 36: a tradition he repeats on all great Royal occasions connected to customers of Henry Poole.
Today Savile Row is in the hands of progressive thinking tailors like Timothy Everest and Richard James, its future secure, nothing is lost, a British institution.
