Savile Row is the heart of bespoke or custom tailoring in Great Britain. It takes the material it receives, enriches it and circulates it back into the body of society.
A living body is not just flesh and blood but spirit and personality too. Craft tailoring is an intensely personal trade and...
Savile Row is the heart of bespoke or custom tailoring in Great Britain. It takes the material it receives, enriches it and circulates it back into the body of society.
A living body is not just flesh and blood but spirit and personality too. Craft tailoring is an intensely personal trade and this aspect is clearly brought out in this illuminating book by Richard Walker. Personality consists of three ingredients: hereditary, environment and personal response. It is the slightly differing nature of these aspects that produces individuals that are nevertheless closely bonded and are known as Savile Row tailors.
I was born to the trade and became a Master Tailor in the generic area of Savile Row. I find it remarkable that Richard Walker has in months grasped an in-depth understanding of the life of The Row which most of us took many years to acquire. He has embraced the rich variety of craftsmen with an accuracy of eye that would be the envy of most tailors.
The story starts with a tailor, Robert Baker, who founded Piccadilly, and weaves a rich tapestry of social life and the tailors' responses to its changes from the beginning of the seventeenth century. The social history is presented in a warm and interesting way that makes the reader feel they are actually observing the happenings at Court or smelling the odours of the streets and the sweatshops. It is inevitable that the book has to end and the author has to place parameters to his researching insight. Therefore this book can only show you the heart of the trade rather than the body as a whole.
Tailoring abounded throughout the country and it was from the country that many of the tailoring greats came. My own family business illustrates this, starting out of London and eventually leading the riding trade from the heart of The Row.
There are still good men and women crafting tailoring beyond The Row and it was amongst these large ranks that one hundred years ago they formed the Federation of Merchant Tailors that in 1988 celebrated its centenary. London joined the Federation ten years after its commencement and has gradually taken more of the lead in tailoring affairs. Throughout the years it has encouraged better working conditions and relationships. Its leaders negotiate the annual wage rounds and plan training with Government and its agencies. It also contributes largely to the development of technical education. The FMT, as it is known, is always there to fight for the trade when it is under threat, which it does now over legislation developments on property. This it does quietly on the whole, for it is the craftsman who must be seen and not his problems.
There could be no better time for Richard Walker to write The Savile Row Story than to mark one hundred years of these skilled craftsmen helping each other. Whatever or wherever the future of Savile Row is to be will depend on the collective strength of the tailors working through their Federation. They are like a flight of geese gaining uplift from each other and especially from their leaders.
Savile Row should be preserved not just for its historical richness so brilliantly displayed in this book but because of the other reasons so clearly seen in these pages. The clothes we wear undoubtedly reflect our attitude to life. The comparatively small population and the limited area of the British Isles does not matter overwhelmingly so long as there is quality in its people, quality in their standards and quality in all they produce. Did not John Ruskin remind us at the height of Britain's prosperity in the last century that 'there is hardly anything in the world that some men cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper and the people who consider price alone are that man's lawful prey'.
Those were the days when it could be truly said - British and Best! Then to buy cloth which was not home produced for to wear clothes which were not made in Britain would have been unthinkable. To appear to be British, to dress like an Englishman and to use English words was the world height of fashion in every civilized country.
Our history of freedom of expression is part of the rich inheritance that in turn is part of the personality of the Savile Row tailor. Who better to continue to lead the world in the correct portrayal of the ever changing world of man.
Foreword
Mr Speaker
Speaker's House Westminster London swia oaa
Speaker Bernard Weatherill in the Court dress gifted by Savile Row. He carries a thimble in a waistcoat pocket, a present from his mother, to remind him to stay humble.
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