GOLLY, DON’T THEY LOOK NICE
Fashion sibyl Diana Vreeland, who only occasionally cast her eyes in the direction of menswear, noted that ‘Uniforms are the sportswear of the 19th century.’
A tailor’s tools
The quotable editrix summed up a menswear paradox: on the one hand it demanded the impeccable tailoring of military dress, required an immediate visual identification of affiliation and hierarchy with immaculate finish, while on the other the incorporation of hidden defensive protective details and the accommodation of potentially violent movement.
Detail of mess jacket commissioned by The Royal Hampshires from Gieves & Hawkes in 1988 for the Princess of Wales, Honorary Colonel
The military uniform epitomised extreme function transfigured into exquisite tailored form.
Bespoke three-piece wool suit
Gieves & Hawkes, with its history as the outfitters of the British Army and the Royal Navy, has in its DNA the technical finesse for apparel that moved between battlefield and ballroom. While the elegant structural refinements of uniform styles are still available, the tailor’s virtuosity is now more commonly sublimated into the easy elegance of suits and jackets seen in boardrooms.
A bespoke suit from the Row, for all the apparent conventions of its aesthetic vocabulary and the delimiting constraints of menswear traditions sustained since the mid-19th century, is essentially a highly individualised effort in its technical details.
Left: early 20th-century bearskins. Right: Bespoke double-breasted suit and greatcoat from 1 Savile Row
The great Savile Row tailor adjusts not simply to fit, but for an amelioration of every client’s physical idiosyncrasies to a more desirable line.
Tailcoat with military-inspired details made for Michael Jackson by Gieves & Hawkes and worn during his Bad tour of 1987-89
The Platonic ideal of sartorial ‘naturalness’ achieved by adjusting for every eccentricity of posture and physique results in a garment that balances a cleaving to tradition and authority with a pronounced contemporary relevance and a supremely personal focus.
Late 19th-century hussars tunic.
At 1 Savile Row, the tailor’s thread spools back to the days of the Duke of Wellington and Admiral Lord Nelson. It is a heritage in which the image of valour and heroism is enhanced through the subtle manipulations of cloth and cut, and whose principles and standards today suborn centuries of tailoring knowledge and technical virtuosity into forms of perfectly integrated function.
One Savile Row: Gieves & Hawkes – The Invention Of The English Gentleman, with foreword by Harold Koda, Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, is published by Flammarion, priced £60.
A tailor’s toolsThe quotable editrix summed up a menswear paradox: on the one hand it demanded the impeccable tailoring of military dress, required an immediate visual identification of affiliation and hierarchy with immaculate finish, while on the other the incorporation of hidden defensive protective details and the accommodation of potentially violent movement.
Detail of mess jacket commissioned by The Royal Hampshires from Gieves & Hawkes in 1988 for the Princess of Wales, Honorary ColonelThe military uniform epitomised extreme function transfigured into exquisite tailored form.
Bespoke three-piece wool suitGieves & Hawkes, with its history as the outfitters of the British Army and the Royal Navy, has in its DNA the technical finesse for apparel that moved between battlefield and ballroom. While the elegant structural refinements of uniform styles are still available, the tailor’s virtuosity is now more commonly sublimated into the easy elegance of suits and jackets seen in boardrooms.
A bespoke suit from the Row, for all the apparent conventions of its aesthetic vocabulary and the delimiting constraints of menswear traditions sustained since the mid-19th century, is essentially a highly individualised effort in its technical details.
Left: early 20th-century bearskins. Right: Bespoke double-breasted suit and greatcoat from 1 Savile RowThe great Savile Row tailor adjusts not simply to fit, but for an amelioration of every client’s physical idiosyncrasies to a more desirable line.
Tailcoat with military-inspired details made for Michael Jackson by Gieves & Hawkes and worn during his Bad tour of 1987-89The Platonic ideal of sartorial ‘naturalness’ achieved by adjusting for every eccentricity of posture and physique results in a garment that balances a cleaving to tradition and authority with a pronounced contemporary relevance and a supremely personal focus.
Late 19th-century hussars tunic.At 1 Savile Row, the tailor’s thread spools back to the days of the Duke of Wellington and Admiral Lord Nelson. It is a heritage in which the image of valour and heroism is enhanced through the subtle manipulations of cloth and cut, and whose principles and standards today suborn centuries of tailoring knowledge and technical virtuosity into forms of perfectly integrated function.
One Savile Row: Gieves & Hawkes – The Invention Of The English Gentleman, with foreword by Harold Koda, Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, is published by Flammarion, priced £60.