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The story of London is the story of
a tension between tradition and modernity.
It's also the story of London's greatest tailoring street,
Savile Row.
I'm in Gieves and Hawkes at Number One Savile Row,
and that's what this episode of Put This On is about.
I'm Jesse Thorn. We'll also visit some of the people and
places that make London such a great men's style city.
Keep it locked.
♪ ♪
Well, my name is Ray Hammet, and I manage W. Bill
in Sackville Street in London.
We're tweed specialists.
We sell high-quality clothes all over the world.
Scottish tweeds, Donegal tweeds, cashmeres,
Shetlands, Harris tweeds, lambs' wools, Cheviot tweeds.
We are tweeds.
I can remember going down Fifth Avenue
and seeing people wear W. Bill clothes, you know.
And you feel you want to go up and hug them, and say,
"That's one of our clothes you're wearing there."
And it's a thrill to me.
We've been dealing with a lot of the mills that we use
a long, long time -- their fathers and grandfathers.
I was in the company when I was 17 and a half,
and I was reading the other day that I'm an "octogenarian."
Whatever that might be. [laughs]
And I enjoy it. It's my life. I like selling good things, and...
Our stuff is good.
(Jesse) While we were in London,
we stopped by the Drake's of London tie factory,
to see what goes into making a necktie.
We got a tour around the factory floor from Chris Tanner,
Drake's production director.
The first step was to pick a fabric.
Since this tie was a thank you gift
to one of our Kickstarter donors,
and since we didn't know his gang affiliation,
we went with this elegant Churchill dot pattern.
The first step involves carefully measuring and marking
all the pieces of the tie.
Weights hold the patterns in place
as the cutter marks the silk,
and then each piece is cut,
including the front and back blades,
the keeper loop, and the tipping.
Next, the tipping is carefully machined
to the front and back blades,
forming the points at the ends of each.
A high degree of precision is necessary
to make sure the seams are straight
and the angles are perfect.
The seamstress connects all three pieces of the tie,
and the keeper loop is machined.
Before moving on, the whole tie is pressed
to ensure that the ends are square.
And then it's subjected to quality control,
the first of three inspections in Drake's process.
Next, a wool and cotton interlining is inserted,
and the tie is expertly folded around it,
and then held in place with what's called a "slip thread."
One slip thread holds the tie together
across its entire length,
closing the back and affixing the envelope to the interlining.
The "self loop", or "keeper,"
is affixed with the slip thread as well.
At the end, the slip thread is tied into a loop.
The stretch loop can be used to bring shape back to a tie
as the fabric stretches out after years of wear.
Once that slip thread's done,
a second quality control phase
ensures that the slipping is perfect,
and then it's on to the loop and labels station,
where the keeper loop is sewn back and final tags are added.
Now, fully-assembled, the tie is subjected to
a very light closed pressing of the tips
to fix the shape while preserving
the three-dimensionality of the folds.
After a final quality control, the tie is ready for shipping.
My name is Ian Bruce, and I am an artist,
as well as being a singer in a band called The Correspondents.
I love Soho for the sort of cultural tradition of Soho.
There was a place on the end of this road called
The Colony Room,
which really had some amazing artists frequenting...
frequenting the place.
You know, people like Francis Bacon,
and Lucian Freud, and Michael Andrews,
who are all people who are a massive inspiration to me.
And there was... I know that I romanticize that era, massively.
I definitely see myself as aligning myself with
a British tradition of tailoring and that kind of thing.
But it's more than just aligning myself with that tradition,
it's aligning myself with a tradition of British artists
and that sort of...
When I do paint, I get into my work clothes.
You know, I wear, like, a pair of jeans
just completely caked in paint,
and like, so thick that you can snap it.
And I really enjoy at the end of a day,
kind of having a wash, getting dressed up,
and then going out.
My first art teacher had this amazing little anecdote
where he went to art college,
and he came back home after, you know,
months of being in art college,
and he was just covered in paint.
And his dad was sitting there with the Financial Times,
and he just lowered the Financial Times,
took one look at him, and said,
"You don't see blood on a surgeon's clothes, do you?"
And then raised it up again. And I kind of, I like that.
You know, I don't really want to walk around going,
"I'm an artist. Oh, can you guess?"
(Jesse) We're in London on Savile Row to find out
what the city's most legendary tailoring street
is all about.
I am with Peter Berthoud, a City of Westminster Guide.
-Peter, welcome. -How are you?
Tell me, when did Savile Row become
what it is today: the center of tailoring in London?
This whole area actually has a very long history of tailoring,
going back to the 1600s.
There was a tailor who made an absolute fortune,
Robert Baker, in the early 1600s,
manufacturing "piccadills", or ruffs,
that gentlemen would wear around their necks.
And rather mockingly, this was referred to as,
"Piccadilly Hall."
And that gave rise, obviously, to Piccadilly Circus,
and to the street Piccadilly.
But it wasn't until really after the French Revolution,
when it wasn't necessarily wise to be walking around
in silks and looking a million dollars,
that a much more genteel,
understated British look developed.
Developed really from the country attire
of English gentlemen.
And that's really when Savile Row began to gather pace
-- mid-1800s --
'cause Henry Poole, seen as the founder of Savile Row,
opened a doorway into the street,
and Savile Row has never looked back since.
(Jesse) Richard, you started your career at Huntsman,
one of the oldest and most traditional
of the Savile Row tailoring houses.
(Richard) Indeed. Yeah, exactly.
Well, I started there in February of 1982.
and it was a very... Even though it was 1982,
it could well have been sort of 1952 or 1962.
When I joined, I was 17,
and I embarked on a very traditional apprenticeship.
I had, very, two very serious masters,
head cutters, who had really been themselves with Huntsman
since they were in their late teens as well.
And I think at 17, I certainly needed that discipline
that they instilled in me.
But what I loved about it was,
it was very apparent that you're working for the best, you know,
that these guys, they really cared for their clothes,
they loved their clients.
And the clothes were the star.
It was all about the service, the fit,
and at the end of the day, the suits being fantastic.
And I loved being part of that.
The clothing really developed
from the clothing that one would wear on a country estate,
so it was country fashion. Trousers, for example,
developing out of riding britches,
popularized by Beau Brummell in the early 1800s.
Many of those garments would have grown
out of military uniforms.
We're standing outside Gieves and Hawkes,
a famous military uniform manufacturer, um... tailor.
And we're just across the road from Ede and Ravenscroft,
the oldest family-run tailoring business on Earth, I believe.
Savile Row had always been
a place that pushed menswear forward, you know.
Up until the 1950s, Savile Row, and London,
and England was the sort of epicenter of all men's fashion.
And was constantly evolving
and constantly moving shapes and styles, and you know,
it evolved in equally as dynamic a way
as the men's fashion industry broadly does now,
outside of Savile Row.
And then, you know, as you say, you went through the kind of
very slim, sort of mod era, and then we went into
this fantastic kind of peacock era of, you know,
Blades and Granny Takes a Trip, and,
as you say, Nutter's, and, you know, Carnaby Street,
and this fantastic sort of expressive menswear period.
And then all of a sudden, you know,
it felt like England just retreated into its shell.
And it lost all its confidence in menswear,
and it's lost its confidence in
being able to tell the world how to move
and how to dress in a different way.
And I think the '90s was an interesting period,
as you say.
You mention my, you know, my dear neighbors,
Oswald and Richard.
I think what they did was bring some vibrancy to it,
but it was still within the constraints of a very...
you know, very... you know, very normal...
sort of never-changing, Savile Row thing.
You know, still a classic coat with a simple proportion.
But I think Savile Row needs to rediscover
its ability to refresh men's fashion.
And I think what we try to do with E. Tautz is
remind people that men's tailoring in London
has invented so many great shapes and styles,
and, you know,
the latest collection is all about a different silhouette.
And, you know, that's something that Savile Row
used to do all the time and do with great confidence.
And I think one or two in London are coming back to that idea.
Tell me a little bit about
your perspective on the tension between this tradition
that goes literally back to the 17th century
of tailoring on this street,
and the move towards Ready-to-wear.
I mean, just things are constantly changing.
I mean, you're right. I mean,
the Ready-to-wear market is excellent now.
I mean, some of the Ready-to-wears they do
the balance of the garments
and the fabrics they use are extremely good.
So we've got to be at the top of our game,
us tailors and cutters, and really gotta be excellent.
And where we can, where we score over them, is that, you know,
we're designing for the individual.
Well, that's what we do. That's what I do here.
I design for the individual.
What in my head was happening,
was that men were returning to products of genuine value.
So people were returning to handmade,
hand-crafted in all sorts of other areas of life.
And, you know, it just struck me that this was something
incredibly, you know, incredibly special.
And needed to be cherished, and preserved,
and worked on to, you know, restore it to health.
The idea of a Savile Row suit is that it will last a lifetime.
So you're buying a very expensive garment,
but it will last you for your whole life.
It will be repaired and altered as required.
♪ ♪
Sports sunglasses are great for sports,
either playing sports or watching sports.
Sports sunglasses are not really great for anything else, though.
Just putting it out there.
♪ ♪
You can find more good tips on our blog at putthison.com