An unusual sight greeted visitors to London’s Savile Row on Monday: a group of mustachioed, tweed-clad protestors waving placards imploring passers-by to “give three-piece a chance”. The cause of their sartorial protest was the threat that Abercrombie & Fitch, having already moved its tanks onto Savile Row’s lawn with a store in 7 Burlington Gardens (which doubles as 42 Savile Row, and previously hosted the Prada-owned Jil Sander store), was to open a branch of its Abercrombie Kids brand in this bastion of fine British tailoring.
Abercrombie & Fitch sounds as if it would sit well with Great British clothiers like Gieves & Hawkes and Anderson & Sheppard – and its 19th-century foundation puts it an a roughly equal footing with much of the Row – but its methods are quite different. One assumes, at least, that the children’s clothes branch will not have the attractive, dancing models of the main store, but it will nonetheless represent the invasion of mass-market, mass-produced American goods onto Savile Row. Not many places would think of A&F as cheap, between the $4 billion market cap and the $50 T-shirts, but in the eyes of Savile Row, where a bespoke suit starts at around $3000, it may as well be a market stall.
The protest, organized by The Chap magazine, assembled at the planned kids’ store site at 3 Savile Row (the former site of Apple Corp, the Beatles’ management company, and the site of their farewell gig) and marched to Abercrombie’s flagship (and only) London store, with music provided by the face of “chap-hop”, Mr B the Gentleman Rhymer. However, the constitution of the crowd was telling. Despite their love of Savile Row as a concept, few if any were wearing Savile Row tailoring, and few of the immaculate outfits were first-hand. The Chap is playfully nostalgic, harking satirically after better days, but the preponderance of tweed in town might have made the very tailors they sought to protect shudder politely.
A Cutting Issue
Savile Row’s traditional tailors have not resp0nded well to the presence of Abercrombie & Fitch, or its expansion plans. Thomas Mahon, suitmaker to Prince Charles and producer of the must-read English Cut website, commented on the original store:
If the bespoke businesses were driven out by crappy retail stores selling poor-quality clothes, then Savile Row’s name would be irreparably damaged.
Complaints from members of the Savile Row Bespoke Association have centred not only on the relative cheapness of the product, but also the presentation – the wall-high pictures of naked torsos damaging the traditional ambience of class and understated luxury. The Savile Row way – not naming customers and concealing labels – is at odds with the world of big-store retail.
Abercrombie might be seen as a symptom, however, rather than a cause. Rents on Savile Row for office space peaked at £10o ($150) per square foot, and the cost of the Row has led some to move to adjacent streets and others to vacate the area altogether: Edward Sexton, maker of the suits worn by the Beatles (excepting George Harrison) on the cover of Abbey Road, who is now based in Knightsbridge. Thomas Mahon’s studio is located in Cumbria, but much of his trade comes from visits to the United States – clients are measured in hotel rooms or at their offices, and the suit is sent to them once made. The rents, and the cost-intensive practice of using local labor for true Savile Row bespoke (whereas less expensive options are provided by sending patterns to Ireland or the Far East, or cutting the cloth using machines rather than by hand), limits productivity and keeps costs high – whether this is a bug or a feature is probably a matter of personal taste.
This is not the first time Savile Row has been the site of unwelcome guests. A decade or more ago, the old guard were complaining of the arrival of flashy “new bespoke” tailors like Ozwald Boateng, Richard James and Timothy Everest. James, however, is now a member of the Savile Row Bespoke Association, guardians of the values (and the value) of Savile Row Bespoke (as opposed to simply bespoke, a term which – as Forbes reported – in marketing language may mean anything from hand-made to laser-cut in a factory or machine-stitched from hand measurements).
It may be that the alternatives to bespoke tailoring are growing faster than the market for premium clothing – the number of tailors on Savile Row has progressively reduced in recent years, and there is a fear that the skills will be lost. Nonetheless, there will always be wealthy men (and increasingly women) looking for fine tailoring, and Savile Row as a brand will remain strong. However, Savile Row the location may find itself surrendering ground to the greater heft – and the more in-your-face ways – of clothing chains, despite the enthusiastic advocacy of its friends in tweed. Perhaps when Abercrombie’s well-heeled clientele can no longer rock a muscle tee, they will find their eyes caught by the steadier virtues of an English cut.
THE SPARK: Citi analyst Jeff Black, who has a “Buy” rating on its shares, more than doubled his first-quarter earnings estimates to 7 cents per share from 3 cents on the anticipated strength in Europe.
Under the boot camp-style diktat, male staff who failed to greet a customer with sufficient cheeriness or follow the order of a superior were told to drop to the floor and perform 10 push-ups.
