Saville Row tailors try to keep up with latest fashion
By Dini S. Djalal
LONDON (JP): His diction is faultless, his posture painfully upright. When he walks into a room, his staff of 40 falls silent, their heads bowed in deference.
Description of an heir to a throne? Not quite, although his family history runs parallel to the monarchy. And only urbanites untutored in fine style fail to recognize the institution responsible for Robert Gieves' stature: Saville Row tailoring.
He is the Gieves of Gieves & Hawkes, the oldest bespoke (British for custom-made clothing) workshop on Saville Row, a narrow London street and haven for Britain's best tailors. In fact, because Mr. Hawkes died heirless in 1809, Gieves is Gieves & Hawkes.
Son to son, that's how bespoke businesses are often run. And as a fifth-generation Gieves, he spent six years learning the trade on his own before joining the family firm. Said Gieves of his hands-on education, which included tanning shoes: "There was no automatic right of entry."
Once in, however, he ran the row's most venerated shop, a legendary house which outfitted Captain Bly, and in 1935, Charles Laughton for his role as Bly in the film Mutiny on the Bounty.
That Gieves & Hawkes dresses the British monarchy is common lore; even by Gieves' accounts, their name stands for colonialism's uniform. In 1886, Gieves & Hawkes published the first clothing catalog, shipping editions to colonial posts so that "soldiers can live the English life in the territories".
The days of strict day dress and evening dress are past, but not of bespoke. Yes, the row has seen bankruptcies in the last 20 years, and in the 1980s, "business was difficult". But now, with the world's eyes on London fashion, cinema, music, and art, Saville Row is enjoying a resurgence in demand for its craft.
Worldwide the trend has flown. Italian tailors such as Brioni report a 30 percent demand increase for suits with a 20 percent markup but tailored to a client's specifications. Indonesian executives are also foregoing Armanis for things more personal. Even twenty-somethings opt to look classic rather than trendy.
In Britain, men young and old now frequent the street's teak- floored ateliers, emulating the snazzy stance of bespoke-faithful pop stars: Oasis, Paul Weller, Seal, Jamiroquai.
Bespoke couture
Saville Row's current hot address belongs to Ozwald Boateng, the 30-year-old dapper designer cutting sleek suits in fruit colors and unorthodox fabrics like mohair. Yet even the kids also go across the street to Gieves & Hawkes at 1 Saville Row.
And however much the media focuses on the cocksure Boateng, Gieves & Hawkes far better embodies the spirit of tailoring.
Boateng talks of "bespoke couture", which he described to The Jakarta Post as "modern design at the highest level", but admits to being too busy to visit his showroom. Now doubling its annual turnover, his million-pound business hopes to expand to a cheaper ready-to-wear line, perhaps even womenswear.
Sighing that "between interviews, designing, and traveling, I don't have time anymore to see my clients", Boateng is more like the pop stars he befriends than their hands-on tailor.
Being at the top of the profession, boasting many heads of state and millionaires as clients, including Indonesians, Gieves has little time for customers, either.
Yet as he inspects the four floors of the 18th century edifice, elucidating the merits of horsehair lining and deploring the disappearance of a back vent in contemporary jackets -- "there's a reason for everything on a suit" -- it becomes clear that his knowledge and dedication surpasses his younger peer. Despite critics' accusations of stagnation in the tailoring arts, Gieves says that tailoring is more difficult than ever.
"Cloths are getting lighter and lighter, so you now sew with greater skill. Master tailors never stop learning," he says.
Attention to detail perfection means mistakes never leave the quietly chaotic chambers.
"They never even go out. We can see a problem coming and correct it immediately," he says.
As a result, his thousand-plus regular clients, including Michael Jackson, regard the costly suits (averaging 2,000 for a simple two-piece) as investments, "handcrafted for you alone and lasting longer than 10 years". Saville Row has an unspoken cachet.
"We now have a lot of younger clients, corporate businessmen, who realize that bespoke is good for their image and thus good for business," Gieves says.
The image is that of timeless refinement. "The look, that classic English look, changes very little," admits Gieves.
Aversion to change, complain younger designers, is Saville Row's problem. They say it doesn't allow for experiments, for deviations from hundreds-year-old standards for fabrics, seaming, and patterning.
Not so, Gieves argues in a typically exacting and rational manner.
"Fashion just goes around and around," Gieves says of its fickle ways. Meanwhile, men's clothing are limited in design possibilities. Rather than rise and fall with trends, Gieves would rather Saville Row stick to being conventional, but safe.
He recognizes the Catch-22 of either hazardously following the fashion fold or remain as what others consider a bastion of boring tradition. Yet finding a middle way, Gieves says, is the unavoidable Saville Row ambition.
"If Saville Row becomes a design center, it would move from thick ice to thin," he says. "The very pace of fashion makes it vulnerable, it is the stuff of dreams, theater, performance.
"Getting close to fashion means threatening its very foundations, but if it just stays still, it also dies. So although we are proud of our history, we try to come up with that little change, putting in a twist but leaving the basic structure in tact."