Venerable Savile Row tailors are concerned that upstarts are degrading the Row’s reputation by taking orders in W1 for manufacture elsewhere, reports the BBC:
Fashion experts such as Eric Musgrave, who used to be editor of Drapers magazine, says the traditional tailors in Savile Row should press for protected geographical status under EU law.
He said: “You can only call a fizzy white wine champagne if it comes from the Champagne region. You can only call ham Parma ham if it comes from Parma.
“I think the boys on Savile Row should continue battling until they get their definition that ‘Savile Row Bespoke’ can only be made on Savile Row and the defined area around it.”
To that end the Savile Row Bespoke Association is launching a quality mark to distinguish its products from other companies who sell “made-to-measure” suits under the banner “Savile Row Bespoke”.
That would allow potential customers to at least know what they are buying when they pay for their hand-tailored suit.
This raises several questions for me. Firstly, is this a protectionist quest to preserve the economic rent that derives from owning some prime tailoring real estate, or a legitimate attempt to increase the level of information available to customers in the market? More practically, is there are quality difference between suits made elsewhere in the UK (or Europe) and actually on the Row that is noticeable even when all other factors (service location, fitting, etc.) is held the same?
Either way, this article is itself a good bit of PR for – Dege & Skinner and an advert for Sartoriani.
I think this is a justified complaint.
Savile Row is a magical name in tailoring, as you already know, and aggressive and ambitious young chaps, not content with their ever-growing client books, crave greater exclusivity not only for brand prestige but also greater profit margins. The whole point about grabbing some lower-ground floor space on the Row is to steal some of the sparkling ‘fairy-dust’ from the likes of Henry Poole, Huntsman and Gieves & Hawkes and sprinkle it over a suit made in Shanghai.
The reason why the old tailoring hands are angry is not just because their famous talents and reputations are being used to sell items of, lets face it, an inferior standard but because the whole basis for Savile Row bespoke tailoring is that a) it is English tailoring b) it is completed on the premises. If the old hands like Huntsman and Anderson & Sheppard were merely a front for the business i.e. they’d never cut a square of cloth in their lives and actually sent their suits off to be made by a few Ukrainian seamstresses in Barnet, they’d have to keep quiet.
They sell Product A and charge price X.
The cowboys sell Product B and represent it as Product A in order to charge price X when really they should be selling it at price Y.