‘We hope people will have even more zest for getting out’
Why British tailoring’s elder statesman is returning to Savile Row in a time of crisis.
It’s a cold autumn morning on Savile Row – a quiet hour in normal times but desolate thanks to London’s increasingly stringent Covid restrictions – and a diminutive figure is doing the rounds. I’m early to meet Edward Sexton, the tailor extraordinaire who helped turn the street into the very epicentre of cool in the Sixties, and catch a glimpse of the spry 78-year-old quietly looking in store fronts, nodding to proprietors. A wistful wander down memory lane perhaps?
The answer’s rather more pragmatic; “I was checking everyone’s opening hours to see how ours might match up,” says the eagle-eyed Sexton. It’s critical market research, because the man who outfitted The Beatles, Elton John and Mick Jagger in his distinctive tailored suits is coming back to Savile Row for the first time in 20 years.
This would be seismic news for the tailoring industry at any time, but the timing in the midst of a travel ban that has decimated suit sales on Savile Row makes it all the more astonishing.
“Yes, our business is hurting, but then everybody’s hurting,” says Sexton. Of course, the new UK measures that come into place tomorrow mean the newly opened store will have to shut its physical doors again.
“It’s very disappointing, but we hope that once this is over people will have even more zest for getting out, looking forward to Christmas,” says Sexton, who has masterminded the logistics with the creative director of the brand’s ready-to-wear range, Dominic Sebag-montefiore. They have an online store, but the two are also launching a click-and-collect service – surely Savile Row’s first – and staying in phone contact with older clients who might not be as au fait with the digital age.
It helps that there’s literally no one with more experience than Sexton in the ways of the Row. An East End lad, his career began when he answered an ad for apprentices in trade magazine Tailor & Cutter, going on to cut his sartorial teeth in the old guard tailoring houses. There he met another workingclass fellow with an eye for a sharp suit in the form of the charismatic Tommy Nutter, and in 1969 they made their debut as the first new tailoring house on Savile Row in 100 years.
In a touching twist, the new store is actually the original Nutters of Savile Row space they started out in.
“We redeemed this street,” says Sexton matter-of-factly, immaculate in a sleekly cut wool suit with polo neck. “It was a graveyard, with heavy
‘Men will want to dress up again after months of leisurewear’
curtains over windows, big heavy doors.”
The old guard were soon clutching their pinstripes at what this racy pair of young men were doing; opening up their window displays and their doors – the vulgarity of it all – and cutting a wildly different kind of cloth.
“We made suits in the great tradition of Savile Row, but we did it in a more dynamic way.” The silhouettes – tight on the body, accentuated on the shoulders – soon caught the eye of the era’s peacocking showmen; The Beatles, followed by Elton John and the Rolling Stones. Mick Jagger married Bianca Perez-mora Macias in Tommy Nutter suits cut and fitted by Sexton, three of the four Beatles wear the suits on the Abbey Road album cover and Stella Mccartney learnt her craft under Sexton. In fact, he was one of the first to create suits for women, doing so for Cilla Black, Linda Mccartney and Bianca Jagger.
Is there a market for the suit in today’s dress-down era? “It evolves, I think we’ll wear suits again but in a different way, and it will be about pleasure instead of necessity,” says
Sexton. “I also think men will want to dress up again and feel powerful after months of leisurewear,” says SebagMontefiore.
The view out front might have changed, but a certain mentality particular to this iconic stretch remains. “Savile Row has always been a village, and everyone knows one another. We’re all essentially competitors, but there’s a feeling that if it’s good for the street it’s good for everyone. We’re a community,” says Sexton. The light, airy space he’s created also features knitwear and silk evening shirts.
That said, there’s just something about those Sexton suits. The way an oenophile can clock a Super Tuscan with one whiff, so tailoring
connoisseurs can spot the cut of a Sexton – lean on the torso, flared slightly on the seat and strong on the shoulders. He works as part surgeon, part choreographer, nimbly adjusting and scrutinising the most minute details. “It’s engineering the body, sartorial sculpture if you will,” he says.
He’s earned the right to put his feet up, I venture. “I still get as excited to come to work every day,” he says. “There’s a magic moment when you know you’ve got it, when someone looks at themselves in the mirror, and that feeling is still as strong all these years later.”
That’s something the changing tides of Savile Row, and the effects of lockdowns, can never do away with.