MAID TO MEASURE:
Kathryn Sargent made history as the first female head cutter on Savile Row. The Leeds-born tailor talks to Sarah Freeman about the art of the perfect suit.
ATHRYN SARGENT has just arrived in Leeds from London. She should have been here a couple of hours ago, but a long train delay has meant a mad dash from the station to the City Museum. Not that you’d know it. Wearing a heather coloured suit that she designed and made herself, Sargent, one of the leading lights in British tailoring, looks pretty unflappable.
She’s back in her home city to open a new exhibition celebrating the country’s rich tailoring history. It features exhibits ranging from a child’s silk coat dating from the 1700s to a 1920s dress suit made by Leeds firm Burtons and with Sargent contributing one of her own designs, she hopes it will be a platform to champion a still thriving industry.
“It looks fantastic, doesn’t it?” she says getting her first glimpse of Tailored: A Very British Fashion, which has been curated by Ruth Leach and features garments by both Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen. “British tailoring is among the best in the world. It always has been, but I think there is a tendency to think that the country’s textile industry has been consigned to history. That’s simply not true. Admittedly there might not be as many mills as there once were and the big manufacturers like Burtons and Hepworth’s, which were both major employers in Leeds, may be no more, but there are still some great firms producing some of the finest cloth in the world.”
Cloth made by Dugdale Bros and Co lines the walls of the gallery and the Huddersfield firm has a long relationship with Sargent who has brought a little bit of Yorkshire to London’s tailoring hub.
“I use their cloth because it’s incredible quality and just fantastic to work with, but the history is also important. Dugdale was founded in the late 19th century and I’m really quite proud to be another small chapter in their story.”
When Sargent was growing up in Leeds she knew from an early age that she wanted to work in the fashion industry, but it was only when she headed south to study at the Institute of Art and Design in Epsom that she discovered her passion for tailoring.
“None of my family worked in tailoring, although my dad always did have an eye for a good made-to-measure suit. As a little girl I would go with him to the tailors and maybe it was on those Saturday afternoons that the seeds of my later career were sown. I enrolled on a fashion course, but quite quickly I realised that what really interested me was tailoring. I think it was something to do with the precision and the structure of the pieces you could create.”