Figure historique · People
Frederick Scholte
The London tailor who cut the drape, and whose method outlived his name.
Scholte, born in the Netherlands and working in London, was tailor to the Prince of Wales from the 1920s. He developed the drape cut, a coat with fullness across the chest and blades, hanging softly and moving with the wearer, which passed into Anderson & Sheppard and remains one of the two poles of English tailoring.
The method
Extra cloth over the chest and the shoulder blades, a high armhole so that fullness does not restrict, a soft lightly padded shoulder, and a coat that hangs rather than grips. It was a departure from the structured English coat of the period and it flattered a slight figure enormously.
Scholte is reported to have been extremely particular about the cut and to have refused commissions that would compromise it.
The inheritance
The method passed to Anderson & Sheppard, where it has been maintained most consistently, and from there to tailors who trained in that house, Steven Hitchcock among them, whose father was A&S's head coatmaker. It is a good example of how tailoring traditions actually transmit: not through a business surviving, but through people learning a method and passing it on.
A tailor known through a client
Scholte left no house bearing his name, no published account of his method and comparatively little documentation. He is known because the Prince of Wales was photographed constantly in his coats. That is the ordinary condition of tailoring history: the cutters are anonymous and the customers are recorded. It is why this site keeps a section for artisans, and why several of the entries in it are shorter than they deserve to be.