Historical figure · People
Tommy Nutter
Opened a shop on Savile Row in 1969 with a window display, and dragged the street into its own century.
Nutter, with the cutter Edward Sexton, opened Nutters of Savile Row in 1969. The house cut a flamboyant silhouette (enormous lapels, strong shoulders, sharply suppressed waists) using entirely traditional construction, and dressed a generation of musicians and actors. Two current Row houses descend from it.
What was actually new
Not the construction, which was orthodox. What was new was the silhouette, the clientele and the presentation: Nutters had a window display when the Row had discreet frontages, and it dressed rock musicians when the Row dressed their fathers.
The house demonstrated that traditional bespoke could serve a contemporary aesthetic, which was not obvious in 1969 and mattered enormously to the street's survival.
The descendants
Edward Sexton continued under his own name; Roy Chittleborough and Joe Morgan founded Chittleborough & Morgan. Both houses still cut recognisably from the same starting point and have taken it in different directions.
Nutter himself left the business in the mid-1970s and died in 1992.
What the shop actually did
It put tailoring in a window, dressed people the street had not previously dressed, and demonstrated that bespoke construction was a method rather than a period style. All three were consequential and the third was the most important.
The Row's later revivals (new houses founded by departing cutters, public profiles, ready-to-wear lines) all follow from the demonstration that the trade could serve a contemporary aesthetic without abandoning anything technical.