Tailoring style · United Kingdom

Savile Row

Savile Row jackets are shaped by hand around a horsehair and wool inner layer, giving defined shoulders, a nipped waist and an upright look for decades.

The English style builds a jacket around a hand-shaped canvas of horsehair and wool. The shoulder is defined, the chest is full and clean, the waist is suppressed and the skirt is long. It makes a man look upright and substantial, it takes about fifty hours of hand labour, and it lasts for decades.

A structured English-cut coat on a dummy

Structure as the method

Between the cloth and the lining of an English coat sits a canvas (horsehair, wool and linen) that has been shaped by hand. Rows of pad stitching, thousands of them, curl the canvas into a permanent chest and roll the lapel. Nothing is glued. The result is a garment with an internal skeleton, which is why an English coat can impose a shape rather than merely follow one, and why it survives being worn, pressed and altered for thirty years.

Everything else follows. The shoulder is defined because a structure exists to define it. Cloth is heavier because heavier cloth takes and holds a press. The skirt is longer and the waist marked, because the whole silhouette is designed to be seen standing up in a room.

Drape and its opposite

The Row is not one style. The most consequential division runs between drape and clean-cut.

The drape cut, associated with Frederick Scholte, who tailored for the Duke of Windsor, and carried on by Anderson & Sheppard, leaves a little extra cloth over the chest and shoulder blades, so the coat hangs with a soft vertical fullness and moves with the wearer. It flatters a thin man by suggesting a larger chest, and it is comfortable in a way structured tailoring often is not.

The clean cut (Huntsman is the standard example) does the opposite: close to the body, lean through the chest, waist high and marked, frequently a single button. It reads as sharp and slightly severe, and it is less forgiving of a figure that is not already good.

How the work is divided

A London house separates cutting from making. The cutter measures the customer, drafts a paper pattern for him alone, cuts the cloth, and runs the fittings; the coat then goes to a coatmaker, the trousers to a trouser maker, the waistcoat to another specialist. Traditionally these makers are paid by the piece and work off-premises, often at home.

This is why the cutter's name matters more than the house's, why houses are so protective of their cutters, and why the trade's crisis is a shortage of makers rather than of customers. It is also why fittings are the product: a bespoke garment is not defined by handwork alone but by the fact that it is made, looked at on the body, taken apart and made again.

Natural

no padding · follows the body

Soft

a thin pad · a gentle line

Spalla camicia

sleeve gathered like a shirt

Roped

sleeve head rises in a ridge

Extended

built out past the shoulder

The shoulder, five ways Right shoulder, front-on; the dashed line is the wearer’s own. Spalla camicia is the Neapolitan signature. The roped shoulder is Roman and Parisian in origin, and Cifonelli’s is the best known. The extended shoulder belongs to the sharper end of Savile Row and to the Nutters silhouette. The shoulder is where a house’s cut is most visible and hardest to fake, because it is built inside the coat. Diagram drawn for Il Sartoriale.

Images

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At a glance

Shoulder

Defined, usually lightly padded; sleeve head often roped

Chest

Full horsehair canvas, hand pad-stitched

Waist

Suppressed; longer skirt than Italian equivalents

Labour

Roughly 50 hours of hand work for a coatWidely cited by the houses themselves; varies by house and garment.

Trade body

Savile Row Bespoke Association (voluntary)

City

London

Country

United Kingdom

Houses working in this tradition

An illustration of the house's recorded cut: natural shoulder, full canvas chest, drape: soft, full chest, long skirt. Not a photograph of the house's own work.

Anderson & Sheppard

Anderson & Sheppard, the softest Savile Row tailor, cuts jackets with extra cloth across the chest so they hang softly and move with you.

An illustration of the house's recorded cut: roped shoulder, full canvas chest, strongly shaped, high waist, distinctive lapel. Not a photograph of the house's own work.

Chittleborough & Morgan

The other inheritors of Nutters, cutting a coat with more shape than almost anyone.

An illustration of the house's recorded cut: roped shoulder, full canvas chest, structured english, military bearing. Not a photograph of the house's own work.

Dege & Skinner

Dege & Skinner is a family-owned Savile Row tailor known for military and ceremonial uniforms, and rare in making custom shirts in the same building.

An illustration of the house's recorded cut: roped shoulder, full canvas chest, structured english. Not a photograph of the house's own work.

Gieves & Hawkes

Gieves & Hawkes, at 1 Savile Row, is a tailor born from two old military firms, known for uniforms, royal warrants and firmly built English jackets.

An illustration of the house's recorded cut: soft shoulder, full canvas chest, balanced english; moderate shoulder, natural waist. Not a photograph of the house's own work.

Henry Poole & Co

Henry Poole & Co is Savile Row's oldest tailor and made the Prince of Wales's 1865 evening jacket that led to the dinner jacket and tuxedo.

An illustration of the house's recorded cut: roped shoulder, full canvas chest, lean, high-waisted, single button. Not a photograph of the house's own work.

Huntsman

Huntsman, Savile Row's sharpest tailor, makes lean jackets with strong shoulders, a high nipped waist and usually one button, rooted in riding clothes.

How it is made

All techniques →

Sources

Savile Row Bespoke Association standards , Savile Row Bespoke Association.

Where a figure is disputed or a house has not published it, the page says so rather than choosing a number.

Picture credits 17