Bespoke by Richard Anderson

Author:Richard Anderson [Richard Anderson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Con Men

Let us take a moment to widen the lens and discuss an unfortunate feature of most industries, even the genteel art and business of bespoke tailoring:

The confidence man.

Savile Row knows two basic categories.

The Inside Man

Every Savile Row house has been hit by at least one, working in some capacity – even Huntsman, where between Hammick’s brain and Hall’s cards you would have thought they knew every last bloody coat in their purview.

When a coat appears to be finished, a good cutter does not allow it to be dispatched until he has personally ‘passed’ it, which he does by putting the coat on himself (or a fellow employee, if the coat is too small for his own frame) and scrutinising its reflection in a mirror to confirm that in every last respect it meets his standards. Taking into account the customer’s relative height, does the collar sit well – or is it too round and rises up in the back? Do the sleeves hang smoothly in a neutral position? Does the front edge fall to the right point against the thigh? Very good cutters do this not only before dispatching a coat, but at each fitting juncture along the way – after the coat has been basted, forward fitted and finished – always to remain one step ahead of the game. So at Huntsman, every afternoon at two, with an almost religious regularity, all of the company coats being made upstairs would be brought down by a tailor or yours truly and Hammick and Hall would drop whatever else they were doing to pass each of them personally – and send those below par back up to the drawing board.

Conducted primarily as a quality-control tactic, this ritual was also thought to keep its participants fully informed of what was happening upstairs at all times. But one day in the seventies the audit figures came round and the trimmings orders failed to match up with the number of units sold. The workshop tailors finished early on Fridays, so one Friday when they had all gone, Hammick and Hall went themselves up to the Heddon Street shop, which at that time was run by a man named Fagle and his right-hand mate, Pease. What Hammick and Hall found hanging up there were dozens and dozens of ticketless coats they had never seen. Fagle had been on a right roll, orchestrating the production of as many as a hundred coats using company-bought trimmings and almost certainly on company time but which were going out the back door. In other words: he was selling suits to friends and private customers – suits made with Huntsman trimmings, overheads and labour – and pocketing what it would have cost to pay for the same himself. The only ingredient he paid for was the basic cloth, probably from Holland & Sherry, next door.

Hammick and Hall confronted Fagle, who confessed and was duly sacked, while Pease, who had known about the scam but pleaded his hands were tied, was chastised yet retained.

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