The Savile Row Story

Fülszöveg

'A man's first duty is to his tailor. What his second is, nobody has yet discerned.' - Oscar Wilde.
For more than a century, the elegant London street of Savile Row has been synonymous with sartorial excellence - its name a universal generic for impeccable male attire. Tailoring's ties to the neighbourhood go back to an Elizabethan tailor who gave Piccadilly its name, and here in the Regency era was born a special relationship with royalty, out of which was fashioned the look of the English gentleman that endures to this day. Then, in the mid-nineteenth century, the Row itself emerged as the mecca of resplendent sobriety, mostly on the energies of a gambler who helped finance revolution abroad while he connived in palace intrigue at home.
THE SAVILE ROW STORY is the definitive history of the world's most famous concentration of bespoke tailors and coincides with the centenary of the Federation of Merchant Tailors, their exclusive trade association. It is a history not only of... Tovább

Fülszöveg

'A man's first duty is to his tailor. What his second is, nobody has yet discerned.' - Oscar Wilde.
For more than a century, the elegant London street of Savile Row has been synonymous with sartorial excellence - its name a universal generic for impeccable male attire. Tailoring's ties to the neighbourhood go back to an Elizabethan tailor who gave Piccadilly its name, and here in the Regency era was born a special relationship with royalty, out of which was fashioned the look of the English gentleman that endures to this day. Then, in the mid-nineteenth century, the Row itself emerged as the mecca of resplendent sobriety, mostly on the energies of a gambler who helped finance revolution abroad while he connived in palace intrigue at home.
THE SAVILE ROW STORY is the definitive history of the world's most famous concentration of bespoke tailors and coincides with the centenary of the Federation of Merchant Tailors, their exclusive trade association. It is a history not only of the street and those who have flourished there, but of the social changes that Savile Row has seen and influenced. The names of its famous clients are legion: 'Go through the pages of "Burke's Peerage" or the "Almanach de Gotha",' one firm has challenged. 'From 1850 to the end of civilization in 1914,1 think we could match you page by page with our old ledgers.' In the post-civilization age, Hollywood stars and business moguls stepped in to augment the thinning ranks of nobility and gentry. Now the Row faces a new crisis as daunting as any in its past.
This book is about that which links Beau Brummell to Elton John, Fred Astaire to the Duke of Westminster and the Queen to Mata Hari. It is a story that has never been told before: discretion bordering on an obsession for secrecy on the part of its closed coterie of tailors saw to that. 'When you meet a man with his trousers off, it's different,' says one Savile Row worthy, in seeking to explain the unique relationships that are forged in the fitting rooms where the rich and the famous submit their persons to the tape and from whence no whispered confidence has ever emerged. Not ever, that is, until now. For this is Savile Row with its pants down: breaking for the first time the conspiracy of silence that has protected the most sacred rite of the English gentleman - and occasional gentlewoman - and of those who aspire to be their like around the world. Vissza