Savile unrest ... the tailors who want to stop Abercrombie & Fitch

The American clothing giant Abercrombie & Fitch is setting up shop on Savile Row and the Mayfair tailors are outraged. But is it just another case of the sharp-suited traditionalists getting hot under the collar or could this be the cash-strapped street’s saving grace, asks Josh Sims
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Josh Sims27 April 2012

Gieves & Hawkes, Anderson & Sheppard, Abercrombie & Fitch – spot the odd one out. The name may sound like a good fit, but if the presence of a preppy American super-brand that touts its logoed casualwear using bare-chested models on a street that has a 170-year reputation for bespoke tailoring of the finest quality seems to you like a clash of cultures, you are not alone.

The old guard of the Row, as it’s abbreviated by the more august inhabitants – some of whom have been there since the 1840s – are not happy about Abercrombie’s plans to open a childrenswear store at No 3, currently a large and empty-looking office building. But then we’ve been here before. The same crowd wasn’t entirely happy about Abercrombie opening at the very end of the Row, in a grand 17th-century mansion on Vigo Street, back in 2007 either. Nor is it overly pleased with persistent rumours – denied by both companies – that Lush, the bath products company, or The Kooples, the hip French casualwear brand, have also been looking to open on the Row, the latter specifically at the now vacant Bernard Weatherill premises at No 5. Weatherill’s owners, JML, aren’t saying either way.

Online petitions have been launched against the Abercrombie opening. In particular, The Chap, a magazine dedicated to self-consciously gentlemanly dressing (think plus fours, pipes and tweeds), has demonstrated outside No 3. Its slogan: ‘Give Three-Piece a Chance.’ But might Savile Row – a world-class suiting mecca for generations – be on its way to becoming, as Anda Rowland, managing director of Anderson & Sheppard, has it, ‘just another one of those not terribly exciting side streets’? And, if it is, so what?

According to Mark Henderson, deputy chairman of Gieves & Hawkes and chairman of the Savile Row Bespoke Association (SRBA), there are several reasons why the additional Abercrombie store – set to open by the end of the year – would be a bad idea. Some are minor: that procedure has not been followed, he alleges, in that Westminster Council did not notify the SRBA, not even its own Savile Row Strategic Group, of the proposed change from office space to retail. Others aren’t very convincing: that the pathways are too narrow for the queues Abercrombie stores generate with their ‘one in one out’ policy. Some do, quite openly, smack of snobbery: there is disdainful talk of Abercrombie and its ‘£25 flip-flops’.

‘It’s hard not to sound snobbish about it,’ concedes chairman of tailors Henry Poole Angus Cundey, who recalls past times when councils have been less bothered to take a long-term outlook on the Row – notably in 1961 when the company’s old premises were compulsorily purchased to make way for a car park. ‘There is concern about having any unsuitable sort of retail outlet on what is a rather quiet, elegant backwater. Savile Row customers often turn up in chauffeur-driven cars or walk up from Claridge’s. They’d have to walk past those crowds all up Savile Row.’ Small wonder perhaps that Abercrombie is not elaborating on the issue – according to a spokesperson it’s just ‘excited’ about the new shop and its ‘iconic location’ – keeping a distance that is dignified or arrogant, depending on your opinion of the brand. And, of course, it’s nothing new, as periodically Savile Row faces the arrival of an outsider, be it the likes of Hackett, Evisu or Duffer, brands that have had premises on the Row at some point over the past decade. ‘The Row made a fuss when Ozwald Boateng opened, and when Richard James opened. And they’re both

tailors,’ exclaims Eddie Prendergast, owner of Shoreditch’s Present menswear store and founder of Duffer, who recalls his own ‘storm in a thimble’ when he opened on the Row. ‘But at least they are both tailors, not some kids’ shop from America. A lot of this debate seems to hang on class – it’s not wanting the snotty-nosed chavs or Euro bods who shop in Abercrombie that the Row is worried about. That makes the reaction stronger than it was against Hackett or Evisu or us, because we all respected traditions and at least aimed to sell to the same type of customer.’

Snobbery, of course, cuts both ways. ‘There’s this idea that those on the Row just want it to stay a place for a wealthy clientele who can afford £4,000 suits,’ says Rowland, ‘but few people take the wider implications into consideration: that the tailors have their own business dependants – alterations people, cloth houses – and need to stick together for all to survive. Or that the Row is emblematic of a growing interest around the world in British menswear. After all, it’s

precisely the prestige that the Row has that other brands want to buy into.’Indeed, the tricky question of the suit-ability of any newcomer to the Row appears to be at the heart of the debate. And that boils down to the perceived impact that the expansion of a brand such as Abercrombie or The Kooples into the Row would have on its very essence: its history as an unusual grouping of craft companies generating a pittance in big retail terms (an annual turnover estimated to be about £25 million) but whose geographic proximity creates an undeniable iconography. And, as Cundey notes, also facilitates its continued existence in allowing collaboration in the training of the few young people willing to set out on the long road of tailoring apprenticeship.

‘Bring in an Abercrombie and Savile Row’s appeal to its tailoring clients as a discreet street would certainly be reduced,’ says Henderson. ‘Its character would change. This is not a street of old farts – Savile Row has had to constantly reinvent itself. And I have no issue with Abercrombie itself – the first shop has been good for the Row. It’s helped put it on the map for younger generations. Mike Jeffries, Abercrombie’s CEO, is even a customer of Norton & Sons, so we’re not on different planets. But successful roads do tend to have like retailers.’

Whereas an Abercrombie feels like a bad fit, it’s implied, a brand with a less transitory customer and one able to take on a long-term occupancy – a luxury goods brand perhaps, one such as Alexander McQueen, due to open on the Row later this year – would be most welcome. All Westminster Council’s operations director for planning Barry Smith will say is that the council ‘is determined to maintain the unique history and special character of Savile Row’. But at the time of going to press it would appear Abercrombie is already part of the plan as it has started to pay rent on the building, whose lease it acquired earlier this year. It is not a foregone conclusion, however, that the store will open as there remain a number of planning stages that need to be approved by Westminster (and there will no doubt be subsequent protests to deal with), plus there is the issue of the road being too narrow, which could result in Abercrombie footing the bill to have it widened in order to open its doors. But the fact that Abercrombie is already in a building too large for any bespoke tailor to be interested suggests said doors will open.

More worrying still, says Rowland, is the long-term impact on rents. Unlike Mount Street, for example, Savile Row is not overseen by one landlord, its single biggest one being the Pollen Estate, whose efforts to retain said character have been widely praised by its tailors. Short-term thinking may see other landlords take the biggest buck from brands now in the ascendant, only to see them leave when their moment passes. Meanwhile, rents will have crept up, out of reach of tailors for whom profit is slim, no matter how expensive the suits may seem – unlike the huge mark-ups typical of more mass-market fashion companies. Rowland suggests the same has happened to the art-gallery community of Dover Street, edged out by its newfound fashionability.

‘The fact is that the more tailoring on the Row gets eaten away, the less it will be able to maintain the critical mass that keeps it going,’ says Rowland. ‘Really the tailors do need to be sited centrally, and the reality is that not all tailors would be able to move at the same time to the same new area. It’s all less a question of ‘here comes Abercrombie and there goes the neighbourhood’, so much as the neighbourhood never coming back once it’s gone. This is going to be a recurring issue for Savile Row until there’s a coherent long-term rental vision for it.’

Such a vision may be caught between two opposing attitudes that the times might be said to be hotly debating: on the one hand the recessionary need to make money, on the other an increasingly deep-seated need for capitalism to be about more than making money, in this instance to consider the need, as Prendergast puts it, ‘to protect some things in this country from erosion, to prevent yet another trade from being lost’.

‘Pushing up rents is certainly a problem, but then the same could have been said of us when we launched,’ says Sean Dixon, managing director of tailors Richard James. It set up on the Row 20 years ago with (shock, horror) Saturday opening and – also a sign of the times – is set to become the first Savile Row tailor to present a catwalk show, at the British Fashion Council’s new London Collections: Men event in June.

‘Some elements on the Row are reactionary,’ he adds. ‘They don’t like any change. They’re caught between wanting to be modern and wanting to respect tradition, though maybe the people going into the childrenswear store with their kids could prove to be good bespoke customers. It’s a long shot. Certainly Savile Row should protest, but the problem is that it can’t do so without asking landlords to take a hit – and it’s a free market.’

Maybe that’s the bottom line. A somewhat despairing Anda Rowland says that it’s ‘crazy to think we can stop them coming’, referring to all manner of monied retailers who want a Savile Row shop front – who, ironically, might kill off its magic by killing off its tailors. And history repeats itself: until tailors squeezed them out, Savile Row was once full of doctors, many of whom vacated to coalesce around Harley Street. Maybe now would be a good time to order that three-piece suit. ES

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