If you would like to learn a little about the evolution of Savile Row Tailors and what is today the most famous sartorial precinct in the world, then we have included a few facts. Plus interludes on British Fashion designers, silk neckties and cufflinks
If you would like to learn a little about
the evolution of Savile Row Tailors and what is today the most famous sartorial
precinct in the world, then we have included a few facts. Plus interludes on
British Fashion designers, silk neckties and cufflinks
1623: Piccadilly Hall, the country
home of Strand tailor Robert Baker and the origin of one of London's most
celebrated place names, is first recorded on the site of today's Great Windmill Street in Soho. Baker's tailoring shop sold pickadils or pickadillos: ruffs
fashionable in the Jacobean era hence the (possibly ironic) name given to his
house. When King James I married Elizabeth of Bohemia in 1613, collars recorded
in the bride's trousseau were made by Robert Baker. It is rumoured that Queen
Elizabeth coined the (surely ironic) name for the palatial residence built by
her social climbing tailor-turned-property developer.
1668: Burlington House,
arguably the grandest Piccadilly palace, is constructed for Richard 'The Rich'
Boyle, first Earl of Burlington - a Restoration courtier during the reign of
King Charles II - in what was then the verdant countryside a mile from St
James's Palace and the site of Piccadilly Hall.
Cufflink Interlude
During the 1880's in America,
George Krementz patented a device based on a
civil war cartridge shell-making machine that could mass produce one-piece
collar buttons and cufflinks. Suddenly every US
business was commissioning
cufflinks for advertising or as gift incentives for clients.
1689: In the year of William &
Mary's coronation, the tailoring house now known as Ede & Ravenscroft is
established by the Shudall family. The firm goes on to hold the Royal Warrant
as robe makers to every monarch from King George III to our present Queen.
Only in 1921 is it finally christened Ede & Ravenscroft: the oldest
surviving family-owned tailoring firm in England
if not the world.
1715: Handel stays with Lord
Burlington and is given rooms at the back of Burlington House because he likes
the sight of fields and trees from his stateroom window. Mayfair is still a grand,
aristocratic enclave while the former Tudor palaces on the Strand and the side streets of
St James's are developed into tradesmen's enclaves riddled with tailor's shops.
British Designer Interlude
Vivienne Isabel
Swire was born in Glossopdale, Derbyshire, on 8 April 1941. Her mother had been a weaver in the local
cotton mills and her father came from a family of shoemakers. Her parents ran a
sub post office in Tintwistle before moving to north-west London in the 1950’s.
In 1965 she met
Malcolm McLaren together they went on to become one of the most creative
partnerships in history and as they say the rest is history.
Vivienne Westwood accepted a DBE in the
2006 New Year's Honours List "for services to fashion", She has won
the award for British Designer of the Year three times. In December 2003, she
and the Wedgwood pottery company launched a series of tea sets featuring her
designs, testimony to her versatility and maturity and the respect she has
garnered, a far cry from Punk. Endurance in such a volatile industry for a
prolonged time is a hallmark by any measure.
Necktie Interlude
With the advent of mass media, celebrities
such as sports heroes, movie actors, and popular singers would create a variety
of neckwear trends.
Humphrey Bogart often sported bow ties,
while another actor, Ronald Colman, was considered one of Hollywood's
sharpest dressers with his tailored, elegant look. Elvis Presley sported an old
fashioned neckerchief, and helped prolong an out of date style a few more
years.
Game show host Regis Philbin became influential with his luxurious looking neckties
in solid colours to match his shirts.
Article Source: http://www.theukarticledirectory.co.uk/.
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