The London Cut

Photo: Guy Hills

I thought I should chime in to say that I very much like The London Cut, by which I mean the series of exhibitions promoting Savile Row, though The London Cut, and here I am writing about the style, is not really to my taste. The photo of James Sherwood, author of The London Cut, and here I am writing about the book, is illustrative of the style: a long, shaped jacket with narrow sleeves paired with narrow trousers. There is plenty of tie space that is filled with overly large, for my taste, neckties. The ties in particular may indicate the pending doom of the style as the Italians don't make them that wide any more and they were the principal supplier of four inchers.

Now this is not to disparage Mr. Sherwood by any means. He deserves all the credit in the world for supplying much of the energy required to get Savile Row promoting itself for the first time since the original Henry Poole was attracting the world's royalty to his shop. Indeed, Mr. Sherwood's efforts have been supported by formerly marketing-free firms like Anderson & Sheppard that make a style of clothing that is only loosely (pun intended) related to The London Cut style. But that just gives the The London Cut exhibitions a bit of additional support. Imagine if they had begun this thing fifty years ago - the tailors in and around Naples would be a pale shadow of themselves.

So good luck to them I say. The exhibitions I mean, rather than the style or the book. Not that I wish bad things on either of those. But the exhibitions are definitely worth the time should one pop up in a nearby city.

Just look for The London Cut. No surprise there.