David Saxby

David Saxby’s London shop is a uniquely British treasure trove of sporting tweeds and formal wear that aren’t available anywhere else on a ready-to-wear basis. A rainbow of high-waisted slim-cut corduroy trousers in heavyweight Brisbane Moss cloth? Check. RTW Norfolk jackets and plus fours cut from Lovat Mill tweed and lined in black watch tartan silk? Check. Jackets in substantial linen in soft pastel colours? Check. It’s almost overwhelming, and fills me with a childish rush of excitement every time I visit.

Two decades ago Mr Saxby started to sell second hand clothes from Old Hat, his vintage shop in Fulham, West London. “You could go to charity shops and car boot sales and buy Harris tweed jackets and they’d fly out at a good profit,” he explains. But things have changed, “You don’t find those kind of jackets in charity shops anymore, and young men don’t want them. Apart from nice old barathea dinner jackets and morning coats (which he still sells) my kind of vintage has had its day.”

Of course, having sold vintage bespoke clothes for two decades he’s almost uniquely well placed to pass judgement on Savile Row. Who made or makes the best clothes? “Henry Poole, Gieves & Hawkes, Edward Sexton. There are a few old tailors who I really admired: Lesley Roberts, Meyer & Mortimer, Hogg & Son and JB Johnson. I’ve never seen anything bad from them. Robert Valentine was a really good tailor, also Davies & Son and Connock & Lockie. There are still people making good clothes.”

Now his focus is on his David Saxby shop, with its unique selection of new clothes that will soon be offered on the internet; he pre-empts the obvious question. “I’ve been asked before ‘Who buys these orange cords?’ All my customers do, from 17 to 70. This is Fulham and Chelsea and we’re catering to local people - quite a few Dukes shop here. But go as far as Wandsworth [the neigbouring borough] and you might as well go over the edge of the world – there are no red trousers there.”

Mr Saxby says, “About a third of my customers are army officers: Cavalry officers, Guards officers, and Sandhurst (Britain’s officer training college) guys. These guys are a delight, they stand up straight, look smart and wear their clothes well. They understand tailoring, don’t ask for silly things and tend to get it right - there are lots of Guards Officers striding about in lemon cords or wearing red trousers with blue blazers.”

But does this explain the obvious country influence? “I coined the phrase Fulham farmers – they like tweeds for (horse) racing and for the weekend.” And what they buy from Mr Saxby is made in his workshop near the town of Ipswich in England’s East Anglia and sold at modest prices – waistcoats are $270 (£175), cords $225 (£145), made to measure jackets $700 (£450) and made to measure suits $1,050 (£675). The prices matter to him. “Part of quality is being made at a reasonable cost. Clothes should last forever; if you buy a tweed jacket you should still have it in 30 years, and that makes it very cheap. I wouldn’t like to price them so high I couldn’t sell them to everybody who comes in. I want a lot of people to be well dressed.”

By Mansel Fletcher
Photography by Chloë Lederman