At the close of last week, Savile Row was bustling with people in a manner altogether more late Nineties than the cost-of-living crippled 2024. Inside the ever-so posh, £2 million revamp of tailor Richard James’s 19 Clifford Street townhouse, just off the suit’s global epicentre, a cut of London’s best-dressed crowded in.
Fizz (Blur bassist Alex James’s Britpop sparkling wine, no less) was grabbed off the just-fitted marble bar, and pointed shoulders brushed against the hanging brown paper patterns of the brand’s most notable clients. In Sharpie, familiar names were scrawled across: David Beckham, Sir Elton John, Mark Ronson, Sir Alex Ferguson…
“Harvey Weinstein’s was there too,” Sean Dixon, the company’s co-founder, says, cringing. “I made the assistant burn it immediately.” Naturally, convicted sex offenders have no place in Richard James’s flashy, modern future. Dixon started the company with the namesake designer in 1992, and went on to “ride the Britpop wave”, he says, quickly becoming famous for more forward-thinking uses of colour and texture.
They dressed a more fashionable crowd — less “the old fusty aristocrats coming up in their chauffeur-driven Rolls Royces” which you might have associated with the Row. “We made suits for both Liam and Noel [Gallagher] — in fact we made both their wedding suits, at that time,” Dixon recalls. “And I remember Liam coming in worse for wear after Oasis had done a huge show at Knebworth Festival. In there too was a very serious captain of industry, who I can’t name, and Elton John. I thought, wow, what other kind of clothes shop would have all these sorts of people in at the same time?”
James has since stepped away from the company following its sale to US property billionaire and Curzon Cinemas owner Charles S Cohen in 2020. And now the first taste of the new vision has arrived, drawing in this generation’s film stars Jacob Elordi and Barry Keoghan as fans, which is no better condensed than in the two-year renovation of the two-floor flagship ‘House Of Richard James’.
The building, which looks onto another glass-fronted Richard James retail space opposite, has been owned by the company since 2007 and used as a base for its made-to-measure clients. “We decided to completely refurbish it, take it right back to basics and create a whole different experience — something that represents bespoke, made-to-measure now, in 2024,” Dixon says. They called on David Thomas, the US-born retail interior design expert who helped Ralph Lauren roll out in Europe over a near-decade stint, and now masterminds extraordinarily chic shop floors for brands including Manolo Blahnik and Goyard globally.
“His brief was to create a modern tailoring environment that reflected Richard James,” Dixon says. “I like to think we’re not burdened with heritage, but at the same time, we still have to have a nod towards the past.” The results: customers arrive into a blue paint-licked ground floor full of ready-to-wear items from casual, camel wool suits to socks and jacquard silk ties. Upstairs, a more relaxed space — much more members’ club (armchairs and bar stools) than space to flog shoes. “I always relate having a bespoke suit made to being almost like a spa treatment for men,” Dixon says. “We often get PAs making appointments for their boss who say they only have 15 minutes — but they end up spending an hour, an hour and a half. We wanted to create somewhere people feel comfortable and want to spend time.” He sees the space as a “gathering place for their community” (“please excuse the cliche,” Dixon quips) and offers new collaborations with young designers, and whisky tastings held by a client with a side hustle, as examples of their growing events programme.
But with the UK in recession, who makes up this group willing (and able) to splurge at least £5,000 on a bespoke outfit? This is where the economic tale of two halves becomes most defined. “In the last three or four months, we have actually seen people wanting to wear tailoring even more,” says Dixon. “There is a return of the suit.”
There are slight changes in style — “a lot less infrastructure, less shoulder pads. It’s more comfortable and relaxed because people are not required to wear them for work as much” — but the demand for one-to-one crafted clothing maintains. Men, leaning into treating themselves, are becoming braver when shopping, too. Dixon was shocked when a pink corduroy suit rose to become their best seller, following the classic navy and greys last winter. “That’s always what we’ve wanted, we’ve always championed. When we first started, a long time ago, it was always creative professionals that came to us. But we’d have a pink suit for window dressing, and now we are actually selling it. That’s really a big shift.”
He attests to a decline in streetwear, the key takeaway from the ongoing autumn winter 2024 fashion shows, which are currently showing in Paris. “Trainers are out. People want to wear nice, uncomfortable leather shoes again,” Dixon says.
But, in spite of these thrills of positivity, concern for the future of London’s historic suit-making street persists. “Property is so expensive here,” Dixon says. “I don’t think we’ll ever lose Savile Row — God, I really hope not — but it does need some sort of protection and recognition. That needs intervention at a government level.”
“All the way through, Savile Row has always been relevant,” he adds. “Our job is just to continue keeping it relevant.” Certainly, that is what the Richard James reincarnation plans to do.
Inside £2 million revamp of The House of Richard James
