LUXURY LONDON
COUTURE
S
ome eight years ago Kathryn Sargent was something of a unicorn in her profession. She had just been appointed head cutter at Gieves & Hawkes on Savile Row, one of the most prestigious jobs at one of the more prestigious names in global tailoring. For her, it was simply the natural progression of her career. It wasn’t until she received a flurry of letters of support from the public that she realised just how much of a dent she had made in what is an exceptionally male world. “That is what really made me understand how unusual a woman in my position was,” says Sargent, who was the first woman to hold such a position on Savile Row, and who has since set up a successful tailoring business on Mayfair’s Brook Street under her own name. “It certainly hadn’t been easy to get that job, because I think tailoring is one of the last professions that women still have to break into. But times were changing: people may have viewed plumbing or carpentry as typically male trades, but when I left college interest in trades and viewing them as male already felt over. I’m sure many of the senior gentlemen I worked alongside would have preferred a young man as an apprentice, but actually they were inundated with women applying. Some found this shocking, others just didn’t understand it, but others thought it was brilliant.” Plenty of esteemed tailoring houses around London will happily make bespoke suits for women – among them Maurice Sedwell, Huntsman, and Anderson & Sheppard (whose director is a woman, Anda Rowland). Edward Sexton, who has tailored for the likes of Annie Lennox and Kate Moss, notes that it’s something of a specialism. “You have to allow for those wonderful peaks and valleys, which most tailors just don’t understand,” he says, referring to the female form. “You can’t just turn on your training in traditional men’s tailoring to cut for a woman. They end up looking like they’re wearing a man’s jacket.” There is considerably less demand for bespoke tailoring for women than for men, and few women have entered the business, whether catering for women or for men. Sargent, it seems, has been something of a catalyst for raising the profile of women in the industry: Richard Anderson, for example, now has two female apprentice tailors and a number now have their own names over the door.
OPPOSITE PAGE KATHRYN SARGENT; THIS PAGE AND PREVIOUS PHOEBE GORMLEY FROM GORMLEY & GAMBLE
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