Mahogany counters, salesmen with tape measures round their necks ... Mark Palmer is kitted out by the last men’s outfitters
Gentleman’s relish
LEEDS LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SERVICE / BRIDGEMAN IMAGES
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very respectable town or city had a clutch of them. Today, the very term gentlemen’s outfitters sounds prehistoric – and wouldn’t find favour with sensitive gender-neutral types. We had several in Reading, where I grew up in the 1950s and ’60s. There was one behind the huge Heelas department store (now a John Lewis), next to Chapstick, the sports shop. My mother took me there to buy my first (and only) double-breasted blue jacket, with faux gold buttons. Tall and lean Roger Moore could carry off this sort of garment with aplomb but if you were short and fat, like me, you couldn’t. ‘Fits like a glove,’ said the dapper salesman, his tape measure slung nonchalantly around his neck – or words to that effect. This struck me as odd because the jacket was singularly uncomfortable. Mind you, from my mother’s perspective it seemed ideal because it was off-the-peg and she thought it would last for years. Which it did. In fact, I still have it, lurking unloved somewhere in the back of the cupboard. That particular gentlemen’s outfitters has long gone – and there are precious few of them left anywhere. The demise began in earnest in the late ’60s and early ’70s when postwar formality clashed with popular culture. Soon shops like Marks & Sparks joined the fray, and browsing became a new and enjoyable pastime – whereas you went to a gentlemen’s outfitters knowing exactly what you needed to buy and your outing was deemed a failure if you didn’t achieve it. In the ’80s, ‘brand’ shops such as Gant and Benetton took more trade away – and wholesalers employing travelling salesmen, whom independent outfitters relied on, began going under. Meanwhile, Burton and Debenhams, which just about could be labelled gentlemen’s outfitters, hit the buffers in 2020 under the stewardship of Sir Philip 30 The Oldie Spring 2022
Gone for a Burton: Burton’s, Briggate, Leeds, 1938
Green’s Arcadia Group. But they were nothing like that shop just off Broad Street in Reading. Memory plays tricks, but in mine it had bow windows, mahogany and glass counters, wooden tie racks with metal clasps and parquet floors smelling of polish. Crucially, at any one time there were as many staff in the shop as customers. ‘May I help you?’ meant ‘May I help you?’ Some have survived. In Oxford, both Walters of Oxford (‘You will always be certain of the red-carpet treatment here’) and Shepherd & Woodward (‘Every detail can be guaranteed as correct’) have been trading for more than 150 years, but you wonder if they would still be around if the university weren’t there. Both rely heavily on the sale of academic gowns and robes. The same can be said about Ede & Ravenscroft on London’s Chancery Lane,
which, established in 1689, is thought to be the oldest tailor in the world; it specialises in ceremonial robes and dresses the judiciary. Gentlemen’s outfitters are not the same as tailors offering a bespoke and pricey service, who may or may not ask, ‘And which way do you hang, sir?’ – but Oliver Brown on Lower Sloane Street manages to offer both off-the-peg and bespoke, plus something in between, whereby they will alter suits, jackets and trousers in such a way that the garments look as if they’ve been made to measure. I was there recently to buy some trousers, to replace those that were part of a suit until the moths feasted on them over Christmas while I was languishing in bed with COVID. Before leaving, I spotted a blue wool suit up for grabs in the shop’s January sale. It needed a fair bit of alteration after being pinned expertly by a man who
