Nobody here is interested in being fashionable. We are interested in whether your sleeve hangs right in thirty years' time.
Arthur had cut for other houses on the Row. In 1921 he started his own, with Edmund Vane as his partner. Edmund was the better salesman. The oak cutting table arrives the same year. So does the book pocket, which has been in every jacket since.
The ledgers have kept every order since the first, with a line for remarks. This one is a favourite.
Customer insists on turn-ups. Told him. He insists.
A piece of window glass lands on the cutting table and leaves a long pale scar in the oak. Arthur refuses to have it planed out.
Arthur keeps "& Vane" on the door, because the sign would look lopsided without him.
Ruth Pellow, the founder's granddaughter, is left-handed. Every pattern in the cellar from 1988 on is chalked from the "wrong" side.
Apprentices learn to read them backwards.
Ruth has cut at it for 36 years, the third Pellow to hold the shears. About 11,000 patterns hang in the cellar. The door is at street level and you are welcome to come down.
Dry, precise, and funny without smiling. She answers the telephone herself when she isn't cutting. She dislikes the word "luxury": "it's a word for things you don't need; a good suit you need for thirty years."
"I don't make clothes. I make a record of a person, in cloth, at one moment in their life. Then I spend three fittings arguing with it."
Grew up in Peckham. Came to the Row from a fashion degree and "had to unlearn everything that made clothes look good in photographs". Now cuts trousers on his own.
Ruth says he has "the best eye for a sleeve I've seen in thirty years, and I'm not telling him that". Please don't tell him either.
Has sewn Pellow & Vane jackets for 44 years. Works from a bench by the back window because the light is better, and she is not moving it for anyone.
She can tell which coatmaker made a jacket by the buttonholes.
Sleeps under the cutting table. Is not for sale.
Arthur Pellow and Edmund Vane are not pictured. Arthur's shears are still in use, though: Ruth cuts with them, and they are sharpened by the same family firm in Sheffield.
It has been here since 1921. In 1940, during the Blitz, a piece of window glass landed on it and cut a long pale scar across the top. He refused to have it planed out.
Ruth still cuts over it. It is, as she would say, not timeless. It has aged well.
There is a brown paper pattern for every customer since 1921, each labelled in pencil.
If you come back after twenty years, we take yours down and cut you from it, plus whatever the twenty years added. It is how a man of 91 was re-measured in 2023 from the pattern he was cut from in 1994.
Since 1988 they've been chalked from the other side, because Ruth is left-handed. The apprentices learn to read them backwards. Kofi can.
On the cellar door, in paint: Measure twice. Cut once. Measure again on Tuesday.
Each order gets a line in the ledger, and each line has a column for remarks. The remarks are where the house keeps its memory.
What the ledgers do not keep is a list of famous names for anyone to read. We have made suits for people you would recognise. We have never said who, and never will.
"If you want to know who else wears us, you're asking the wrong tailor."
| Year | Remarks |
|---|---|
| 1936 | Customer insists on turn-ups. Told him. He insists. |
| Once | Measured during a solo. |
The table, the cellar, Dot's window, Hugo. The door is at street level on Savile Row, and the workshop is downstairs. Ring first, so Ruth isn't mid-cut.
Monday to Friday, 9:00 to 17:30. Saturday by appointment. Closed Sunday. Nearest Tube: Piccadilly Circus or Oxford Circus.
Twice a year Ruth takes appointments in New York. Dates are given by telephone to customers on the list.