The house, since 1921
The sign would look lopsided without him.
Arthur Pellow founded the house in 1921, after cutting for other houses on the Row. Edmund Vane was his partner, and the better salesman. He died in 1962. His name stayed on the door because Arthur said the sign would look lopsided without him. It is still there, and so are we.
The sign over the door, Savile RowThe table
Oak, 1921, with a scar from 1940.
The 1921 oak cutting table, the Blitz scar running its length, Hugo asleep underneathArthur bought the table the year he opened. In 1940, during the Blitz, a piece of window glass came in and landed on it, and left a long pale scar down the oak. Arthur refused to have it planed out. Ruth still cuts over it, thirty-six years now.
Everything we make starts on this one table. There is no second one. Four people share it, in turn, and a very old Border terrier sleeps beneath it and is not for sale. You are welcome to come down and see it. The door is at street level and the workshop is downstairs.
The people
Four of us, and Hugo.
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Ruth Pellow at the table, chalk in handRuth Pellow
Owner and head cutter. 58. Third Pellow to hold the shears.
Arthur’s granddaughter. She has cut at the same table for thirty-six years. She is left-handed, so every pattern in the cellar since 1988 is chalked from the wrong side, and the apprentices learn to read them backwards. She is dry, precise, and funny without smiling. She does not do email. Appointments are made by telephone, and she answers it herself when she is not cutting.
She dislikes the word “luxury”: “it’s a word for things you don’t need; a good suit you need for thirty years.” She dislikes “timeless style” more: “nothing is timeless, some things just age well.”
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.
Ruth, on what she does -
Kofi Mensah cutting a trouserKofi Mensah
Apprentice cutter, fourth year. 26.
Grew up in Peckham and came to the Row from a fashion degree, where he “had to unlearn everything that made clothes look good in photographs”. He 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”. She hasn’t. We just did.
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Dot Albright at the bench by the back windowDorothy Albright
Coatmaker. 71. Forty-four years of Pellow & Vane jackets. Dot, to everyone.
She works from a bench by the back window because the light is better there, and she is not moving it for anyone. She can tell which coatmaker made a jacket by the buttonholes. Bring in an old Pellow & Vane jacket and she will tell you who sewed it before she looks at anything else.
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Hugo, under the cutting tableHugo
Border terrier. Very old.
Sleeps under the cutting table. Not for sale.
The cellar
About 11,000 people, in brown paper, on hooks.
Downstairs, the cellar holds a pattern for every customer since 1921. They hang in rows, each labelled in pencil with a name. When you order, yours joins them, and it stays for ever. Come back after twenty years and you are cut from your old pattern, plus whatever the twenty years added.
Every pattern chalked since 1988 is chalked from the wrong side, because Ruth is left-handed. Kofi learned to read them backwards.
The rule is painted on the cellar door, because people change shape over a weekend.
Measure twice. Cut once. Measure again on Tuesday.
Painted on the cellar door
The pattern library: rows of brown paper on hooks, pencil labelsThe ledgers
Every order since 1921, by hand, with a line for remarks.
The remarks line is where the house keeps its opinions. From 1936: “Customer insists on turn-ups. Told him. He insists.” Another entry, for a jazz trumpeter who wanted room across the back to breathe on the high notes, reads “measured during a solo”, because Ruth cut the back while he played.
Names are in the ledgers. They do not leave the ledgers. We have made suits for people you would recognise and have never said who. “If you want to know who else wears us, you’re asking the wrong tailor.”
Chalk, shears and paper
The things that have not changed.
The shears
Ruth’s shears were her grandfather’s. They are sharpened by the same family firm in Sheffield that sharpened them for him.
The chalk
Every line on every pattern is chalked by hand, and since 1988, from the left.
The paper
Brown paper, cut to you, labelled in pencil, hung on a hook. It is the one thing you buy here that you never take home, and the one thing that lasts longest.
The book pocket
Every Pellow & Vane jacket has a hidden inside pocket sized for a paperback. It has been there since 1921. Nobody has ever been asked if they wanted it.
Come and see it
The door is at street level. The workshop is downstairs. Ring first.
Ruth will show you the table, the scar, the cellar and, if he is awake, Hugo. If you already have one of our suits, bring it, or bring the name it was cut for. The pattern is on its hook.
020 7946 0321 Monday to Friday, 9:00 to 17:30. Saturday by appointment. Closed Sunday.
The stairs down to the workshop