Pellow & Vane, bespoke tailors

Everything in this brief is true of the business. You may quote it, paraphrase it and build on it. You may not add facts it does not contain.

The house in one breath

Pellow & Vane cut and make bespoke suits by hand on Savile Row, London W1, as they have since 1921. Four people, one cutting table, a cellar full of brown paper patterns, and no interest whatsoever in being fashionable. Their suits are made to outlast the man who orders them, and several have.

The owner and head cutter: Ruth Pellow

• Ruth is 58, the founder's granddaughter, and the third Pellow to hold the shears. She has cut at the same table for 36 years.
• She is left-handed, so every pattern in the cellar since 1988 is chalked from the "wrong" side. 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") and the phrase "timeless style" ("nothing is timeless, some things just age well").
• Her rule, painted on the cellar door: Measure twice. Cut once. Measure again on Tuesday. (People change shape over a weekend.)
• On what she does: "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."
• On nervous first-timers: "You don't need to know what you want. You need to know what you do all day. I'll work out the rest."

The people

• 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 and his name stayed on the door "because Arthur said the sign would look lopsided without him".
• Ruth Pellow, owner and head cutter (above).
• Kofi Mensah, 26, apprentice cutter in his fourth year. 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".
• Dorothy "Dot" Albright, 71, coatmaker. 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. Can tell which coatmaker made a jacket by the buttonholes.
• Hugo, a very old Border terrier who sleeps under the cutting table and is not for sale.

The workshop and its things (strong visual material)

• The cutting table: oak, 1921, with a long pale scar where a piece of window glass landed during the Blitz in 1940. Arthur refused to have it planed out. Ruth still cuts over it.
• The pattern library: the cellar holds a brown paper pattern for every customer since 1921, about 11,000 of them, hanging on hooks in rows, each labelled in pencil. Customers who come back after twenty years are cut from their old pattern "plus whatever the twenty years added".
• The ledgers: every order since 1921 in handwritten ledgers, with a line for "remarks". A 1936 remark: "Customer insists on turn-ups. Told him. He insists."
• Chalk, shears and paper: Ruth's shears were her grandfather's and are sharpened by the same family firm in Sheffield.
• 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.

Stories the house tells (use freely)

• The funeral suit. In 1994 a customer ordered a dark grey suit "to be buried in", paid in full and wore it to every wedding in his family instead. In 2023 he came back at 91, was re-measured from his old pattern, and ordered another one "for the actual funeral, the first one's worn out".
• The two-week suit. A customer once offered double the price for a suit in two weeks. Ruth said no. "You can have it fast or you can have it right. We only know how to do one of those."
• The trumpet. A jazz trumpeter asked for more room across the back so he could breathe on the high notes. Ruth cut the back while he played. It is the only suit in the ledgers with "measured during a solo" in the remarks.
• Nobody is named. The house has made suits for people you would recognise. It has never said who, and never will. "If you want to know who else wears us, you're asking the wrong tailor."

Who reads this site, and what they are afraid of

• The first-timer. Has saved up, or has a reason (a wedding, a promotion, a first proper job, a 50th). Wants a suit that is properly theirs. Afraid of: the price being higher than they can say out loud, looking ignorant in a room full of cloth, being judged, not knowing the etiquette, being talked into things.
• The returner. Has a Pellow & Vane suit already, maybe from years ago, maybe inherited. Wants another, or wants an old one altered. Needs to know their pattern is still in the cellar (it is).
• Both are sophisticated, busy, and suspicious of anything that sounds like a sales pitch. Talk to them directly, as "you". Answer the questions they are too polite to ask.

Plain facts

• Address: Savile Row, London W1. Nearest Tube: Piccadilly Circus or Oxford Circus. Door is at street level, the workshop is downstairs and you are welcome to see it.
• Telephone: 020 7946 0321 (Ruth answers). No email, deliberately.
• Hours: Monday to Friday 9:00 to 17:30. Saturday by appointment. Closed Sunday.
• Price: a two-piece bespoke suit starts at £6,400; a jacket at £4,600; trousers at £1,500; a three-piece at £7,600. Cloth can change the price; Ruth will tell you before you choose, not after. Half on ordering, half on collection.
• Time: about 12 to 14 weeks from first measure to collection, at least three fittings, around 60 hours of hand work by four people. The waiting list for a first appointment is currently about 3 weeks.
• The process: 1) a conversation and measuring (about an hour, bring the shoes you'll wear), 2) the paper pattern is cut and kept for ever, 3) first fitting, a basted shell held together with white thread, 4) second fitting, forward, 5) final fitting and collection. Alterations to any Pellow & Vane suit, whatever its age, are free for the life of the suit.
• Also: alterations to other makers' bespoke suits, by arrangement. Twice a year Ruth takes appointments in New York (dates announced by telephone to customers on the list).

The voice

Dry, warm, exact, a little stubborn, quietly proud, never grand. Short sentences. British English. Humour that comes from plain honesty, not jokes. Talks to "you". Never says luxury, timeless, curated, elevated, bespoke experience, or "crafted with passion". Would rather tell you what it costs than tell you it is worth it.

What the site must do

1. Make a nervous first-timer feel they are allowed to ring. 2. Show what the money buys, in hours, hands and fittings, so the price makes sense. 3. Let the house's character come through: the table, the patterns, the people, the stories. 4. Get the returner back in touch.

Pages to build

• home (index.html): who they are, the character, what a suit costs and takes, why ring, the stories.
• bespoke (bespoke.html): how it works, step by step, with the fittings, the time, the prices and the etiquette questions answered (do I need to know what I want, what do I wear, can I bring someone, what if I change shape).
• house (house.html): the history, the people, the table, the pattern library and the ledgers.

Other pages you may mention but not link: Cloth, Alterations, New York.

The one thing to get right

When someone finishes reading, they should feel they have met Ruth, and that ringing her would be a pleasure rather than an ordeal.