Bespoke tailors · Savile Row, London W1
At the same table since 1921
The house / Established 1921
Oak. 1921. A long pale scar from a piece of window glass during the Blitz. Arthur wouldn’t have it planed out. His granddaughter still cuts over it.
01 / The names on the door
Arthur Pellow founded the house in 1921 after cutting for other houses on the Row. Edmund Vane was his partner, and the better salesman.
Vane died in 1962. His name stayed because Arthur said the sign would look lopsided without him.
Now Ruth holds the shears. The third Pellow to do so. They were her grandfather’s, and the same family firm in Sheffield still sharpens them.
02 / The people doing the work
Four people make your suit.
Here are a few you should meet.
Owner & head cutter · 36 years at the table
Ruth is 58. Left-handed. Every pattern in the cellar since 1988 is chalked from the “wrong” side. The apprentices learn to read them backwards.
She doesn’t do email. She answers the telephone when she isn’t cutting. If you don’t know what you want, start with what you do all day.
Apprentice cutter · Fourth year
Kofi is 26, from Peckham. He arrived with a fashion degree and “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”.
Dot · Coatmaker · 44 years of jackets
Dot is 71. Her bench is by the back window because the light is better. She is not moving it for anyone.
She can tell which coatmaker made a jacket by the buttonholes. You may start looking at yours rather differently.
03 / Downstairs, your pattern stays
About 11,000 brown paper patterns. On hooks, in rows. Each labelled in pencil. One for every customer since 1921.
Come back after twenty years and we’ll cut from your old pattern, “plus whatever the twenty years added”.
Every order is in the handwritten ledgers, too. The remarks are often the best part.
Order ledger / 1936 / Remarks
“Customer insists on turn-ups.
Told him. He insists.”
04 / What you do all day matters
A jazz trumpeter needed more room across the back to 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.
You won’t find his name here. Or anyone else’s. The house has made suits for people you’d recognise. It has never said who, and never will.
What making your suit involvesThe door is at street level. The workshop is downstairs, and you’re welcome to see it. Ring Ruth for an appointment.
Mon–Fri 9:00–17:30 · Saturday by appointment
Savile Row, London W1.
New York appointments twice a year. Ring to ask about the list.