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Bespoke tailoring has become more modern. It is the antidote to fast fashion, and remains one of the most sustainable and responsible ways of making clothing.
Not all tailors are pausing their bespoke offering, however. Savile Row-trained Antonia Ede, of Mayfair’s Montagu Ede, is working by eye to have customers select fabrics without touching, and gauging customer’s measurements using her expert knowledge from afar. Customers will wear masks, as will staff, disinfectant will be supplied and all doors will be open in the studio. As she points out, a great deal of trade is reliant on repeat orders with existing measurements already logged, so fittings can be done without contact.
Perhaps the biggest change in bespoke tailoring over the past 10 years has been the number of young women working in and around Savile Row. Antonia Ede's business is a few minutes away, around the corner in Soho. That's not to say that tradition isn't still important; when I catch up with Ede, she is busy finishing off a chasuble for a priest officiating at a wedding two days later.
Women of Savlle Row' is a creative radio feature made by emerging radio / audio producer Clare Lynch (clarelynchsoho). The piece is a conversation between three extraordinary women talking about working in the bespoke tailoring trade. Their voices are heard alongside the sounds of them hard at work in their workrooms in central London.
Clare Lynch who writes for the magazine Soho society spoke to some of Soho’s remaining craftspeople who are keeping its artisan traditions alive.
The Rake meets with Antonia Ede, a Savile Row stalwart who has broken with tradition to found her own bespoke house, and who isn’t afraid to do things a little differently.
Founder Antonia Ede on reshaping the Row and how her company blends the traditional with the modern for a fresh take on bespoke suiting