In the late 90’s, I picked up a job working in a post room in Mayfair. The hours were 7am till 10am at first, so I had to be on my toes early. My routine if arriving early for work, which sometimes I did if the number 12 bus I travelled on picked up a favourable tail wind, was to get a take away coffee and walk up and down a then silent Savile Row, which was just around the corner from my office.
I have always been fascinated by the process of bespoke clothing and I enjoyed gazing into the windows of Henry Poole, Anderson and Shepherd, Kilgour French and Stanbury etc., taking in the various cuts and cloths. There was a ‘stuffy’, traditional look and feel to the majority of the shops.
A couple of years later when I started researching my first book ‘The Fashion of Football’ I discovered the name of Tommy Nutter, who it said has a shop on Savile Row.
Tommy in the photos that I found, looked very flamboyant, showy and yes, glamorous even. It was when I read that he opened at number 35a in 1969 that I had to smile. Quite what the old boys of the cutting rooms made of Mr. Nutter back then would be anyone’s guess, but I’m sure he livened them all up.
Thomas Albert Nutter was born in Barmouth Merioneth, Wales in 1943, before the family relocated to Edgware, North London a few years later. Nutter was his real name, not some fantasy 60s ‘look at me’ invention.
Somewhat surprisingly when you think of how things turned out, that he was training to be a plumber as a teenager, before he picked up a seven year tailoring apprenticeship in Burlington Arcade with the firm Donaldson, Williams & Ward at the start of the 1960s, a job that gave him a thorough grounding in all aspects of the trade.
It is fair to say that Tommy enjoyed himself immensely in that heady decade, quickly becoming a face about town. It also brought him into contact with the wealthy and connected. So, when he was ready to launch his own business in 1968 in partnership with master cutter Edward Sexton, a boy from the streets of the Elephant and Castle, he wasn’t short of financial backers.
These included the singer Cilla Black, who had been an early client and Peter Brown, later to be best man at John and Yoko’s wedding, who was then managing director of Apple Corps, which ran the offices of The Beatles, based at the nearby number 3 Savile Row.
Tommy opened the shop on Valentines Day and he was soon off and running very fast, his exotic ‘tradition spiced with daring’ tailoring rooted in the old skills of the craft. He was already picking up a healthy order book, with celeb clients such as Mick Jagger and Elton John having suits going through his workrooms, along with that of aristocrats, filmmakers and working class dandies all looking for what was later described as ‘space age Regency.’
Nutter is perhaps most famous for dressing three of the four Beatles on the cover of their 1969 album ‘Abbey Road.’ Only George by going all double denim stopped him from getting the full house.
Tommy and the now legendary Sexton were also highly regarded for his very influential cut on his women’s tailoring. Sexton bought the company from Nutter in 1976, which eventually left Tommy struggling somewhat financially, before he moved on to the company Kilgour French and Stanbury.
That fit didn’t really work, so he returned in his own shop in 1982 at number 19 Savile Row, later to create outfits for the film ‘Batman’ in 1989, with Jack Nicholson as The Joker wearing Nutter.
Sadly, like too many in the fashion industry, he succumbed to an Aids related death in 1992, but his name lives on.
Edward Sexton meanwhile continues in tailoring at 26 Beauchamp Place, Knightsbridge.
The Mumper of SE5
