Culture
Tailoring as an industry and an idea: where it came from, who shaped it, and why a craft that should have died out fifty years ago is still here. Dress codes have collapsed, fashion weeks have changed what reaches the high street, and the trade has survived all of it by being useful rather than nostalgic.
A trade that keeps refusing to die
Tailoring has been declared finished at least four times: by the arrival of ready-to-wear, by the 1960s, by business casual, and most recently by remote work. Each time, the prediction was reasonable and each time it was wrong, because the thing being predicted was demand for suits rather than demand for clothes that fit.
What has changed is who commissions and why. The obligation has gone, which means the people walking into a tailor now have chosen to be there. That has made the trade smaller, more expensive, and considerably more interesting than it was when every office in the country enforced a dress code.
Common questions
Why does Savile Row matter?
It is the place the modern suit was effectively invented, and the standard by which bespoke is still measured everywhere else. A single street in Mayfair has held the highest expression of the craft for roughly 170 years, largely by refusing to industrialise. That it survives at all is remarkable.
Is tailoring dying out?
It nearly did, in the 1960s and 70s, when ready-to-wear arrived and a generation rejected their fathers' tailors. What saved it was the collapse of the dress code, oddly enough - once nobody has to wear a suit, the people who do are choosing to, and they want it to fit.
What actually killed the dress code?
Technology money, mostly, followed by the pandemic. Silicon Valley made informality a status signal rather than a lapse, and remote working finished the job. What replaced it is harder, not easier: with no rules, the burden of judgement falls entirely on the wearer.
Do fashion weeks matter if you do not follow fashion?
More than you would think. Lapel widths, trouser cuts and shoulder shapes filter down from the shows to the high street over about three years, so the suit available in a mid-market shop today was decided on a runway some time ago. You do not have to follow it to be affected by it.