Designers Statement
Edward Sexton tailors have played a leading part in dressing the zeitgeist since the early ‘70s. When Edward co-founded Nutter’s of Savile Row with his business partner, Tommy Nutter, the shape of men’s tailoring changed for good. Their bespoke suits were not only fashion, as they approached the traditional craft of Savile Row through young, rebellious eyes. Their work spoke to artists, actors and models, in the new swinging, classless London. It was 1969 when The Beatles strode across Abbey Road in bespoke Edward Sexton suits, creating the cover image of an album that would transform pop culture. Twiggy and Justin de Villeneuve were early supporters. In 1973, Mick Jagger married Bianca Jagger in St-Tropez in a cream gabardine suit, a look that Mark Ronson referenced with his Sexton wedding suit to marry Josephine de la Baume in 2011. Andy Warhol and David Hockney both wore Sexton, as did the premiere designer of his generation, Sir Hardy Amies. When, in 2011, Naomi Campbell modelled a Sexton creation for a photoshoot, she was so smitten she became their closest clients. Bill Nighy and Rhys Ifans wear Sexton in The Boat That Rocked, while Benedict Cumberbatch has worn their suiting to present Saturday Night Live. In 2017, Harry Styles’s design team commissioned Edward Sexton to create an entire bespoke wardrobe for him, filled with bold, block-colour gabardine suits, to launch his solo career.
The sheer beauty and detail of their clothing drew me in when looking a formal suit to suit all occasions, from cutting a dash at a cocktail party to looking respectfully smart at a funeral. Picking a sensible dark blue cloth, Edward told me that when entering a room others will see that I’m well dressed but won’t be sure just quite why, the secret is the cut, the architecture of tailoring. Such subtle but effective intervention not mired by tradition but liberated by the knowledge of good craftsmanship is an attitude that I too have strived for in my own work.
In 2022 Edward Sexton took the opportunity to return to Savile Row and their Creative Director Dominic Sebag-Montefiore asked if I’d be interested in designing their new showroom. Of course, I would be interested even though I knew that work would have to be completed at lightning speed, delivered within a rigorous budget and yet have a crisp high quality finish to reflect the standards of their brand. I was delighted however to discover that working with other creatives the development of the design was fast as Dominic understood what I was trying to convey and how that might manifest itself into 3D.
The showroom itself was modern concrete box with no awkward dimensions, the perfect blank canvas to design the ideal showroom.
The over all style was a modern take on the dynamism of Art Deco as is the in-house look of the tailoring, this reflects in the unusual decoupage applied to the walls using deep gold corduroy, and bronzed and silver leaf wallpapers. The mood however is warm and welcoming, sociable in fact, with a large marble topped island in the middle around which everything revolves, from Edward using it as a cutting table to concealing racks of suits in production to just leaning against chatting and having coffee. With the pull of a cord the dressing rooms are created from nowhere as the deep blue velvet lined in rust-coloured satin whooshes round on the tracks offering large luxurious spaces to try a suit on.
That’s where the magic of Edward Sexton begins.
