catwalk report on Kilgour ready to wear collection in Milan

[WF]

http://www.vogue.co.uk/fashion/show.asp ... rt/id,6423

full-length photos are also available on Vogue - click on the 'full length' tab

[Bishop of Briggs]

Those are just the typical slim fashion styles that so many "designers are offering. Black and white just shows a lack of imagination and true sense of style. Brandelli is slowly killing off the old firm and turning it into another Italian fashion brand like Prada and Dolce & Gabbana.

[storeynicholas]

And so another Great bites the dust and is gathered up to such as the Mermaid Tavern, A Sulka and Sullivan Powell's Oriental cigarettes....
NJS

[Bishop of Briggs]

There seems to be a current trend in buying up established British brands and trying to target the youth market. Pringle and Lyle & Scott are two recent examples. There may be short-term gain but probably long-term pain in such fickle markets.

Gieves & Hawkes is trying to claw back its mature customers who were repelled by the Gieves youth brand. I would guess that Kilgour's older bespoke customers, disgusted by Brandelli's imported Eurotrash staff, are defecting to other traditional houses on the Row.

[storeynicholas]

All the best cutters, whatever their genetic roots, really need to be born within the sound of Bow Bells and pronounce 'half' as 'art' (as in 'art a crahn) and balcony as 'bralcony' and call a suit a 'whistle' - otherwise it is pointless putting chalk and shears to cloth.
NJS

[rjman]

There seems to be a current trend in buying up established British brands and trying to target the youth market. Pringle and Lyle & Scott are two recent examples. There may be short-term gain but probably long-term pain in such fickle markets.

Gieves & Hawkes is trying to claw back its mature customers who were repelled by the Gieves youth brand. I would guess that Kilgour's older bespoke customers, disgusted by Brandelli's imported Eurotrash staff, are defecting to other traditional houses on the Row.

Ballantyne, Drumohr, McGeorge, Chester Barrie, etc., etc., etc.

Gieves has been showing on the catwalk for a while. Even 25 years ago Flusser was able to write that G&H was no longer doing much bespoke tailoring relative to its RTW business. Gieves and Kilgour are using a high-profile RTW to gain the attention of customers who wouldn't have thought of using them, customers who may, sooner or later, buy its bespoke as well. It's something that the so-called New Savile Row did. Both Gieves and Kilgour had significant RTW operations prior to their relaunch as fashion brands; Kilgour's in particular was diluted by a North American license that had very little to do with its style or quality. I prefer its current incarnation to that which was looking for a direction in the 1990s. While I don't agree with much of what Brandelli does or says, he's successfully made Kilgour contemporary while also retaining the traditional bespoke for those who can afford it, even if more attention is focused on their Chinese-made "Entry-Level Bespoke", which is by most accounts a good product.

[K-tie]

I once considered G&H for my next suit in order to experiment a more modern look. Now I know better. Thanks.

[storeynicholas]

What is tremendously sad about the G & H decline is that they designed and built the naval and military uniforms which the whole world then copied with adaptations - as well as having claims to Nelson, David Livingstone (and Stanley) and many other great men.

NJS

[sartorius]

What is tremendously sad about the G & H decline is that they designed and built the naval and military uniforms which the whole world then copied with adaptations - as well as having claims to Nelson, David Livingstone (and Stanley) and many other great men.

Gents, whilst I am not here to act as advocat for the defence for G&H, I have to say that we are in danger of sounding like a bunch of grumpy old men! The G&H bespoke operation is in my experience excellent. The quality of their product, the speed they produce it and the level of their after sales care are outstanding. If you don't like their RTW line (and I don't), then don't buy it. But don't conflate their RTW with their bespoke - they are different operations with different customers and different business models.

[storeynicholas]

When you say 'conflate' do you mean 'confuse'? Encouraging to see that G&H have some support still. And - well, yes, I am quite old and VERY GRUMPY. if there were more grumpy old men of our generation, maybe there would not have been 17 (or with the frantic stabbings of the French students in New Cross is it now 19) fatal stabbings of youngsters in London this year. Hazy, lazy laid-back slackers make for a miserable society. Time to wake up, perhaps.
NJS

[sartorius]

When you say 'conflate' do you mean 'confuse'?

I think that we should accept that SR businesses are like businesses everywhere. No business can survive unless it adapts and, for tailoring, that seems to have meant broadening the customer base by exploiting the brand. I agree with many others here that for some tailors brand exploitation has been difficult and has not always worked. But the proof of the theory is that most of those which have diversified are still in business and the fundamental consequence of remaining in business is that they are still able to offer the bespoke product which they have offered for 100 years+.

My own experience is with G&H and I know that their bespoke operation is separate from the RTW business. Many of the tailors will tell you that they don't like the RTW side of the company either, but they do recognise that the two exist in symbiosis.