The London Lounge

Has anyone read the latest issue of the magazine Brummell, published by Financial News? It has an article on bespoke tailoring. The article is thus summarized:

“In this month’s edition of Brummell we celebrate the concept of bespoke. The term comes from Savile Row, where a customer would bespeak (speak for) a measure of cloth that was then turned into a suit. But the theory behind bespoke has long since expanded beyond the world of tailoring. Inside you will find a directory of bespoke products from attaché cases to umbrellas; a guide to personalised fragrances; a look at tailored champagnes; a guide to commissioning portraits; and the insider’s scoop on the most customisable city in the world: New York.”

Commissioning of portraits and attaché cases have recently been the subject matter of some threads, as far as I can recollect.


The relevant link is: http://67.19.80.66/brummellnew/ from which the magazine can be read from the first to the last page. Should it fail, an alternative link is:

http://www.efinancialnews.com/brummell/ ... 2451789829

In the mean time I skimmed through some of the articles. They are rather disappointing, and I suspect it is just a further token of the same type: an ever-growing tendency to covey the idea that the commissioning a bespoke item whatsoever is the ultra non plus form of expression of one’s personality as an individual. But are not people being cajoled, with such articles, into rushing into this or that famous, traditional, over-hundred-years-old house in the same way they have not long ago been rushed onto the arms of designers, and logos? The article, it was my personal first impression, in a certain sense betrays the very spirit of a bespoke item, for it sounds as a third voice in the context of relationship where we would expect but two.

Amen, Marcelo! Very pithily put.

There is an ad from A&S! Is that a first?

Doug wrote:There is an ad from A&S! Is that a first?

Maybe they have caught up on the expression It pays to advertise even if they don't like talking to outsiders. Well, anyway, it does - and they don't.
NJS