By Elliott West
“The most exciting tailor on Saville Row in decades”.
Hardy Amies
Introduction
Born in 1943 in Barmouth, Meirionnydd, Wales, Tommy Nutter was one of the most prolific tailors of London’s Savile Row. Famous for reinventing the Saville Row suit in the 1960s. Raised by his parents Christopher and Dorothy in Edgware, Middlesex, his father ran a local cafe in the high street. The family would later move to neighbouring Kilburn. Tommy initially trained as a plumber but this career dream aside when he was 19, discovered his true passion for tailoring. A love that would cause him to go on to study tailoring at the Tailor and Cutter Academy.
Cut from the Right Cloth
Tommy Nutter joined the tailors Donaldson, Williamson and Ward in the early 1960s and after seven years branched out on a joint venture with Edward Sexton to open the tailor’s Nutters of Saville Row at 35a. Financially backed by Cilla Black, her husband Bobby and the lawyer James Vallance-White, the business became an overnight success. Designing outfits for the likes of Mick Jagger, Sir Elton John and George Harrison’s outfit on the cover of the Abbey Road album along with three of the other Beatles in his suits.
A dip in demand in the 1970s, led to Nutter diversifying to ready-to-wear clothing for Austin Reed and growing the Saville Row brand in East Asia and Japan. The Nutters brand continued until 1983 with a number of snooker players such as Jimmy White taking a keen interest in their unique brand of tailoring and design. In the 1980s, their tailoring was a cross between the big-shouldered look of Miami Vice and the traditional Saville Row look. Even Kirk Stevens’s classic white suit from the 1984 Masters was straight off their tailor’s dummy and Jack Nicholson’s role as the Joker in the 1989 film Batman was created by Tommy Nutter.
The Brand
The Tommy Nutter brand continues to this day despite losing its creator to complications caused by the cruel disease AIDS in 1992 aged just 49. J&J Crombie now owns the brand. Nutter will be remembered for being the tailor who ripped up the rules of Savile Row and incorporated the vibe of the Swinging Sixties into his clothes. He was the archetypal dandy who attracted Terence Stamp, and Vidal Sassoon to his shop and even the teenage dandies of the East End aspired to own one of his suits. This was a welcoming and inclusive brand that was owned by a humorist and someone who had an ironic personality Elton John once said of Tommy:
“Tommy completely glamorised Savile Row and made it accessible.” There’s no arguing with that…”
Elton John
