Savile Row back in the day: Bob Bigg Part 1
Bob Bigg has been a coatmaker all his life, on or around Savile Row. He started an apprenticeship at 16, and over 60 years later is still working, overseeing and training. He worked with many tailors in those years, including the famous Harry Helman and Anthony Sinclair, who was Sean Connery’s tailor.
But the thing I found most interesting about talking to Bob about the Row in the 60s, 70s and 80s was how different it was. It wasn’t dominated by the names we know now, and there were was a fair bit of shoddy work around. On the plus side, it did sound like fun.
After years of hearing Bob’s stories – particularly during our trip to the Whitcomb & Shaftesbury workshop in India last year (below), which Bob set up – we finally made time last week to sit down and talk about them all.
PS: Bob, tell us a little about what Savile Row was like in the 1960s, when you started.
Bob Bigg: Well I learnt my trade in Soho, like most coatmakers did. You started in a workshop there and moved up if you were good enough. The place I trained was over a brothel, so it was a pretty colourful place to work.
I moved to Savile Row when I was 23 at the end of my apprenticeship. It was a very busy place, you had the blokes called ‘trotters’ running up and down the whole time, taking jobs from the tailor to a workshop and back again. The trotters had big black bags made of silesia – pocketing – that they carried everything in.
What did tailors wear in those days?
There was some very formal dressing around, though it was dying out slowly. One of my favourites was Johnny Reed [cutter at Jarvis & Hamilton]. He’d travel into work in a light linen jacket, perhaps some casual trousers. But then he would change into work attire – a shirt with a starched, detachable collar, cashmeres [a black cashmere jacket], a white waistcoat and a flower in the buttonhole. Often a bowler hat.
That collar made you walk around like you had your nose in the air most of the time.
Were the same houses on Savile Row as now?
Oh no, Huntsman is the only one that’s still in the same place. Dege were in Clifford Street, Norton’s were on Conduit Street, Poole’s were in Cork Street, Davies in Maddox. Hawkes were in the same place but Gieves were on Bond Street. Gieves moved to Savile Row when they were bombed by the IRA.
So all these names we think of as being stalwarts of the Row were scattered around the surrounding streets?
Yes. Anderson’s was on the Row but of course they moved off it. Kilgour was a big name but they were over on Dover Street.
Was Savile Row still the centre of things?
Yes it was still regarded as the centre, but there were far more tailors in general – in all the streets around and on both the ground and upper floors. So many names have gone. There’s a board downstairs at Whitcomb with a list of all the ones that used to be there.
Was it common for tailors to have clear succession, for one generation to take over from the next?
No, not really. They were usually centred around one cutter or owner, and when they went the place closed or merged with somewhere else.
With some of the houses the ownership made a difference. Anderson & Sheppard was owned by the Rothschilds then, for instance, before Tiny Rowland took them over. He bought them, so it’s said, to avoid Al Fayed from getting them. Those two hated each other.
Looking at the big Savile Row houses now, it’s easy to think the English are good at succession. But actually the impression is distorted because we only see the ones that are left, not all the ones that closed.
Yes, the only two really that have gone through successions like that are Poole’s and Dege.
Who were seen as the other big tailors back then?
JB Johnston’s was big, as was Carr Son & Woor. Lesley & Roberts was one of the most respected, and Harry Helman. Benson Perry & Whitley on Cork Street made for a lot of the stars, and they made the suits for Dr No – Ian Fleming and Sean Connery had their suits made there.
When it came to the next Bond film, I remember, they wanted too many suits and Benson couldn’t do it. So they went to Anthony Sinclair [with Connery above]. Roger Moore had his suits made there for his first films too, but then he left. He didn’t like it, said the suits were rubbish. Sinclair was using fusing in some thing back then – one of the first to do so.
It was one of the first places you worked, right?
Yes, Sinclair was one of my first jobs. He was on the first floor on Conduit Street – where Tateossian is now – and he had a workshop on the fourth floor. It was a nice set up.
He was a pain to work for though, the kind of person that would expect you to alter the sleeves he cut so they would actually go in the armhole – but then have a go at you later for doing exactly that!
Didn’t you witness a great reconciliation between Connery and Moore?
Oh yes – there was a lot in the papers at the time about the two of them being at loggerheads. It was when Moore had just been made Bond.
I was working on Cork Street, and there was this drinking club round the corner, the 19th. I got a call and someone said “come round here Bob, you’ll see the real story”. I went round and there was Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Ian Carmichael, Trevor Howard and Kenneth Moore all on the piss.
Who were seen as the biggest celebrities of the day?
David Niven (below) was one of the biggest. I made a lot of stuff for him and he was seen as the best dressed man around.
He was a very nice man too. Once I remember he was in the shop, and he needed some small alterations done – buttons replaced maybe. He was old by this point, but he made the effort to go down into the basement and give the girls 50 quid to say thank you. It exhausted him to do it, but he wanted to.
You see the real character of a lot of people in those kinds of environments – how much they respect the people that work to make them look good.
Was it a big thing for Sinclair to be making for Connery at the time?
Oh yes, it was a big deal for him. It didn’t necessarily do to go shouting about it though.
Why not?
Well you’re still selling exclusive work, and to boast about who it was for wasn’t a good look, plus the customer wouldn’t feel like it was their tailor then.
I’ve had quite a few customers like that over the years. I had a few in Palm Beach who would fly me out there, when I had my own operation, but they never wanted me to say I made for them. Their friends all loved the suits apparently, but they wouldn’t recommend me to anyone else.
Gatekeeping, we’d call it today.
Exactly, but it didn’t matter because they’d order enough, and I’d stay in one person’s house – well I can’t really call it a house, it was an estate. That guy was unbelievably wealthy. I remember him saying once that it was easy to be a billionaire – all you needed was a great-grandfather with a dust farm in Texas that found oil!
Were they knowledgeable customers?
Oh yes – to be honest that’s probably the biggest difference between tailoring then and now, the sophistication of the customer.
There’s something about the way I put the shoulders together in my suits, people always seem to say they’re comfortable. Well, he’d notice if anyone else ever made a suit for him, just by that tiny difference in the way the shoulders felt.
What are the other big differences between then and now?
In terms of the product, the biggest change is how much ready-made clothing has improved, it’s been huge. And it’s the trade’s fault, they never really kept up.
When I first started, there was some real rubbish being turned out. Some makers were pretty poor, and the finishing was rough. But customers didn’t really have a choice – there was no good alternative.
Johnny Reed (above), for example had very high standards, and he found this great finisher to do his work. One customer refused to accept the buttonholes weren’t done by machine, and he had to take the customer round to the workshop to prove it, they were so neat.
Some finishing was really poor back then, it looked like spiders had been all over them.
So are standards today much higher?
Absolutely, it’s only the high end that’s left now. The middle and lower end of the market, that’s what’s gone.
It’s a bit like ladies couture, just not as extreme. Back then many ladies had things made couture, and it was expensive – a top-end skirt might cost £600 [over £8000 today]. But there was no alternative. Now it’s only that very top end that’s left.
That’s reassuring I think, because some readers will assume that things were better in the past, when they read about all the Savile Row history and so on. Was cloth better in the past too?
Well not better in lots of ways – there was nothing fine. But cloth was left to hang around longer. Yarn would be spun and then sit around for a year. The cloth would be woven and it’d sit for another year. Now, as they say, it’s straight from the sheep’s back to the cutting board.
That’s what’s referred to as London set, or London shrunk sometimes – what effect does it have on the cloth?
It makes it denser and drier generally. It’s not for everyone, a lot of people won’t like it. But it does have a unique character and it tailors very well. You can really work it with the iron, shrink it and shape it. It’s worth trying some time.
Thanks Bob, I actually have something on the way in a vintage piece, it will be interesting to try.
Part 2 of this interview, tentatively titled ‘Bespoke, booze and babes!’ will be published next week.
