March 13, 2005
savile row sewers
London was fun. I was there less than 48 hours, but that was plenty. Got some stuff done, saw a few people, caught the train back.
The highlight of my weekend was the time I spent on Savile Row; seeing it from an informed eye for the very first time. I loved every minute of it.
The funny thing about Savile Row is that yes, there are actual real tailors actually sewing stuff. It’s not just retail storefronts.
Walk down the Row and around the back streets. Look in all the basement windows, underneath the stairwells. Guys sewing in little workshops. There they are.
And the thing is; you have to be nice to these folk. If you just sold a couple of suits to Monsiuer Ambassador, once you’ve designed the pattern and cut the cloth, you need to find a freelance tailor to sew it all together for you.
And he’s already busy. He’s probably doing you a favor by taking the job on. And dropping Monsieur Ambassador’s name won’t phase him. He probably was sewing for Monsieur’s boss the week before. So everything, and I do mean everything, is fuelled by an interdependant sense of goodwill. Something only given lip service in most organisations.
It’s a tight little community. They all know each other, they all rate each other. And news travels fast.
More than once, a tailor approached Tom on the street this weekend, said he’d heard Tom’s been busy lately, and handed Tom his phone number.
Happy to sew for you, great news on your website, call me if you need anything etc.
This explains why Tom’s site hasn’t been updated in almost a week. Yes, he’s gotten busy. English Cut is almost working too well. Managing the “increase in demand” has eclipsed “lack of demand” as the biggest business issue in less than two months.
Tom and I are both quite stunned, to be honest.
[ALSO:] English Cut gets a mention in Slate. Very cool.
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A wee chuckle to start your day off right etc.
Why should you be stunned?
People are sick of buying from faceless corporate hegemonies. It’s easy to care about people. It’s something humans are wired to do.
You just have a lot of people who want to help you because they like you.
Humans are strange. But wonderful.
Hey Hugh…
I love the way you stumbled into this, and have embraced it fully. One of the secrets to success is being able to recognise and then evaluate the myriad opportunities flinging themselves at one every day.
To most of us, helping a tailor out with some advice on his blog is as far as it would go. For a small percentage of us, we’d even go so far as to offer said tailor some amazingly insightful marketing advice.
Only one of us — you, Hugh — actually thought, “Hmmm… here’s an opportunity to get OUT of this damned advertising world I’ve been badmouthing of late. What do I need to do to take this opportunity by the collars????“
You’re into conversation, Hugh. Have you read THE REPUBLIC OF TEA? It’s one of those business books that IS conversation in your sense of the word, but that predates the concept by at least a decade. Well worth the read.
Blue skies
love
Roy
I dunno if it was so much a clear need to get out of advertising, Roy. It just all kinda happened by accident.
I think once The Hughtrain was pretty much written and explained, it was time to dig the teeth into something else.
Like the cartoon.
I didn’t spend that much time in New York, but I do remember sitting in a couple of bars waiting for people. Sitting at the bar nursing a beer, waiting for people to finish work or whatever, inevitably within a few minutes some girl, usually good looking in that skinny unfed stressed New York kinda way would “happen” to be ordering a drink next to me, and the following conversation would take place.
“Hi, how are you?“
“Yeah, I’m fine, how ’bout you?“
“Yeah, things are goin’ good, I’ve just been down in SoHo looking at a really good art exhibition/working at my ad agency/writing some stuff (this was mid-town, all the bankers were downtown, and still working). So what about you? (i.e. what do you do?)“
“I’m a business consultant.” (neglecting the difficult to understand and uncool fact that it is IT systems for banks, but making it clear I am middle class and solvent.)
“OK. So, waiting for friends?“
“Sure, my date, and a couple of friends as well.)
THUNDERCLAP!
*She thinks* ” “Ohmigod, a STRAIGHT guy in NEW YORK. Might be single.“
Then, her drink arrives and she sits there for a couple of seconds, I say nothing, and she gets up and goes.
Jesus, if I wanted to get laid a lot a lot a lot, then I would have moved to New York when I was thirty. It would have been too much though.
You know, Hamish, I think I know that girl.
“I may not look bovine, but boy, am I cattle.”