The Coat Route by Meg Lukens Noonan Read Free Book Online Page A

sourced raw materials, both in Great Britain and in the United States.
    Prince William married Kate Middleton, and in so doing shined a light on the sartorial traditions of Old England. (Among the viewing audience were an estimated thirty million Chinese.) Savile Row tailors reported a rush of orders from men who made the guest list. Business on Savile Row grew by 10 percent, even as the world’s economy faltered. Wool prices in Australia rose to record highs. And the venerable Gieves & Hawkes undertook a major renovation to transform itself into a men’s emporium, showcasing several niche businesses under its roof.
    Among the shops-within-the-shop were a branch of Bentley’s, a London dealer in vintage steamer trunks and 1920s cocktail shakers; a salon called Gentlemen’s Tonic, which specializes in classic wet shaves; Carréducker, a hip husband-and-wife team of custom shoemakers who could be seen working in a glass booth surrounded by hand-shaped lasts; and a shoe-shine station operated by a young man named Justin FitzPatrick, an expert in military-grade polishing and a well-known blogger among footwear fanatics called the Shoe Snob. Gieves & Hawkes set out tobe more than a store. It wanted to be an experience, as alluring to a certain kind of man as its upstart American neighbor, Abercrombie & Fitch, was to its younger and scruffier, but no less loyal, clientele.
    I leave Anderson & Sheppard, pass by Abercrombie & Fitch again, and arrive back on Savile Row, in front of the sheep trailer, where there are a dozen or so people with champagne flutes in their hands. A young security guard in a waxed-cotton field jacket and Wellington boots shifts his weight from one leg to the other, his vigilance apparently on the wane. Behind the split-rail fence, the poker-faced sheep are chewing on hay.
    Most of the street is in shadow, but the late-afternoon sun has lit up the white façade of Gieves & Hawkes and illuminated the small-leafed ivy curling out of planters and around the black iron rods of the fence, the navy window awning with the forthright white lettering, the arched entranceway over the black wooden double doors, and, above them, the Union Jack, moving a little in a weak breeze. I walk down the west side of the street, past Ben Sherman and Lanvin, to Ozwald Boateng, the large shop at the corner of Savile Row and Clifford, in the space once occupied by Anderson & Sheppard. I peer through the windows into the gallery-like store. Along one wall there is floor-to-ceiling shelving, painted a glossy black, and in each lighted opening there are men’s shirts, folded flat and arranged by intensity of color—celery to fern, sky to indigo, petal to poppy. In the shop window, I catch a reflection of myself. My sweater, which I had thought fashionably oversized, is, I see now, overwhelming. My slim pants have gone baggy at the knee.
    I decide to do one more lap of Savile Row, before the sheep are loaded back into their trailers, before the old Victorian doors are locked, before the street returns to what it was yesterday andwhat it will be tomorrow. I stop first in a small exhibit barn, erected for Field Day, where tables hold the lovely, simple equation of wool—raw fleece, skeins of twisted yarn, bolts of cloth. Then I’m in front of Huntsman again, looking down over its wrought-iron fence to the basement workroom. Two tailors, older gentlemen with bald heads, are sitting near the big front window, which, even though it is below street level, lets in plenty of light. One, in a lavender shirt, has a garment in front of him on a worktable, and the other, in a dark vest and a white shirt, has his project on his lap. Their heads are bent, and for a moment each has his right hand poised at the top of the stitch, like conductors about to cue the orchestra.
    On the sidewalk, a young man with a trimmed brown beard and tortoiseshell glasses is striding toward me. He is wearing what I am almost certain is a bespoke suit. It is a bold