Many thanks to the Evening Standard who recently ran the following article: -
Cyclist Bradley
Wiggins, singer Paul Weller and actor Martin Freeman have one thing in common —
their tailor. Nick Curtis talks to Mark Powell about the return of the Brit
look.
As tailor to
Bradley Wiggins, Martin Freeman and the Modfather himself, Paul Weller, Mark
Powell is the suitmaker for the new Mod revolution. Powell, 52, made the dapper
outfits that Freeman wore to the New Zealand, New York and Tokyo premieres of
The Hobbit, and the gorgeous double-breasted velvet number that Wiggins carried
off with such aplomb at the Sports Personality of the Year Award.
“Martin is very
pernickety, a perfectionist who knows exactly how he wants things made and has
a very strong look,” says Powell, his growly East End geezer’s accent
unsoftened by decades in Soho. “Paul is that way too. Bradley is lovely to
dress because he’s tall and slim and he looks very smart, but also a bit edgy.
With his shape you can put more of a waist and more of a skirt into a jacket
and make it more elegant. A subtle boot-cut looks better on a long, slim leg.
But he don’t make much fuss: he didn’t even want to try on the blue suit to
check it looked okay, but I made him.”
Wiggins sought
out Powell 18 months ago — “I barely knew who he was back then,” says the
tailor — after hearing an online sartorial show called The Modcast, on which
Powell mentioned that he dressed Weller. Four years ago Weller asked Powell to
make him some double-breasted grey pinstripe suits based on a 1967 fashion
spread in a magazine called Rave, which in turn were a homage to the outfits
for the film Bonnie and Clyde. Around this time, Powell also started making
clothes for Freeman, including a short-jacketed, slim-trousered pinstripe based
on a suit worn by Miles Davis circa 1962.
This was just
after Powell had opened a shop offering dandyish bespoke suits from £2,700,
made-to-measure from £1,300 and ready-to-wear from £800 just off Carnaby
Street, where the Vince Man shop and the tailor John Stephen dressed the first
mods in the late 1950s. And where shops like The Face (and, until recently,
Merc London, now online) sell two-tone tonic suits and bullseye T-shirts to the
faithful.
Today, with mod
favourites John Smedley and Ben Sherman showing at the second ever London
Collections: Men this week, alongside Liam Gallagher’s take on the movement’s
casualwear through his Pretty Green label, it seems Powell is surfing a
zeitgeist-y wave. There are even mod-influenced music acts like Jake Bugg and
The Strypes picking up cues from Weller and the Who. Arguably, the mod values
of seriousness and sobriety (the early mods were pill-poppers rather than
boozers) sit well with our straitened times.
“Mr Weller, Mr
Wiggins and Mr Freeman are all basically following the philosophy of the early
mods,” says Powell. “Everyone was wearing suits back then [in the late 1950s],
so what the mods did was add more detailing and styling but in an understated
way. They were influenced by Italian tailoring and by the Ivy League, preppy
look, knitwear and bow ties. But it was never a generic look, it was always
changing, always evolving. These three guys are putting more of a contemporary
spin on it.”
Powell thinks
there may also be an element of urban aspiration to mod: he is from Romford,
Weller from Woking, Freeman from Aldershot, Wiggins from Kilburn, and they are
all now “men about town”
.
Indeed, the mod
look — derived, fittingly enough, from the word “modernist” — has been through
several incarnations, the smart-suited, clean-cut style of aspirational
working-class lads who listened to US jazz and soul shading later into the
ska-loving, pre-racist skinhead look, with its Harrington jackets and Ben
Sherman shirts. Then it was, in Powell’s words, “f***ed up” by the Who’s 1979
film Quadrophenia, which dramatised the mod vs rocker battles of the 1960s and
established the cliché of mods as scooter-riding, parka-wearing clones. He
points out that the flamboyant late-1960s looks of Terence Stamp, Twiggy’s
manager Justin de Villeneuve and Lord Lichfield were every bit as “mod” as Pete
Townshend in his Union Jack suit or Phil Daniels on a Lambretta.
POWELL thinks
the new flowering of a personalised, stylish version of the look is “a
reaction to the homogenisation of clothes. If you walk down Savile Row,
everyone’s doing the same one-button, slim-fit cut — that hedge-fund manager
style. And people have slowly got bored with over-branded clothing. They want
to express their individuality.”
Powell’s own
influences are too eclectic to be tied to a single genre of fashion. At this
point I should probably declare an interest: he made me a shadow-striped,
gauntlet-cuffed suit for my wedding 13 years ago, and both suit and marriage
are still going strong. He’s made clothes for Bowie and Bryan Ferry too, for
the films Absolute Beginners, Shopping and Gangster No 1, designed an Autograph
range for Marks & Spencer in 2007 and dressed Naomi Campbell for several
public appearances, including in court.
His own look is
a blend of Edwardian gent, riverboat gambler and East End gangster: when I
first knew him he had crayon drawings by Ronnie Kray, a client, on his wall.
Powell was born
in the East End and raised in Romford — his father worked in textiles and his
mother for the theatrical costumier Charles Fox. Even at a young age he was
taking oddments of cloth from his dad to a tailor. He learned to measure and
cut properly in the 1970s at the outfitters Washington Tremlett on Conduit
Street. He opened his first shop on Archer Street in 1985, selling “unworn
suits from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s that I’d found in a warehouse” and began
his tailoring business from there.
He has daughters
aged 22 and 15 and a 19-year-old son, and since the break-up of his marriage
five or six years ago has lived in Soho, first in Frith Street, latterly in
Wardour Street. “It was the place I knew I’d never feel lonely, and I love it,”
he says.” The only trouble is you do become insular and don’t leave the place
much, because everything is here. Even walking to Mayfair or Covent Garden is a
big thing.”
A past Evening
Standard article about modern rakes saw Powell talking happily about the joys
of gambling, drugs, underground drinking dens and lapdancing clubs. “I’ll always
be a bit of a hellraiser, but I’ve calmed down with age,” he says blithely. He
is single and shares his flat with his son Max, who hopes this year to
apprentice himself to one of Powell’s friends in Savile Row as a cutter. “I’ve
tried to persuade him not to become a personality tailor, and to concentrate on
being a good cutter,” says the proud dad. “But he wants to be the next Mark
Powell. Or whoever.”
Mark Powell
Bespoke Tailoring, 2 Marshall Street, W1 (020 7287 5498,
markpowellbespoke.co.uk).
No comments:
Post a Comment