The freshest new tailors in London

If you’re ever going to have a bespoke suit made, surely it should be for your wedding: the most significant day requires an equally significant outfit. Bespoke tailoring – in London, at least – still has something of an image problem, conjuring images of grey figures in dowdy suits in mahogany-panelled chambers. The reality is very different. There’s never been a more diverse range of tailors to choose from.

“Our goal is to create tailoring that feels comfortable and elevated in every situation,” says Dag Granath, one half of Swedish made-to-measure tailor Atelier Saman Amel. Granath and Saman Amel established the brand in 2015 and have since earned a reputation as one of the chicest tailors in Europe with their louche, luxurious and monochromatic clothes (suits cost from around £2,400). Next month, Saman Amel opens its second bricks-and-mortar store (the first is in Stockholm) on Albemarle Street in Mayfair. Both spaces, created by interior design studio Halleroed, feel more like art galleries than tailor’s shops. “We generally don’t jump straight to talking about clothes with our clients,” says Amel. “Instead we talk about the kinds of lives they live.”

Granath got married last year, and his own choice of attire epitomised the brand’s approach, sitting somewhere between classic suiting and black tie. “For the ceremony, I wore a dark-navy suit in high-twist wool with a white shirt, a dark knitted silk tie and black penny loafers,” he says. “Then for the party in the evening I wore a double-breasted midnight-blue raw silk jacket, off-white silk shirt and black wide-leg trousers.” 

We make a suit that doesn’t get in the way of the person

Those in search of modern British tailoring are similarly spoilt. Following two decades as head cutter in Paul Smith’s Notting Hill tailor’s shop, Tom Arena went his own way in 2021: Atelier Arena, with its workroom in St James’s, has become tailor of choice to Gary Oldman, Jack Lowden and gallerists Iwan and Manuela Wirth among others. “My studio is a place to feel at ease – I want the experience to be relaxed,” says 46-year-old Arena. “You want to come to your tailor and feel inspired – not intimidated.” A bespoke two-piece suit will cost from £4,500. He spends hours hunting down unusual fabrics, and also makes trench coats, bombers and blousons in suede, alongside tailored pieces that feature subtle styling details such as neat, single-button jackets and turn-back cuffs. “I’ve always wanted to offer something different,” he says.

Down an alley opposite Spitalfields Market in east London sits the townhouse that’s home to Taillour, co-founded by studio director Lee Rekert and pattern cutter Fred Nieddu. The pair first met working at the Shoreditch-based tailor Timothy Everest, and launched their label in 2021. The brand name comes from the Anglo-Norman word meaning “to cut, sew or sculpt”. “We don’t restrict ourselves to a house style,” says Nieddu. “We just want to create clothes that our clients will feel comfortable in.” Nieddu trained with an old-school tailor around the corner from Savile Row but, coming from a Sardinian family, was always fascinated by the tradition of Italian tailoring. Over the course of his career he has deftly blended the two, to create suits and separates that mix the best of both worlds. 

The Taillour townhouse, which opened last year, is a four-storey warren filled with artisans. There’s a bespoke shoemaker in the basement, while Fred’s two cutting tables sit at ground level. Clients are seen in an airy, art-lined space on the second floor, while the top floor is home to a troupe of coat- and trouser-makers. A two-piece suit costs from £4,800. Nieddu cut all the tailored menswear for Netflix’s The Crown; other recent credits include outfits for Empire of Light, Wonka and the latest Indiana Jones film. “We’re a creative hub really,” Rekert explains. “We want to make things that people will want to wear.”

On Portobello Road, George Marsh, one half of Speciale, makes softly constructed, understated suits (from £4,884) that are true to his Italian training. He studied under several tailors in Florence before working for a grand master, Antonio Liverano, and the London store is designed to emulate the same casual appeal that one finds in a Florentine neighbourhood. He makes all his suits himself, rather than relying on out-workers – a common practice in London tailoring. “We make a suit that doesn’t get in the way of the person who’s wearing it,” Marsh says. “There’s nothing too stylised or dramatic in the cut or proportions.” Marsh only makes around 20 to 25 garments a year; the waiting list is several months long. Alongside bespoke tailoring, his business partner, Bert Hamilton Stubber, curates Speciale’s haberdashery, selling hand-framed knitwear, Italian handmade shirts, socks, ties, jeans, and all manner of menswear staples.

Of course, some may still prefer something akin to Savile Row, without the risk of stuffiness. Whitcomb & Shaftesbury in Mayfair offers a classic British cut that’s neither too showy nor too conservative. Not that the team doesn’t enjoy getting creative with clients. “We make a lot of eveningwear in silk or velvet for grooms,” says co-founder Suresh Ramakrishnan, citing everything from smoking jackets to frock coats to Nehru collar jackets among recent requests. “We just made a double-breasted royal-blue silk-velvet jacket for a wedding in Cornwall. The idea was that it would pick up the colour of the sea.”

Whitcomb’s Classic Bespoke tailoring service is a clever hybrid, whereby the suit’s pattern is drafted and the fabric cut in the London shop by a small team with Savile Row training, but made in Whitcomb’s own atelier in Chennai, India. Ramakrishnan  and his brother Mahesh, co-founder of the brand, set up the workshop in 2004 in response to the Indian Ocean tsunami; creating a training scheme (in partnership with the charity Children Of The World) that teaches local artisans the craft of tailoring. Twenty years later, the quality of Whitcomb’s garments is indistinguishable from a suit entirely made in London. The price of a Classic Bespoke two-piece suit starts at £3,200 – the starting price at most Savile Row tailors is close to double this.

For wedding suits, the tailors advise to opt for something sober, elegant and understated. “A wedding suit is the one instance where we try to restrain people,” says Nieddu, who wore a dark chocolate brown mohair double-breasted suit to his own wedding in 2019 at Fitzrovia Chapel. “It’s natural to have a lot of different ideas about what you want your wedding suit to be, but there’s a lot to be said for a subtle navy or something restrained in soft grey or even very dark brown. Avoid the baby blues, bright colours and all those loud choices.” Arena agrees: “You don’t want to look back at your wedding photos and think, ‘Why did I wear that?’”