Three rooms, one street, a hundred and thirty-nine years.
Ashworth & Hale has cut at No. 14 Savile Row since 1911 and on the Row since 1887. The rooms have not changed much. Neither has the method.
Where the work is done.
Cloth is chosen downstairs, cut upstairs and decided in front of one mirror. Every suit passes through all three rooms at least four times.
- Ground floor · 200 bunchesThe front room
Two hundred bunches of cloth on a long oak table, a fire that is lit from October, and the rail where the season's pieces hang. This is where cloth is chosen and where tea is poured.
- First floor · 6,000 patternsThe cutting room
Six thousand paper patterns in brown paper, filed by name, going back to 1887. Two cutting boards, a long pair of shears per cutter, and a window that faces north so the light does not lie.
- Ground floor · one mirrorThe fitting room
A three-way mirror in a brass frame, a dress form, a valet stand and one lamp. Everything that matters about a suit is decided here, standing up, in silence.
A short history.
Told the way we tell it to a client who asks, standing by the fire in the front room.
- 1887
Edmund Ashworth, a cutter from Huddersfield, and Thomas Hale, a trimmer from Lambeth, take two rooms at No. 9 Savile Row. Their first order is a frock coat in Oxford grey; the pattern still exists.
- 1911
The house moves three doors down to No. 14 and gains a third room. The three-way mirror is bought second-hand from a theatre in Drury Lane and has not been moved since.
- 1946
Four hundred suits are cut at cost for officers returning without one. Most of the patterns were drafted in a single winter; several of the clients' grandsons are still measured from them.
- 1978
A ready-to-wear line is attempted and withdrawn after two seasons. The head cutter's note in the order book reads: "It fitted no one. Back to the paper."
- 2004
The archive of paper patterns is catalogued and rehoused in acid-free boxes. Six thousand one hundred and twelve names.
- 2026
The fitting room goes online. The suit is still cut by hand, in the same room, with the same twenty-two measurements.
The people who cut.
Sixty-one years in the house between three of them, and opinions to match.
- 01M. OkaforHead cutter · 31 years in the house
Cuts coats. Takes the three observations as well as the twenty-two measurements, and will tell you which shoulder you lead with before you do.
- 02J. WhitlockTrouser cutter · 18 years
Believes a trouser is harder than a coat and has the evidence. Responsible for the house rise, the side adjuster and the two-inch turn-up.
- 03A. LindqvistCoatmaker · 12 years
Pads the chest canvas by hand, thirty hours a coat. Sews buttonholes with silk twist in complete silence and prefers it that way.
Come and see the rooms.
Tuesday to Saturday, ten to six, by appointment. The first hour is a conversation, a look at cloth and the measurements. Nothing is ordered on the day unless you want it to be.