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as posted in aaac...
I don't think this was posted before...
http://www.englishcut.com/archives/000201.html
I don't think this was posted before...
http://www.englishcut.com/archives/000201.html
Life is strange how it can throw up marvelous things one day, then totally disappoint you the next. I normally don't care to discuss things like this, but I've had a lot of enquiring mail asking my opinion of this bit of drivel in The Times: "Armani Attacks Savile Row".
I think the main reason why I'm disappointed by this article is not Mr. Armani's silly ramblings, but more the fact that a journalist of such a respected newspaper would take this story seriously. Then again, the writer is a journalist, and Mr. Armani is a couturist. They are both two individuals who know nothing about [A] true bespoke tailoring and how business is done on Savile Row. For Mr. Armani to set himself up as an authority on this subject is ludicrous, and equally ludicrous is the journalist's inability to separate reality from PR drivel. Had it appeared in some frothy fashion magazine I wouldn't have given it a second thought, but for it to appear in one of our nation's great broadsheets greatly concerns me.
We English tailors have been offering the complete sartorial package on the Row for over two hundred years, advising our customers on shoe makers, shirts, ties and jewelry. The difference is between us and Armani is, we direct them to other professionals in their particular field, we don't pretend to be the best at everything. That way we help maintain the crafts, and also our clients get real authoritative service from the people who matter. We do it for reasons of heritage and tradition, we do not do it for the opportunity to be part of the "snob" group of customers that Mr. Armani so desperately desires. "Snob", by the way, is Mr. Armani's word choice, not mine.
For anyone to pin the hopes of their new venture on the assumed "snobbishness" of future clients is astonishing. The very fact it's being marketed this way would make me avoid it like the plague, even if I was wealthy enough to spend £75,000 on an outfit.
The one thing I know about my customers is, they do not wear my clothes to impress their friends at cocktail parties, or because they wish to partake in a spot of social climbing. They wear them simply because they appreciate both the product and the people involved in creating them.
My clients range from twenty-year-old college students, to eighty-year-old farmers. I make for customers who do world-famous work in design and technology, and people who have the both the financial and intellectual clout to make or break any number of so-called "designers". They live in the real world and are very much part of it. They are not using my services in order to live up to some empty fantasy ideal, conjured up in some soulless media boardroom.
That being said, Mr. Armani, your unnecessary name-calling, uninformed opinions and ego trip notwithstanding, I'm pleased you are giving your craftsmen an opportunity to grasp the highest rung on the sartorial ladder, and hopefully some of them will excel there. Good luck to them.
But yes, to answer some of my readers, Savile Rows has heard all this sort of nonsense before. And it sounded tedious and vacuous back then, too.