Frederick Scholte (Savile Row)

[ctp120]

Glad to have stumbled on this thread. Thanks, CrimsonSox--feels like SF from the early days (2004-2008), during which I learned so much.

 

[CrimsonSox]

The Duke of Windsor in Boston, 1943:



The perfectly proportioned shoulder:







Chalk stripes:



Wallis Simpson's favorite photograph of the Duke:



In living color -- bolder than you think:



Not always vented. Note that the trousers have no break:



The Prince of Tweed:





A suit that fits in motion:

 

[CrimsonSox]

The softly rolled lapel. The Duke's jackets had a gentler waist suppression than you might expect from jackets today. The elegance of the jacket comes less from a suppressed waist, and more from a beautiful shoulder. It's neither too sloped nor too straight; it's smooth and well-made; and it's precisely proportioned in width to his head. Compare Mr. Disney's suit shoulder, which is artificially straight and too wide, or the King of Jordan's shoulder, which is cut too narrowly for his head.







Photo by Cecil Beaton:



The Duke and his dog, Disraeli:



The Duke visiting Virginia:



The bow tie with the suit.



The bow tie with evening wear. Both the suit and dinner jacket button 4X1.



Showing the shirt cuff:



The light colored suit for summer:



That shoulder:



From the Annals of Unexpected Meetings. With Julie Andrews. The Duke is wearing sunglasses after having eye surgery.

 

[inimitable]



Ah, I should have said light in color marco.

It's good to hear from you, Len.  I always enjoy seeing your work, and I greatly enjoyed the stories.  The Duke of Windsor once saw Scholte ripping a morning coat off the back of the American Ambassador, after the Ambassador's wife started criticizing it during a fitting.  I'll have to post a short excerpt from the Duke's memoirs on his experiences with Scholte. 

If you are referring to "A Family Album', it's a fantastic read. i've just finished it actually.

Great thread BTW

 

[CrimsonSox]

Not Scholte or the Duke of Windsor, but it's a fun picture of a royal, Prince Philip, with Gwyneth Paltrow and Cameron Diaz:

 

[CrimsonSox]

The Duke reflects in A Family Album on differences between British and Americans on coordinating colors:

"However formally they may be dressed, Americans do tend to wear brighter ties than the British do. . . . There are differences between the two races in other such details of dress. I myself like, for example, when I dress in the morning, to see that my tie, socks, shirt, and handkerchief tone, more or less, with the suit I have chosen. I have not noticed many Americans who match up their clothes in this way. Often I have seen them wearing, say, a blue suit with a fawn shirt, red tie, and green socks. I have one American friend, the president of a big corporation, who goes to the opposite extreme. He likes to wear shirt, tie and handkerchief of precisely the same checked pattern. This, maybe, is carrying conformity a little too far. These various accessories of masculine costume should, in my view, blend, but they should not match too exactly. This, I suppose, is an instance of the notorious British convention of understatement, expressed in terms of clothes."

Matching tone:



vs. contrasting tone and the bright, highly saturated American tie:



Matching too closely. Get this man a light shirt, matte tie, and grey suit, stat!

 

[CrimsonSox]

A review of London and Paris firms, including from Savile Row, in The New Yorker, 1929. The writer is a bit conservative, referring to the fashionable nature of Scholte's cut. Some of the advice on ordering suits, however, might be of current interest.

Notably, a firm's quality in 1929 was quite distinct from its quality today. T.M. Lewin, now a mass-market store, back in the '20s made the vanished luxury of "evening shirts with starched bosoms and cuffs, and bodies of handkerchief linen." Turnbull and Asser is mentioned not as a place to buy shirts, but gloves. Henry Poole is listed as having a branch in Paris.

A few clarifications. The author writes that Savile Row suits were only 15 to 17 guineas at the time. That's $1,262 to $1,430 in current dollars, less than Samuelsohn MTM. The "King" is George V, the Duke of Windsor's father. "Hand-me-downs" refers not to vintage clothing, but to ready-to-wear, as Vox wrote: http://www.voxsartoria.com/post/56574697136/the-persistence-of-quality

Quote: English tailors require plenty of time to do their work properly, and it is a great mistake to rush them. It is also a mistake to insist on an American cut; the best tailors will refuse to depart from the lines on which they have made their reputations, and those who allow you to coerce them usually turn out a suit that is neither one thing nor the other. If you must, however, have an American cut, there is one man, J.C. Wells, 19 Maddox Street, who makes good English clothes but will also turn out a credible suit on American lines.

Don't go to a cheap tailor. The money you save won't make up for the time wasted, and it is doubtful whether the suit will ever satisfy you. The better ones charge from 15 to 17 guineas for a lounge suit, and they give you a 15 per cent discount for cash. In addition to this, of course, there is the [import] duty to be considered.

However, if you are staying in London a while and have need of clothes, these houses are among the best: Davies & Sons, 19 Hanover Street, are conservative; the King gets his clothes there. Poole, 37 Savile Row, is also conservative. Both firms ask for an introduction from one of their customers. Pleydell & Smith, 12 Cork Street, have a large following among younger Englishmen and Americans. Their evening clothes are excellent. Anderson & Sheppard, 30 Savile Row, are also very smart and have a number of American customers; they are known for their fabrics. Lesley & Roberts, 16 George Street, Hanover Square, makes clothes for many of the guardsmen. F.P. Scholte, 7 Savile Row, is rather extreme. Hawes & Curtis, 53 Jermyn Street, are known as haberdashers, but also make suits; Jack Buchanan is one of their customers.

Among the shirtmakers, Hilditch & Key, 48 Jermyn Street, are patronized by university men; this, like most of the shops mentioned below, also sells haberdashery. Whitelock & Son, 64A Pall Mall, are fairly expensive but have unusually fine ties and sweaters. Beale & Inman, 131 New Bond Street, and Harborow, 6 New Bond Street, are good. T.M. Lewin, 39 Panton Street, makes evening shirts with starched bosoms and cuffs, and bodies of handkerchief linen. H. Lundlam & Company, 37 Albemarle Street---small, old, conservative, in a shop that should be visited if only for its atmosphere -- make excellent shirts.

For shoes, I suggest Hoby & Gullick, 1 Ryder Street; R. Thomas & Sons, 5 St. James Street; Alan McAfee, 38 Dover Street; and Peal, 487 Oxford Street. H.E. Randall has several shops -- one is at 171 Regent Street -- where good ready-made shoes are sold.

Lock & Company, hatters, have been at 6 St. James Street for centuries; the front of the shop is two hundred years old. This is the place to have a silk hat made to suit your height and the shape of your head and face. Herbert Johnson, 38 New Bond Street, and Scotts, 1 Old Bond Street, also make fine hats.

Horace E. Sleep, 345 Oxford Street, and Turnbull & Asser, 71 Jermyn Street, specialize in gloves. Brigg, 23 St. James' Street, is famous for umbrellas and sticks. Asprey, 165 New Bond Street; Vickery, 143 Regent Street; and Finnegan's, 18 New Bond Street, are places to go for leather goods and novelties of all kinds.

As you may know, some of the concerns I have mentioned are well represented in New York shops.

Paris is not the best place in the world to buy suits. Even though many Paris tailors have English cutters and some British firms have branches there (Poole, for instance, at 18 Rue Tronchet), it seems rather pointless with London so near. However, Paris has some excellent shirt-makers who also make unusually good dressing gowns and pajamas: Boivin, 10 Rue Castiglione; David, 32 Avenue de l'Opéra; Byron et Cie., 50 Avenue des Champs-Élysées; Jourdain & Brown, 14 Rue Halevy; Lambert, 84 Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré; and Charvet, 8 Place Vendôme; and, of course, Sulka, 232 Rue de Rivoli. All these shops carry ties, socks, and the like. At Charvet you can get those large batiste handkerchiefs that are worn in the evening. Lanvin, 22 Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré, has marvelous ties. Louis Vuitton, 70 Avenue des Champs-Élysées, is famous for luggage, and Hermes, 24 Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré, has all kinds of leather novelties." -- G. McC.

 

[CrimsonSox]

This is a shopping guide to London from Vogue, May 15, 1927. Our man Scholte makes an appearance in the article, as well as other famous firms, such as Anderson & Sheppard and Davies. A fascinating detail is that four shoemakers are mentioned as the best in London at the time: Lobb, Peal, Thomas, and McAfee. I believe that the only surviving bespoke firm is Lobb.

An earlier London shopping guide by Helen Josephy and Mary Margaret McBride, London is a Man's Town (1930), appeared earlier on this thread. On tailors: http://www.styleforum.net/t/355817/frederick-scholte/15#post_6731203 On Hawes & Curtis, Turnbull & Asser, and other shirtmakers: http://www.styleforum.net/t/355817/frederick-scholte/15#post_6731209

From Vogue. I've included the section on men's clothes, without the ones on cars and children's clothes.



Quote:

What man has not dreamed of one day of shopping in London? And, indeed, it is a dream worth realizing, for nowhere in the world are the men's shops so numerous. In them, every whim of masculine imagination has been anticipated -- a fact that is one of the reasons for calling London a man's town. Certainly, nowhere else do men look so well dressed as in London. The perfection of his clothes, plus the high standard of grooming, makes the casual Englishman, dressed in his tail-coat and white tie, appear to be unique among men.

The London Tailor

When the stranger comes to London, his first thought is of a tailor. Out of the dingy, unimpressive shops of the best-known tailors come those smartly cut clothes that the tailors of no other country quite reproduce. But the London tailor must be handled with care in order to get the best results. Americans who arrive on a Monday and depart for Paris the following Saturday can not expect to leave England with a wardrobe that represents the tailor's best efforts. Though this phenomenal feat is often achieved, clothes born of that emergency are nothing like the clothes that the English tailor can turn out when he has time for the proper number of fittings, especially if the customer is a new one. In the ordinary course of events, the London tailor delivers a suit with the instruction that, after it has been worn a few times, the minute faults will be discovered and the suit will then be given its final and last adjustment. Then, and only then, will the garment be perfect. So the first consideration of shopping in London should be the amount of time a man can spare to his tailor. Give him as many fittings as he asks and given him a little more time than he has calculated on in order to allow him to have the clothes back again and again until they are right. As to the cut and fit, leave it to the tailor and make the minor changes as the fittings proceed. Do not make the mistake of having a London tailor copy your American clothes. He can never do it, and they will be a failure.

Hats and Boots

Next, after the visit to the tailor, should come a round of the hat shops and the bootmakers. They are all close to one another in the West End, in or near Bond Street. The tailors are most in Savile Row and the little side streets leading into Bond Street, and there are an incredible number of them. Looking about, you will see the names of the best known, such as Scholte, Anderson and Sheppard, Johns and Pegg, Davies, Kilgour and French, and, a little further away, close to Hanover Square, Lesley and Roberts. The hat shops and bootmakers are scattered about from Bond Street to Pall Mall, and every place in a shopping tour is within walking distance of the others. I suggest a round of the hat shops, because, while Hilhouse in Bond Street, Scotts in Piccadilly, White in Jermyn Street, and Lock in St. James' are all equally good, the shape and form of one maker may suit one individual better than that of another. And this applies to all London shops. The cut of one tailor may be more successful for you than that for another man, though the tailor himself cannot be said to be better. Nothing could be more interesting to the American who has never been in London than a visit to Lock, the hatter. This quaint shop has stood unaltered in St. James' Street for over two hundred years. The window, which looks like the window of an old Valentine shop, has a display of very brave hats from the dim past when men wore clothes which now would only be suited to musical comedy. Inside the shop are rows and rows of dingy band-boxes out of which come the smartest and newest shapes of the season. Henry, who has been there for forty years, will point through the back window to the facade of the original shop that is now buried many yards back from the street, but which was once on the line of original shops, when St. James's Street was much wider than it is now. There are not many shops as old as this, but all of them have impressive traditions. But, unlike the shops of other cities, the oldest shops in London are the most up-to-date in the way of business, continuing to create the latest thing and make the fashions.

Next to Lock is Thomas, the bootmaker, who with Lobb, Peal, and McAfee makes up the quartette of the four famous bootmakers of the world. A little up the street is Brigg's, with a window full of furled umbrellas, seat-canes, and various accoutrements of English sport. Inside, you will find that the man who sells you a stick will have it cut off to a length to suit your personal taste. This is a thing seldom done in America, but absolutely necessary if the stick is to be used with any comfort. Round the corner in Jermyn Street is a dazzling row of shop-windows and famous haberdashers' signs. You can not resist gazing at the silk underwear and sweaters in the window of Turnbull and Asser or the waistcoats and ties that are shown by Hawes and Curtis, the famous shop where the Prince of Wales gets his waistcoats. Going through the Piccadilly Arcade, across Piccadilly, and through the Burlington Arcade, you could spend an hour "window shopping" and be tempted as many times as you turn around. You have not seen the London shops until you have walked through the Burlington Arcade, for, while they are not the smartest to be found in London, these little shops, like bazaars strung along in a row, could be reproduced nowhere else in the world. They are all tiny, with gaily lighted windows crowned with no end of amusing things.

Men's Accessories

Come out into Bond Street, cross over, and look into Asprey's. There is no shop, anywhere, like it. It seems to have been designed and carefully thought out for men to spend his money in. So varied and so attractive are its wares that the man who stops to linger before the windows and finally passes in through the swinging doors presided over by a tiny boy in buttons is destined to come out a poorer, but a wiser man. Here, you will find everything from jewellery to luggage. Watches, cigarette-cases which open in a special way (Asprey's own patent), toilet bottles, note-paper, and almost every luxurious accessory are to be had. Further along is Sulka; but a Sulka with different things from those shown in Paris or New York. You will even find that Vuitton's shop seems somehow to have come under the spell of London and also differs from his place in Paris. At Finnigans, across the way, the choice in leather goods is baffling to even the surest taste. From a huge table spread with wallets and bill folders, you will inevitably choose several, since they are all so attractive that your decision can never be narrowed to one.

Then you must not forget that London is the place to buy gloves. Go over to any one of Sleep's shops, and you will be amazed at the variety of the gloves shown in these tiny places. London spells sweaters, too, to the man who shops. Look for them everywhere, but especially in the women's shop at Fortnum and Mason. There, all the men are now going to find the new models. Of course, no man ever forgets to buy neckties in London. But don't buy the first smart necktie you see, for, in the London shops, the choice is endless.

Last Words of Advice

We have a few more words of advice to the American shopper, concerning some of the things one should always bear in mind on coming to London.
Remember that the best brushes in the world are of English make, and, as really good brushes are essential to a well-groomed head and are very expensive in New York, it is wise to buy them in London.

English leather goods are famous the world over for their smartness, solid workmanship, and durability. Many of the large London stores have an excellent leather department, and various smaller shops make a specialty of the finest leather products.

The best woolen stockings are invariably of English make, and one should certainly replenish one's supply while in London. Practically all the big department stores carry them in a great variety of weights, weaves, and colours.

 

[CrimsonSox]

The windowpane suit. I love looking at that suit shoulder. It's the picture of moderation: neither too straight nor too sloped; neither too wide nor too narrow. Richard Anderson once wrote that Scholte had the reputation of making the best shoulder on the Row in the early to mid 20th century.



Black tie with turn-down spread collar and white pocket square. Note the similarity in the shoulder:



If I ever include a photo that's already been posted by a friend on Tumblr, once informed I can replace the photo with a link to the original site. In living color:



Daytime formal wear, featuring Scholte's famous morning coat, photographed by Cecil Beaton. The more casual photos from the Duke's wedding are charming and not seen very often.



A formal wedding photograph, with one of the most striking floral arrangements I've ever seen. The photo also shows the lines and drape of the Duchess' wedding dress beautifully.



A spontaneous moment. You can be sure a woman likes you when she grooms you.



Pictures from a marriage. This suit is documented as being by Scholte.

 

[CrimsonSox]

I forgot to include this photo from the Duke's and Duchess' wedding. The best man is Fruity Metcalfe, the Duke's friend and equerry, who was also a client of Scholte's.

 

[CrimsonSox]

Today's theme is the young Prince of Wales, keeping in mind that Scholte was his tailor starting in 1919.

The collar of the jacket fits well, hugging the neck.










I remember Vox once quoting Luciano Barbera, who said he knew he could be friends with you, if you could play golf in a jacket:



Gorgeous overcoat, though the Duke (then the Prince) did not use Scholte for his overcoats, to the best of my knowledge. Note the rounded sleevehead, and the crescent jetted pockets.



The Duke and the high shirt collar.

 

[VRaivio]

CrimsonSox, where do you find all these wonderful photos?

 

[CrimsonSox]

CrimsonSox, where do you find all these wonderful photos?

I usually find them in a vault in the desert.

 

[VRaivio]

Here it is, that DoW's MacDonald Lord of the Isles tartan suit with jacket by Scholte, trousers by H. Harris and cord vest by Hawes&Curtis.

 

[marcodalondra]



Here it is, that DoW's MacDonald Lord of the Isles tartan suit with jacket by Scholte, trousers by H. Harris and cord vest by Hawes&Curtis.

I have seen and touched in person this suit when he was last put up for auction in London (went unsold). The corduroy waistcoat is by Scholte but included in the set were The Lord of the isles above and two marcella highland waistcoats by Hawes & Curtis.