A friend of mine has been into menswear since he was a teenager. He obsessed over three-piece suits with collared waistcoats, dreamt of visiting Savile Row, and for years sought out second-hand bespoke online.
He briefly worked in menswear, and began to access these kinds of makers. He made the same kinds of mistakes we all do of course – everything too bright, everything too much – but he got to know some of them personally as well, and found a deeper appreciation of the genius of some, the sheer hard work of all.
In the past five years or so, my friend has become more successful professionally. He left menswear, he’s making more money, and he doesn’t yet have the commitment of children. His disposable income is higher and he is deliberately revisiting some of those artisans, in order to buy wonderful, long-lasting things from a very small number of them – always at full price.
He is becoming, I thought recently, a patron.
A patron can be a very rewarding thing to be. You spend the money you have on people you know deserve it, and together create beautiful pieces of craft. You use them every day, and both your experiences are enriched by the value you place on them.
You bring the clothes (or shoes or leather goods) back to be repaired. You make comments on how they’ve worn, and how you have worn them. You talk to the maker – whom you know fairly well at this point – about the world you move in and who else appreciates these things, what others wear and why.
The relationship is interactive, and that is powerful – both financially and creatively.
Financially, it gives the craftsman a consistent income, which is often all he wants – a reliable way to do the thing he loves. Bespoke makers often say that big orders from rich people (Middle Eastern royalty often) are what make them money. But it’s the regular, long-term customer that holds the business together.
And creatively it’s powerful too. Tailors used to be kept on their toes by their knowledgeable clients. Here’s a misquotation from a half-remembered conversation I remember having with John Hitchcock of Anderson & Sheppard (above, left) about 15 years ago:
“Customers used to be so much smarter back then, Simon. They would always be dressed up, really the most elegant men in the world. And there was always this interplay between the customer, our front of house, and us [the cutters].
“The customer would observe a fashion, and make a suggestion during a commission. The salesman would be instinctively conservative of course, but perhaps they’d make an adjustment – certainly they would take it all in. Little changes happened, both to keep up to date and to enrich the house style, to deepen it, all within that little nexus.”
Now I write it down, it doesn’t sound anything like John. But I clearly remember the point he was making: stylish, consistent customers are just as important to a tailor’s style as the people selling it (the ‘front of house’).
The problems these days of course are manifold. People don’t use one tailor, or buy as much, for as long. Style has expanded and fractured. Consumers are less educated about clothing. The idea of the designer (or rather today, a corporate brand) telling you what to wear is the norm. The idea of anything being interactive is alien.
But it’s still possible to be a patron. – to support artisans through what you buy and how you interact with their creator.
There’s another reason I was thinking about this recently.
I get regular questions from readers asking how they can get into menswear. The growth of ‘influencers’ and start-up brands has given the impression this is an easy thing to do, or at least very possible.
The vast majority of people who work in menswear do so in a shop, and spend long hours standing on their feet, straightening shirts and folding sweaters. Or they’re online, answering customer service emails. Or they’re in the basement, packing orders and receiving crumpled returns.
Menswear is hard. Many brands fail. The ones that are successful have often been plugging away for years. PS was going for a decade before it started making real money; Aimé Leon Dore is 10 years old, not new; Buck Mason is 11.
If you have a dream, please follow it. But there is also a good alternative – be a patron.
Pursue your professional career and make good money. Use that to buy a house, have a family and so on. Then use your disposable income, whatever it might be, to support makers you like, and establish relationships with them. This is so undervalued, and so powerful.
It’s easier with artisans, but even with brands the chances are you’ll get to know the managers and probably the founders. That’s the great thing about classic menswear – it’s so small.
These days, if you wear the clothes well, chances are you’ll get a following on social media and brands will ask you to appear in their shoots or campaigns as well. There’s always a lack of good people for that.
I know it’s easy for me to say all this. It’s not what I did, and now I can tell everyone else how hard it is. But I mean it about a dream – if you do have one, do follow it. Just remember that it isn’t the only way to be involved in menswear, in a rich and rewarding way.
Being a patron is fantastic – I’ve met many over the years, among which the great, late Edmund Schenecker was a favourite. But you are all patrons right now, as PS readers, given how you interact with clothing.
I’d say value that, and deepen it.
Pictured, from top to bottom: Sr Francesco, Charvet, The Tailors Symposium, Sartoria Melina, Musella Dembech, Philippe Atienza
