At our request, today the author of the famous ‘Gentleman’ book takes us back to his first forays into bespoke tailoring – working with an English and a German tailor in parallel.
By Bernhard Roetzel.
The first time I consciously saw handmade suits was in 1988. A friend of mine was a customer at two of Germany’s top 10 menswear shops of the day, Heinrich’s Herrenmoden and HB Möller in Hannover.
Heinrich’s has now disappeared but HB Möller is still active and thriving under the name Möller & Möller (below). Herbert B Möller’s son Mick Möller also runs his own menswear shop, Mick’s Hannover. Michael Jondral trained at Heinrich’s and co-owned the shop before he started very successfully on his own.
I was impressed with Kiton, Chester Barrie and Attolini even though I didn’t know anything about fit or the technical side of tailoring (my mother never sewed anything herself and my father wore good-quality off-the rack suits and jackets). But I wasn’t really fascinated by those clothes.
There was a small bespoke tailor named Krautheim near the flat that I shared. What I saw in that narrow shop window really did fascinate me: half-finished garments on a tailor’s dummy, probably at the second fitting stage.
I often stopped and looked at these jackets. I tried to figure out how the jacket was constructed and what all the stitching, layers of fabric and white threads were all about.
I started using this shop for the alterations of trousers and jackets. This way I found time to chat with the owner, who ran the business with his wife. He was a typical German bespoke tailor offering a clean cut, firm construction and excellent handwork (as I found out later when I knew more).
I tried to find out more about bespoke tailoring. I started looking for books in the library of my design school, which had a fashion and a textile department. I remembered that my aunt had trained as a ladies’ tailor after the war and so I started interviewing her about the craft.
Bespoke tailoring became one of my main interests – only in theory though because it was much too expensive for me. But I realised, even though I didn’t know very much, that the handmade suits I saw at Heinrich’s or HB Möller lacked something in comparison to bespoke tailoring: the individual pattern and the fit that resulted from fittings.
I had visited London four or five times as a schoolboy, but in 1990 undertook the first journey with the purpose of finding vintage handmade suits and visiting Savile Row. During this trip I found the book A Gentleman’s Wardrobe by Paul Keers in the bookshop of the National Portrait Gallery, and it opened my eyes to English style.
I spent hours walking around Brompton, Belgravia, Chelsea, Westminster and Pimlico searching second-hand-shops and looking in shop windows. I have a clear memory of the original three separate Hackett shops: one for city suits, one for tweeds and one for formal wear.
The salesman in the suit shop impressed very much. He had red hair and a reddish beard. He wore a navy pinstripe suit and an Hermès motif tie with a Gallic rooster coloured in the French tricolore.
In those days there were still quite a few gents outfitters to be found in small side streets of Westminster. One of them was Etheridge & Glasspool. I loved that shop and during my next visit I ordered an MTO covert coat (which I still have) and an MTO navy suit with rope stripes.
I also got my first impression of Savile Row. I remember passing the open door of a tailor shop and I stopped and looked inside. Someone was cutting out a suit. He wore the waistcoat and trousers of a three-piece suit and he looked just perfectly dressed. He was very friendly and welcoming, and he explained patiently what he was doing.
Unfortunately I don’t know which tailor shop this was, maybe Dege & Skinner. I remember that it was slightly above the street, with a few stairs leading up to the entrance. The cutting table sat in the room you entered from the street.
After I took my degree in graphic design in 1992 I worked in advertising agencies for three years, and then became a script-editor in a TV production company in Cologne. While I worked there I wrote the concept for my book Gentleman (above) and offered it to the publisher Ludwig Könemann. He was very successful in those days selling well-made coffee-table books at reasonable prices.
I had sent in the concept by mail and received an answer with an invitation to meet Ludwig Könemann. I don’t remember if I wore a suit or a tweed jacket but I do remember my covert coat from London. I am convinced that my clothes helped me sell my book because they reflected the content that I promised to deliver.
I started working on the book in the fall of 1997. It was scheduled to be published in February 1999. I travelled to London several times in 1998 and one of the visits I walked into Tobias Tailors at 32, Savile Row.
The shop sat in the middle of Savile Row between Chester Barrie and the old Anderson & Sheppard address. When I first walked in I was welcomed by the late John Coggin, who was in his fifties then. The second owner of Tobias Tailors was John Davis: both were cutters and coatmakers and they shared the work between them.
I wore a mid-grey single-breasted Chester Barrie suit that I had bought in Cologne (above). John Coggin greeted me when I came in and scanned my suit in a few seconds. “This is a nice suit you’re wearing,” he said with his Cockney accent, “but we could make you a nice suit too.” I left the shop without ordering a suit immediately but he had won me with this first sentence.
In later years I met many tailors and all use a different approach with people entering their shop. Many tend to make negative remarks about the suit you’re wearing, especially when they find out that a tailor made it. I don’t like this approach because it implies that the person has no taste or is stupid.
I came back the next day and placed an order for a double-breasted suit. I chose a fabric from Dormeuil’s Sportex bunch which had just been re-released, as John Coggin told me. For the lining I picked a a kind of airforce blue which matched the fine stripe in the fabric. (Pictured above, today.)
I ordered very classic trousers which I described as “deliberately unsexy”. John understood what I wanted at once. He said that the seat was roomy like in the old days, when people used stairs more frequently.
I was a bit disappointed because John didn’t ask if I dress to the left or the right. He explained that this question only makes sense for tight-fitting trousers. Classic trousers are roomy in the front. He said that classic trousers never show anything of what is behind the fly. He joked: “Imagine if the Prince of Wales was on a state visit and something was visible in his trousers.”
I have been photographed many times in this suit and it still fits. The trousers needed letting out in the waist in 2007 but later they were altered again to the original girth. None of the jackets that John Coggin and John Davis made for me have ever needed alterations, even though my weight went up from about 65 kg to 75 kg and back over the following years.
John Coggin explained later that he made the coats roomier to give me more presence, as my rather thin figure wasn’t very impressive. I wasn’t too happy about this explanation, but this is something that many bespoke tailors like to do when they cut a suit.
The price for this first suit was £1,375. I never paid less at Tobias Tailors and the maximum for a suit was £1,575 (about £4,000 today). These were the regular prices charged by Tobias Tailors. The second suit I commissioned is shown above.
I never asked for a discount and I never got one, even after my book was published. But John Coggin once gave me a tweed jacket which he had made for himself. John had outgrown it and it was used as decoration in the shop window. I think it was made from a Hunters of Brora tweed.
When I mentioned that I liked the fabric John altered the jacket to make it fit me. This meant taking it apart and recutting it as he was much more muscular than me (he had played rugby since his youth). I appreciated this gift very much and I still own and wear the jacket.
A few weeks after I had placed my first order on Savile Row I met the German bespoke tailor Heinz-Josef Radermacher in Düsseldorf (below).
He was really very charming and I liked the cut of the suit he wore. I got carried away and ordered a double-breasted blazer, even though the first fitting of the suit in London hadn’t taken place yet. So I had two pieces in the making and experienced the different approach to fittings in the following weeks.
Düsseldorf was only an hour’s drive from my home in Cologne so I was asked to come for a preliminary fitting. It was much rougher than the first fitting but Heinz-Josef Radermacher used it to get a better idea of my figure.
As this was my first fitting ever I didn’t know what it was all about. I only remember that there were no sleeves, no collar, just the front, sides and back. It took only a few minutes but I was impressed.
I experienced the real first fitting in London. The trousers were at the second-fitting stage but were close to perfect. They were made with side-adjusters but no buttons for braces. Buttons were added later when I found that self-supporting trousers don’t work on my figure.
The trousers had one forward pleat on each side, no back pockets and a button fly. They were unlined because I thought this was more traditional. In those days I always looked for the traditional options.
My choice of trousers was rather unusual then – most customers seemed to prefer low-cut flat-front trousers with belt loops, like John Coggin and John Davis wore themselves whenever I saw them in the shop.
The jacket was a proper first fitting. It was also very close to perfect. Only the shoulders were much too wide, because I had said that I didn’t want the shoulders too narrow because I have a rather big head. We did a second fitting for the jacket a few weeks later while the trousers went to the finisher immediately.
Meanwhile in Düsseldorf the first fitting for the blazer was being prepared. It was interesting to compare it to the English fitting. In Germany there were no sleeves at the first fitting stage, one sleeve at the second.
Herr Radermacher unpicked the shoulder seam and took off the collar. Then he pinned the shoulder again following precisely my shape. Afterwards the collar was attached.
I later asked John Coggin what he thought of this method. His reply insinuated that this was nice showmanship but not necessary if the cut was right. He also dismissed the idea of performing the first fitting without sleeves. He said it is hard for the customer to picture the suit without sleeves.
I find that unpicking the shoulder seem is not necessary in every case. It does impress the customer, especially if he is new to bespoke tailoring. But it also serves a purpose. I have seen very good tailors doing it and I think they would save themselves this step if it was only for show.
When the German blazer was finished (above, photographed today) it was beautifully sculpted to my figure. I had agreed to the suggestion of getting Herr Radermacher’s trademark shoulders, which are slightly raised and square, with a bit of rope in the top of the sleeve. This style was a bit seventies and it was called a pagoda shoulder. He thought it had an uplifting effect on the whole figure.
When I collected the blazer I was asked to wear it for a while and come back if I had any issues. After wearing it a few times I noticed that the armholes pinched me a little. Due to my inexperience I hadn’t noticed this at the second fitting.
Herr Radermacher was willing to do the alteration. Afterwards the armholes felt better but vertical creases appeared over both shoulder blades. I didn’t go back to the tailor and stopped wearing the blazer.
I was so much in love with the clothes from Tobias Tailors that I didn’t notice how unfair it was not to give Herr Radermacher the chance to improve on the last alteration. Looking back, I should never have complained about the tight armholes because the blazer looked wonderful before I had them fixed.
It may sound strange but sometimes it is better to accept one small imperfection if everything else is fine. Unfortunately it rarely happens that a bespoke garment completely satisfies. It may be the better option to order another piece hoping that it will be better.
Between 1999 and 2003 I ordered a dozen outfits from Tobias Tailors including a covert coat, a dinner suit and a tweed jacket with dark-grey cavalry twills (some shown above).
I always ordered the pieces one at a time and I spent a lot of time thinking about what to order next. The suits were expensive but I considered them investments because I thought that my taste and figure would never change.
Most of the fabrics were good choices – only two didn’t turn out to be as versatile as I had thought. In one case I had planned to order something lightweight for summer. I had thought of cream or beige, maybe also khaki. I had considered cotton but wasn’t sure. John Coggin suggested some alternatives and in the end I chose a midweight wool fabric from one of the old suppliers (maybe Lesser’s).
The fabric turned out to be difficult to match with shirts and ties, and it took years until I found some good combinations. The fabric was also rather heavy and not really for summer. In those days I thought it wasn’t sensible to have a very lightweight suit made that could only be worn for a few weeks a year.
The third piece I ordered was a dark-blue double-breasted with rope stripes. I wanted something very English and John Coggin suggested 420g fabric from Harrison’s. He sold it by saying that this was a fabric that a MP would wear (he didn’t say of which party) and this was really what I wanted.
The suit looked very impressive, especially with a red lining. But in the long run it was a bit too strong so I wore it less than I had thought. The suit was cut by John Davis and the lapels and collar looked completely different from John’s cut (who had trained at A&S as a coatmaker and as a cutter at Strickland brothers).
John Coggin later came over to Germany with his wife and I introduced him to friends in Cologne who started ordering from him. We also started a trunk show business in a shoe shop in Frankfurt so John came regularly (below).
We staged seminars together with German tailors at one point with the cutting academy Müller & Sohn, and seminars about bespoke tailoring for style consultants. We became friends and I learned a lot about tailoring and cutting from John. Being friends with your tailor is nice on the one hand, but on the other it makes it difficult to express criticism.
There was only thing that I didn’t like about Tobias Tailors: they weren’t able to replicate suits or jackets. I later found this to be a weakness of many tailors.
I never found out why it is difficult to make a suit exactly like the one before. Tailors often put it down to the difference in fabric, but even if the fabric is similar or identical they don’t necessarily manage to produce a very similar garment.
I think John drew the patterns with a lot of ‘rock of eye’, especially if he was cutting bold patterns. I watched him drawing the pattern for a checked tweed and it was interesting how freely he moved the paper patterns around on the fabric.
I had about half a dozen other suits in mind that I wanted to order from Tobias Tailor. Unfortunately they had to close their business in the summer of 2003.
When I visited John Coggin and John Davis for the last time in their Savile Row shop, we had lunch together in a pub around the corner. I remember this as a sad day. The two had worked hard but the rent was going to be raised so much that it was impossible to go on.
John Coggin continued to make suits for private customers, while John Davis went back to coat making. I ordered two more pieces from John Coggin after the shop was closed, a suit and a jacket. I visited John in his house in Chingford for the fitting or we met in Germany.
The five years I spent with Tobias Tailors and John Coggin were happy times. Never again did I enjoy bespoke tailoring in this naive way. I fulfilled a dream and enjoyed it but the happiness passed. I knew more later but I had less fun.
As I became a menswear writer my hobby became a job. With the expected effect. If you want to keep enjoying bespoke tailoring you’d better treat it as a pastime.
I will write a second part to this journey, about my years after Savile Row and my experience with continental European tailoring.
All finished tailoring shown, from Tobias Tailors. Part two of Bernhard’s article will be published next week.
