Masters of Style: Edward Sexton - bespoke tailor

After decades as a lawyer, essentially an uncreative and often destructive profession, it's a huge pleasure for me, in my new life as a blogger, to talk to people who make it their task to create quality, elegance and style. I recently went to Beauchamp Place, in the shadow of Harrods in South West London, to meet Edward Sexton, bespoke tailor and striver for perfection, in his studio.

I can, even as a then disinterested youngster, remember the impact made on Savile Row by the opening of Tommy Nutter and Edward Sexton's Nutters in 1969. I even went over there to press my nose to the window. For some reason I can't now explain, I thought that Nutters was mentioned in one of the James Bond books as 007's tailors. The last Bond book was written a few years before Nutters opened, so I'd just got it completely wrong.

Of course, Nutters wouldn't have made suits to Bond's tastes anyway. Although the quality of the tailoring was high, the clientele was international pop and rock stars and the styles were those of Carnaby Street rather than the establishment of Her Majesty's Secret Service. Images of stars wearing Nutters long waisted coats with huge, wide collars, exaggerated roped shoulders, flared trousers and clashing checks advertised Edward Sexton's creativity and sixties style.

These elements still echo in his tailoring, providing a refreshing and individual alternative to the classic styles available elsewhere in London. These style clues from earlier and possibly more original days of tailoring reminded me of Mark Powell, another tailor whose work I write about here. The relationship between cutting edge tailoring, depth of experience and heritage is complex and so interwoven that they can never be separated. Without tailors with a foot firmly in the best of the past, we would be much the poorer.

But Sexton isn't dwelling on the past. The focus of his skills, and the very obvious pride he has in them, is on the quality of his tailoring. He showed me how he structures, sews and manipulates canvas, cloth and thread to make a garment that moulds to the wearer, moving with him or her and masking unevenness or pocket contents in way which, to me, seems magically mysterious. 

Despite his depth of experience, he told me that he can learn something new every day and he admitted to me that he has never made the perfect suit. This must make him the perfect tailor. Who wants to go to a craftsman who claims always to make perfection? It's the striving for elusive perfect tailoring that makes the genius. Luckily he also loves to pass on his skills to a younger generation and seeing him work with a young apprentice made me envious of the creativity and skills he has to pass on. 

Everything is completed in his studio; cutting and tailoring. Sexton offers a made to measure range, offering all that we love of the Sexton style. Suits in this range cost around £1800 and are made in China from his own patterns. The block is then altered back in London after fittings with the client. A large proportion of Sexton's clients are women.

Sexton is obviously a man of great generosity and the number of young tailors and apprentices working closely with him highlights his desire to pass on his many years of experience to a new generation, ensuring the future if his business, and indeed of London tailoring.

See Edward Sexton.