House of Nutter_The Rebel Tailor of Savile Row

by Lance Richardson

  As the Oz editors were sentenced to prison for up to fifteen months each, David, appalled by the verdict—which was, after all, also a verdict on his own work—documented the pandemonium that erupted in response.

  Peaceful disobedience outside the Old Bailey.

  The counterculture would not go down without a fight. And yet, in David’s fatalistic view, it would go down all the same. Indeed, the best of it had already started to fade: “It was wonderful in the days of Carnaby Street and the hippies, but at the end of the decade I found it all becoming so boring.”

  Nor was David the only one to feel that way. John Lennon and Yoko Ono, disgusted with the persecution of Oz (and various other things, including the Troubles in Northern Ireland), packed their bags in September. “It’s like 1940 here,” John complained on his way out the door to New York. “It’s really the sticks, you know.” London was over, Britain was over, and the ’70s were “gonna be America’s.”

  Riding a wave of popular support, the Oz editors immediately appealed the verdicts. Finally, in November, the Appeal Court chief justice reversed their convictions and dismissed the prison sentences, even though the three men showed up to his courtroom wearing luxurious Regency hairpieces. It was a huge moment, a stunning reprieve for free speech; Oz supporters were ecstatic. David marched in the victory parade behind a giant penis.

  Nevertheless, he was not in much of a mood to celebrate himself.

  When asked why NUTTER LABORATORIES & STUDIOS collapsed around the exact same time the Oz trial was wrapping up, David offers two possibilities. His depression was worse than ever; maybe his drinking, which he’d begun to use as a form of self-medication, damaged one too many business relationships. It is hard to develop quality prints when you can barely focus the enlarger.

  Or maybe the business was no longer making enough money because Carlo, instead of helping with the work, “just sat around languidly smoking cigarettes.”

  Carlo remembers things a little differently. “The issue that made us part company was that David was having arguments with his boyfriend, and one day he came in and said his boyfriend has smashed all the cameras. As I recall, I said, ‘David, that’s the final straw. We’re not doing enough business to be able to carry this kind of aggravation, so let’s call it a day.’ ” (To which David responds: “It was an impossible alcoholic relationship with an African Muslim named Ismaila. Only one camera was broken, and it was seldom used anyway.”)

  Whatever the true cause of the breakup, it meant that David, marching along behind that giant penis, was now unattached, disillusioned, and suddenly floundering in his career, with no sense of direction at the tail end of 1971.

  Perhaps it was inevitable that his thoughts would turn westward. He had dreamed of New York since the 1950s, swooning over West Side Story with Tommy in the matinees. In 1965, on his first American vacation, he had passed through the city and been electrified by its “erotic” charge. New York’s clandestine gay scene, concealed behind curtains to dissuade the police from raids, had seemed particularly attractive to a rebellious twenty-six-year-old. On a more recent visit, David had encountered the new New York, renegotiating its social boundaries after the Stonewall riots, which had only made him desire it even more for its atmosphere of defiant queerness. New York was the dream place—“the Rome of today,” as Lennon called it—while London seemed to be drifting backward toward its old gray conservatism. It was time to go.

  Just before Christmas, David worked up the courage to tell his parents; Dolly and Christopher were more remote than ever from the lives of their two sons. He said goodbye to Tommy, who took the surprising news well, considering it was only ten months since Peter’s exodus to Manhattan. David then packed up everything he could carry, including so many photography samples that he exceeded the maximum weight allowance at Heathrow. Thankfully, a sympathetic stewardess let him board the plane anyway. Perhaps she recognized wild-eyed desperation when she saw it.

  It was only after David arrived in New York, stepping out of the terminal into a frigid chill, a million new plans racing through his mind, that he realized he’d forgotten to bring a coat.

  Tomcat at Piccadilly Circus.

  “It seems that at the moment we are in a transitional stage as far as the fashion business is concerned, something of a pause.”

  Six industry hotshots—tailors, designers, consultants—were gathered around a table with cups of tea to discuss the future of menswear for Tailor & Cutter magazine, which would publish a full, unedited transcript of their lengthy talk, as though it were a groundbreaking inquest.

  “I do think that we are now in an age of a non-suit,” said one of the gentlemen. “I rather like it, because I am a bit bored with the ordinary jacket and trousers.”

  “You’re bored,” said a fashion consultant, “but is the customer?”

  “Well, they obviously have to be educated,” replied the gentleman.

  “How does one do that?”

  “Bags of publicity, I would suppose, and offering it to them in a way to make it attractive.”

  Finally, Tommy interjected. “I don’t find that fashionable people are bored with the suit,” he said. Take his hugely successful silhouette at Nutters, for example: “We try to change the look of it, but it is still a sort of classical suit, with wider lapels, more shaped.” When the Nutters look first appeared, people were “horrified,” sure, “but now lapels are getting much wider,” he said.

  “Can they get any wider?” asked the fashion consultant.

  “Well, they can overlap,” Tommy said, “but I think it would look rather hideous.”

  Seated near him was a cutter named Eric Joy, who ran his own business from Old Burlington Street. An irascible, brilliant craftsman, Joy had worked at Blades before an epic argument with the other directors caused him to walk out. He liked to be contrarian, and now he began challenging the basic premise of the discussion, that fashion and tailoring were interlinked. “This whole fashion concept is not valid when you are talking about the classical suit,” he declared grandly to the table. “Somebody claims that they are designing a fashionable suit—it’s just a different suit from what is being sold at the time. Forget about these high falutin’ words like fashion, etc.”

  Then he started to needle his neighbor. “One particular shop develops a sort of a look and gets noted for it,” Joy said, “and in its time the fashion writers and journalists will adopt it as their sort of scene. They will say this is what we like, and they will zoom somebody to the top of the tree as being fashionable. Two years later, you think whatever happened to so-and-so?”

  Everyone knew who Joy was talking about. “That’s an interesting point,” said the fashion consultant. “How important is this sort of publicity? Tommy, you’ve had quite a bit of it of late.”

  “It helps a lot,” Tommy said. He was proud of his press, both at home and in America, and he was not about to shrug it off as valueless.

  “The bespoke industry is getting smaller and smaller,” Joy mused.

  “Yes,” agreed Barry Grigg, a cloth designer who was friends with Tommy and presently wearing one of his suits, “because tailors have done very little about being with it…”

  Joy was having none of that. “The reason the tailor is part of a dying breed has nothing to do with his fashion sense at all,” he snapped. “It is the fact that he is an incompetent and incapable man. Time has passed him by.”

  But what about Tommy? He started with a look “which was probably ahead of its time,” Grigg noted.

  “Hopefully it was,” Tommy added, though he preferred to think of his look as transcending time—certainly the trends of bespoke tailoring.

  But all this talk seemed to bore him. Tommy fell silent for a moment. Then he became defensive. “I just do what I like. I am creating clothes in a look I like.” He designed his look with Edward several years a
go, “and we are still doing it. We put some braids on now to outline the shape, and it has become our most popular seller. I don’t care what anyone else does…I will stick with what I am doing because I like the look of it.”

  “That is the most dangerous thing in the world for a designer to do: to like something he has designed,” said Joy. “You must be absolutely indifferent.”

  But indifference was not part of Tommy’s nature. He had poured his soul into his work to produce something that combined the person he was with the person he wished to be: Why wouldn’t he be attached to that?

  “You don’t mind being copied?” asked the fashion consultant.

  “It’s a compliment,” Tommy said. “When Saint Laurent and another designer in Paris came out with a collection in which most things were braided, I was very flattered.”

  But what about the lost income that comes with being copied? Tommy didn’t care; making money was almost an afterthought. He was “the originator of a certain style,” he said, “which is built upon my name.”

  Joy dismissed this idea with a patronizing swipe. “Tommy, you’re laboring under illusions of youth, that you create a look and think you will be known for that look. If somebody knocks it off, they take it and say thank you very much.”

  “Even if we have our styles and looks pinched,” Tommy argued, “at least we have created something for which we will be known. I am known for the look I have designed, and obviously I hope to benefit from the publicity.”

  “You’re laboring under a tremendous illusion,” said Joy.

  * * *

  At the beginning of 1972, Britain found itself experiencing a curious crisis. On January 9, the country’s coal miners went on strike because of a pay dispute with the Conservative government, led by Prime Minister Edward Heath. The National Union of Mineworkers wanted a substantial pay rise, but Heath was resistant. There was frustration, a standoff, stalled negotiations; by the middle of February, there was a state of emergency. The miners had picketed power stations and other sources of fuel. Trains were suspended, bank trading hours reduced, and milk deliveries cut back. The weather was icy, and rolling blackouts began plaguing London and the rest of the country: the Central Electricity Generating Board was trying to ration its dwindling resources. As elsewhere, Savile Row was plunged into darkness, sometimes for up to nine hours at a stretch. At No. 35a, Tommy lit gas lamps around the showroom, trying to fill the space with a cozy glow; with work all but impossible under such circumstances, he then sat down at his desk, and began to write a “little notette.”

  Dear David

  Thanks for letter. Glad everything is going all right for you! We are still very busy but are being hit by power cuts

  From the moment David moved to New York, Tommy began a correspondence with his brother that is remarkable for its breadth and candor. Over the previous few years they had drifted apart, dwelling in separate circles that occasionally overlapped like a Venn diagram. But now that David was gone, physically, Tommy set about restoring the relationship to its former intimacy.

  Went over to Eresby Road last Sund with Jimmy in the Central Heating Van

  His early letters have the quality of two brothers back in their childhood bedroom, sharing banal talk of holidays, another trip to Europe, the blazing Mediterranean sun (“She became very tanned!” Tommy writes of himself). There is tender concern for David’s debilitating moods (“Hope you are working hard and not having too many UPS and DOWNS”), as well as regular suggestions to check in with “Miss B”—Peter Brown, who was used to dealing with manic characters. There are also frank discussions of sex: “Not much trade but a few members hovering. Had a big black beauty that you would have liked called Marion? He is a model from New York…” And appreciative nods to the other thing uniting them, that Nutter sensibility: “If you have any ideas photo-wise, writing-wise, or art-wise, let me know. Perhaps we could get something published together.”

  On this occasion, though, Tommy began by writing about their parents, whom he’d recently visited with his friend Jimmy Clark, who worked for British Gas (thus the van).

  They were thrilled & Gran came down & Jim looked at her bits of old glass. Some of them are worth something. Took away a lovely old sepia photo of Mum which I will frame and put next to Twiggy’s in the flat. The flat is great now—very respectable. Wall to wall curtains etc.

  But Tommy was stalling. This is not what he wanted to say. Suddenly, he turned to Monty Python for help, borrowing the title of their latest film.

  And now for something completely different

  The shirt shop had closed.

  it just did not work & we were losing money

  This was a shock. The original shop “could not be busier so that’s all O.K.,” but Nutters Shirts was a debacle, deeply embarrassing. Later, when a journalist would bring up the failure during an interview, Tommy would wince. “Do we have to mention that? I hoped no one would notice.”

  The truth was that neither Tommy nor Edward had any idea what they were doing when it came to accessories. The boutique had chugged along on idealism rather than any sound business sense. Of course, its closure meant that Christopher Tarling, whom Tommy called “Belle,” randomly sliding between gender pronouns, was now out of a job as the store manager.

  Belle will unfortunately leave us—he was marvelous about the whole thing but a bit upset. So please drop him a little note soon as he is coming to N.Y. at Easter & I am persuading him to stay there. I think he’ll love it—so anything you can do to help will keep him going—of course Miss B will keep an eye on her also.

  And with that, Tommy couldn’t write any more. He told David to get back to him soon. Signed his love. Then, trying to look on the bright side of things, where he was more comfortable dwelling, he scrawled a final thought up the side of the page.

  Monday was our 3rd anniversary of Nutters—very established

  * * *

  Tommy never had much of a grasp on the accounting ledgers. But there is no reason to doubt his assurances to David that things were still “all O.K.” in the early months of 1972. His public profile, for one thing, had never been higher. Once again, he was named to the annual World’s Best Dressed List in New York. His “label” (a relatively novel concept) was now being mentioned in terms of a “status symbol.” And two more major rock stars had recently turned up on Savile Row asking to add their names to the Nutters order book.

  Elton Hercules John first walked through the door in 1971. Though just twenty-four years old, he had already released three studio albums and was presently preparing a fourth: Madman Across the Water, which would feature “Tiny Dancer.” Elton was wealthy and famous, including in America, where he had just been nominated for a Grammy Award. Not that Tommy was all that impressed. In his opinion, Elton’s stage-wear was “far too flashy” (all those rhinestones), and his regular clothes were not much better: waterproof anoraks (“very nasty”), and hats that made him “look like Andy Capp,” a working-class comic-strip character known for his slovenliness. Elton actually bought much of his wardrobe from Mr. Freedom, a “pop art” London boutique, but Tommy snubbed his nose anyway—or at least feigned horror, the better to cast himself in the role of sartorial savior.

  “It was a big job changing him,” Tommy later said. Like Professor Henry Higgins, lifting a Cockney flower girl out of the street to turn her into a fair lady, Tommy focused his energy on making over the piano player from Pinner, Middlesex: “Fittings would go on for hours, sometimes days. It would get edgy, so I used to send out for a bottle of sherry to smooth things along.” As John Reid, Elton’s manager for twenty-eight years, recalls, “There was a little bit more than sherry. It was quite an event going in to Nutters. You’d write the whole day off. Maybe you’d have lunch, a couple of bottles of Champagne…” Everyone would become hopelessly drunk.

  The process was more
collaborative than Tommy suggested too. He would parade samples and conceptual sketches before Elton and his manager, and Elton, with his predilection for eye-catching extravagance, would push Tommy to go even more extreme: add a little bit of this; make this wider, louder, brighter; make sure you can see it from the other end of the street.

  Tommy was only too happy to oblige. He soon came to see himself and Elton as good friends, a relationship that John Reid, who also began to wear Nutters suits (“I would buy four and Elton would buy twenty”), attributes to a shared sense of humor.

  But there was also an important creative synergy between the tailor and the performer. Elton encouraged Tommy to cut his imagination loose, presenting himself as a muse and willing clotheshorse with a seemingly inexhaustible budget. Tommy, for his part, improved Elton’s style off the stage (and occasionally on), thus helping curate the superstar’s image, about which Tommy would remain wryly protective for years. Eventually, for example, Tommy would make Elton a line of Henley Royal Regatta–style striped jackets for one of his North American tours, then open the newspaper to a photograph of Elton dressed as Donald Duck in Central Park. “I was rather upset he wasn’t wearing these lovely blazers,” Tommy would complain on BBC Radio, only half-joking.

  The other major rock star to turn up on the doorstep was Mick Jagger. Tommy claimed to have first met Jagger back in 1969, at a party thrown by the Beatles: “All of a sudden Jagger just walked up to me and said, ‘I’ll have a suit like the one you’re wearing.’ ” This is entirely possible, although it was not until 1971 that Jagger became seriously associated with Nutters.