House of Nutter_The Rebel Tailor of Savile Row

by Lance Richardson

  On May 12, in Saint-Tropez, Jagger elbowed his way through a mosh pit of popping flashbulbs, punches flying as he clutched the arm of the Nicaraguan-born Bianca Pérez-Mora Macias. Wincing in the crush, Bianca wore white Yves Saint Laurent: a wide-brimmed hat with diaphanous veil; a long, narrow skirt and tuxedo jacket; and no shirt. Jagger wore a three-piece eau-de-nil Nutters suit with a small star pinned to the acres of lapel. Their wedding was supposed to be a low-key affair, just lords, ladies, and music luminaries flown in from London. Instead, it was chaos. Fans swarmed. Pressmen gate-crashed. Photographs of the beleaguered Jaggers—Bianca and Mick in the back of a Bentley, an uncorked bottle of Champagne clenched between his well-tailored thighs—were quickly circulated around the globe. As were pictures of their subsequent honeymoon in Venice, where the couple looked very snug. Or Mick did, at least, in another Nutters suit.

  Mick and Bianca Jagger on their honeymoon in Venice, June 1971.

  If Elton John accentuated the camp quirkiness in Tommy’s style, Jagger revealed the sex. Of course, Jagger revealed the sex in everything; he seemed incapable of wearing the most quotidian outfit without charging it with explosive potential. But here the effect was notably subversive, even queer. The tightness, the softness, the lissome curves and loose lower legs, the strong, armor-like shoulder line—here was a suit that was neither masculine nor feminine, but both, combined in a single androgynous assemblage. Mick Jagger in Nutters emphasized the fluid potential of the suit, and not for nothing would Tommy once describe it as his “Jagger look.” Nobody would ever inhabit it better.

  Nobody, that is, except Jagger’s new wife.

  * * *

  “When I first said I wanted to go to Tommy,” Bianca told The Sunday Times in 1972, “Mick didn’t like it at all. He said that a man’s tailor was very special. It was a personal thing that a woman shouldn’t intrude on. But I went anyway. Mick would much prefer it if I dressed in old jeans and a tee-shirt. I take ages to get ready when we go out and when I come down he says: ‘Oh, no! You’re too dressed up again. Can’t you take the hat off, or leave the cane behind at least?’ But I just say, ‘Why?’ and go out dressed as I am. Afterwards, of course, he’s proud and pleased, he says: ‘I was choked, you looked so beautiful. I only said no before we went because I hadn’t anything to match up with you.’ ”

  Bianca Jagger strolled into Nutters not long after her wedding. A meticulous customer, she demanded numerous fittings—four, sometimes five. If a trouser leg was an eighth of an inch shorter than the other, she would ask for a do-over, coming back into the shop or receiving Tommy’s tailors in her mansion ballroom for further adjustments. She was not looking for a suit, exactly; she was looking for a statement. And that statement had to be perfect.

  The preceding few years had seen the publication of Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics, Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch. Feminists had thrown flour bombs at a Miss World beauty pageant at the Royal Albert Hall, and the Women’s Liberation Movement had held its first national conference in Oxford. “It was part of my liberation to be able to wear trouser suits because it makes life so easy,” Bianca later wrote. (She would also wear suits by Saint Laurent and Dior.) However, when Tommy first presented her with a finished jacket on Savile Row—black gabardine, with bust darts to highlight her svelte figure—she rejected it. She asked for the suit to be recut “just like a man’s,” which meant no bust darts, and buttons on the right side. She took Tommy’s own jacket and wore it out of the shop to use while she waited.

  Bianca at Heathrow Airport.

  “We’ve been making some lovely clothes for Bianca Jagger,” Tommy wrote to David in the summer of 1972. One day, she stepped off a plane at Heathrow dressed in a black bowler hat and white three-piece Nutters suit, clutching cigarettes and an antique Malacca cane as she strode through the terminal.

  Another day, she was at the Oval watching a cricket match next to Mick, both of them dressed in Nutters suits that competed to outdo one another in boldness. Then, in New York, she was in the restaurant La Grenouille—in a pistachio-colored Nutters suit this time—seated at a central table with Fred Hughes, “discussing life.” But not before she’d made an appearance at Leo Castelli’s SoHo gallery for the opening of Warhol’s Mao Zedong silkscreen collection: Nutters black velvet, crocheted gloves, Art Deco jewelry, and a veiled hat with a stuffed white bird on the brim. “I can’t stand by her,” complained one of the guests. “She’s so beautiful she makes me feel ugly and old.”

  In his 1974 biography of Mick Jagger, the writer Anthony Scaduto would document yet another occasion.

  Bianca arrives at a Vogue studio, very, very late, of course, but photographer Norman Eales doesn’t mind because he is so anxious to photograph her. When the lift reaches the studio floor, where a dozen people wait so expectantly and nervously for her, out steps a chauffeur carrying a coffin-sized suitcase and a leather box full of hats. Then shoemaker Manolo, of Zapata, with two dozen pairs of shoes with four-inch heels. Followed by hairdresser Ricci Burns, carrying an assortment of wigs and feathers. He is followed by Jay Johnson, one of Warhol’s superstars…Finally, behind the Warhol superstar, Bianca herself, stepping out of the lift in a $250 green Tommy Nutter suit and carrying her collections of walking sticks, which have become as famous a trademark in some circles as Dietrich’s legs.

  Tommy was hardly new to dressing women. While many Savile Row firms shied away from making anything much beyond women’s riding wear, Nutters had already dressed Cilla, Twiggy, Yoko, and would soon accept the challenges of Joan Collins and Diana Ross. Tommy was all too willing to position himself as a peer to Saint Laurent, who first gave women his iconic Le Smoking in 1966.

  Yet unlike Saint Laurent, Tommy was an ambivalent accomplice when it came to women’s liberation. About 5 percent of his business came from them, and while he hoped for more, “I certainly don’t want too many,” he said, taking care to affirm that “we are still very much men’s tailors.” Gentlemen paid an average of £130 for a suit at Nutters; women were charged £160. Tommy claimed that this was because women were “harder to please,” and “it’s much more difficult to get the trousers to hang properly.” But it was also because some of his male clients had begun to complain that there were too many women “around the place”; the extra £30 acted as a kind of congestion charge. Furthermore, though he would never admit this publicly, Tommy had never quite gotten over the physical aversion that had once caused him to build a wall of pillows between himself and Carol Drinkwater. He was uncomfortable with the physical closeness involved in designing for women, in conducting their fittings. He told friends, “I don’t know how to deal with women’s tits.”

  Bianca seemed to override most of these reservations, though, for one simple reason: Tommy was bewitched by her glamour. He would tell a magazine that one of the best days of his life was the day Bianca phoned him up and asked if he’d escort her to a premiere: “Every young boy’s dream.” And he liked that she had her own ideas. Some people took a wonderful suit and screwed up on the accessories, but not Bianca. “She’s so magical, so beautiful,” he said. “She’s quite terrific. She has great style. She looks marvelous any way.”

  In fact, Bianca’s charismatic power seemed so capable of reducing Tommy to babbling adoration that she could get away with virtually anything. Once, in a letter to his brother, Tommy would write: “Bianca has been around this week and has been driving us all mad. She is very grumpy, but extremely beautiful.” As though her beauty canceled out everything else.

  * * *

  In April 1973, Tommy turned thirty. Peter was back in London for a visit and took care of the details. The party was held at Club Louise, an upmarket establishment that catered to a clientele of lesbians and gays. The proprietor (after whom the club was named) was an elderly French dame, and her club was dim, with a black banquette and a long wall of flattering mirrors that soon reflected many of
Tommy’s friends and admirers. The Lord and Lady Harlech came to celebrate. Jean Muir, the dressmaker. Michael Fish, of Mr. Fish fame. Yvonne Elliman, who’d played Mary Magdalene in Jesus Christ Superstar on Broadway, and Lionel Bart, who’d written Oliver!. Edward brought Joan, while Dolly brought Lily, Tommy’s grandmother, both of them dressed to the nines with big, bouffant hairdos and costume jewelry. Tommy floated in circles around everyone, Bianca Jagger dangling off his arm for much of the evening.

  Years later, Tommy would recall this party with great fondness, telling a friend that “everyone” had been there. He would say the presents were “fantastic” but that he’d become so out of it by the end—on alcohol and cocaine—that all of them were stolen. Carol Drinkwater, though, is not entirely convinced. “Knowing Tommy, he put them somewhere, and then he forgot all about them,” she says. “That’s what Tommy did.”

  Tommy with Bianca Jagger and Ingrid Boulting, the ballerina and model.

  Nutters of Savile Row Ltd.

  35a Savile Row, London W.1

  Tele: 01-437 6850 Cables: Nuttersrow

  [c. April 1973]

  Dear David,

  Will be arriving in N.Y. on or around Friday June 1 with Jimmy.

  Thanks for Birthday card, everyone loved it. Will be in N.Y. that weekend & will have masses of new clothes with me & I wondered if you could borrow a camera & take a few snaps as the ones [Justin de Villeneuve] took leave a lot to be desired. Possibly that weekend as I have a large P.R. campaign the third week in June when I return from a little hol in Puerto Rico. Then I will spend the last week of June cruising N.Y., the baths, Fire Island & anywhere new!

  It would be lovely to have the pics ready for that 3rd week so I can hand them out to various periodicals (excuse the word).

  Missed you at my 30th which was sensational. 500 people, 499 queens. It was great. Bianca came…

  Belle might be there & I think she hopes to stay with you as I do not think there will be sufficient room at Miss B’s pad. This of course is up to you. Belle is not quite sure if I am coming as I feel it is much easier to travel with one person rather than two. Jim is no trouble.

  We are desperately busy & I am trying to get things cleaned up here before I leave. Have a pretty minette stepping into my shoes for a while. She’s good with the queens.

  Will see you when I arrive

  Keep in touch

  Love Tommy X

  * * *

  When David arrived in New York at Christmastime 1971, he dropped his bags at a friend’s apartment on East Tenth Street, just down the block from Tompkins Square Park, and wandered off past junkies and homeless camps looking for a place to dance.

  Before February, he found himself near Astor Place, in the ex-manufacturing district of NoHo, now mostly occupied by struggling artists. It was after midnight and the streets were unlit. He shivered violently as he approached a nondescript entrance at 647 Broadway. Someone had told him about an after-hours party here—the party, really, that was defining what “party” meant in this city at the moment. It was invitation-only, but David could talk his way through any locked door, his tongue like a skeleton key. He’d told a friend of a friend that he was visiting temporarily (a white lie), and received an invitation with Our Gang printed on the front. Now he entered the warehouse. He located David Mancuso’s spacious loft. At the door, he paid a $2 “contribution.” And that was it: everything else was free: the coat-check, candy, and fruit punch that may or may not have been spiked with LSD. This was more house party than commercial club, though the sound system rivaled anything a club could offer. Under a canopy of multicolored balloons, two sets of Klipschorn speakers were arranged to create a sonic swimming pool that David slid into with stunned bewilderment. “Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys” by the Equals, say, followed by James Brown, or maybe “Rain” by Dorothy Morrison. It was impossible to predict in what direction the rhythm might flow, but each track resonated with a clarity that seemed to dissolve effortlessly, perfectly, into the next, which was a way of mixing disparate styles to generate mood that David had never heard before. Also unfamiliar was the crowd, gyrating against him in an intimate mosh: gay and straight, black and white, rich and indifferently poor (indifferent, that is, because they had better things to do than pursue money). Mancuso’s private discotheque was like an alternate reality, which Mancuso would later explain was precisely his intention: “Once you walked into the Loft you were cut off from the outside world. You got into a timeless, mindless state. There was actually a clock in the back room, but it only had one hand. It was made out of wood and after a short while it stopped working.”

  This was David’s first proper introduction to New York City. He quickly decided he would never move back to London.

  * * *

  By the time Tommy’s letter arrived in 1973, life had taken some unexpected turns. These were largely due to David’s employer, the fashion photographer Bill King.

  Bill King had grown up in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, and studied painting at the Pratt Institute. He made his name in London, though, producing fashion spreads during the ’60s for Queen and Harper’s Bazaar, eye-popping editorial work that featured, in one memorable example, male models posing with a transgender Puerto Rican dancer, Playboy Bunnies, and a Ugandan princess. If King was not quite Richard Avedon (his idol/nemesis), he was highly regarded in the industry, a boundary-pushing star in his own right. David had met him through the printing business and admired his discipline; on a personal level, he found King introverted but friendly. The two men were also roughly the same age, both gay, and maintained an easy rapport—not insignificant in the high-tension environment of a fashion shoot. By the time King returned permanently to New York, their connection was such that David, arriving about a year or so afterward, could walk straight into a job at his studio.

  But something had happened to King in the interim. As Erica Crome, an editor with Queen, later told the journalist Michael Gross: “[King] became a different, much less nice person in America. He developed a destructive streak.”

  King’s studio was located at 100 Fifth Avenue, near Union Square. The interior struck David as “very antiseptic.” At King’s insistence, many of the staff wore white coats, like scientists in a laboratory. King stuck colored tape to the floor to restrict where certain people could and could not move. He compiled detailed files dictating how staff should deal with the famous guests: “You must not make eye contact,” and so forth. Some female models were forced to wear shoes that were purposely too small, “so they’d be in pain,” David recalls, just because King liked it that way. David also recalls standing in the studio during winter, watching a hose spray water up into the air and down over a young girl’s head as faux rain. “Bill kept saying, ‘Get her in the face! Get her in the face!’ ” These shoots were executed in a cone of silence and could stretch on for hours.

  Officially, David was hired as King’s darkroom technician. This banal title, however, disguised the true dimensions of their arrangement. More accurately, David became a kind of uncredited executive assistant—and one with considerable latitude to challenge his boss’s eccentricities. David refused to stay within the colored boundaries marked on the floor. He laughed off King’s petulant rampages and openly accused him of “jeopardizing shoots by making things go wrong just for the drama.”

  Why would King permit such impertinence from a new employee? Well, he didn’t—not exactly. King lashed out, belittled David, destroyed prints, and demanded he do things over and over again. But then, David recalls, “he also seemed to need me.” King was socially awkward; David could loosen up the likes of Elizabeth Taylor before a photo shoot with ease, which was an invaluable asset given King’s clientele and contacts. King also got in the habit of using David as a confidant and therapist. Each Monday, he would slink into the studio and summarily dump a weekend’s worth of dysfunction onto his darkroom technicia
n: “Oh, I was walking down Christopher Street with my dick hanging out…”

  In David’s view, King’s demons could be traced back to an oppressive upbringing in a conservative military family. King was a classic “closet queen,” according to David, and the strain of maintaining a facade of straightness had produced twin side effects of self-loathing and cruelty. David could sense the shape of King’s neurosis: he found it sad, felt sorry for the man. Yet he also liked him—or, as David puts it, “I didn’t dislike him.” Bill King clearly needed help; maybe, on some level, David needed to be needed. “It was an unhealthy and strange relationship, to be sure,” David admits, though he stops short of using another word for it: abusive.

  This was the situation that David walked into in New York. He considered leaving to look for another job, but King was dangling a green card in front of his nose, dangling and withholding, dangling and withholding, in a torturous game that was still being played out by early 1973. David needed that green card; it made him dependent on King. So instead of leaving, he adopted a coping strategy that saw him focus all his remaining energy on places where he could lose himself—like Mancuso’s Loft.

  Bill King and David

  The Loft was open only once a week, but there was always the Sanctuary, a dance club in a converted German Baptist church with a DJ booth where the altar once stood. And the Planetarium, a dingy dive where water pooled on the floor and the music from Shaft blared over the heads of drunk drag queens. And Buttermilk Bottom, which also may or may not have put LSD in the fruit punch. And the Tenth Floor, a minimalist, members-only club with elitist attitudes about class and race, as well as unreliable elevators (ten flights of stairs in an ex–sewing machine factory). And Fire Island, of course: Cherry Grove, the Pines, the Sandpiper disco with its Christmas lights blinking on hot summer nights. “It was like a nun getting out of a convent and just going berserk,” David says.