House of Nutter_The Rebel Tailor of Savile Row

by Lance Richardson

  “Were Tommy not such a sensible person”: Glynn, “Gentlemen’s Agreement.”

  approved of and encouraged by Yoko herself: See May Pang, Instamatic Karma: Photographs of John Lennon (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008), xiii. Yoko Ono offers a corroborating account in Philip Norman, John Lennon: The Life (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 712.

  “I needed a break”: Yoko Ono, quoted in Chrissy Iley, “Yoko Ono: ‘John’s Affair Wasn’t Hurtful to Me. I Needed a Rest. I Needed Space,” The Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/photography/9160041/Yoko-Ono-Johns-affair-wasnt-hurtful-to-me.-I-needed-a-rest.-I-needed-space.html). Accessed March 27, 2016.

  he was alone in the apartment: Though David has no recollection of it, his diary entry for March 5, 1975, suggests that Tony King and John Lennon may also have been present for part of the shoot: “Tony was there and so was John. Did job well. Many laughs. Lovely atmosphere.”

  “rather reminiscent of Little Bo Peep”: “Teddy Boy Bridegroom Steals the Show,” Bath and West Evening Chronicle, March 26, 1975.

  “a few subdued gasps”: Ibid.

  “today’s best young designer”: Anna Harvey, quoted in “Presentation,” Brides & Setting Up Home, June 1975.

  “Teddy Boy bridegroom”: “Teddy Boy Bridegroom Steals the Show.”

  “played with my knee”: Tommy Nutter to David Nutter, letter, April 3, 1975. DN.

  “Ms Nakatsu”…“quite a few lady clients”: Ibid.

  “a little holidayette”…“look after them”: Ibid.

  “quite chubby, really”: Tommy Nutter to David Nutter, letter, July 8, 1975. DN.

  “Trying hard to think of a new look”: Ibid.

  “we have gone open plan in the shop”: Tommy Nutter to David Nutter, letter, August 14, 1975. DN.

  “Young David”: Ibid.

  “No special friends around”: Ibid.

  a rock photographer of drag bands like the Cockettes: Sherill Tippins, Inside the Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York’s Legendary Chelsea Hotel (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010), 310.

  beaten to death: “Information Needed,” Village Voice, January 27, 1975. David notes the murder in his diary on November 26, 1974.

  “Sorry to hear about all your predicaments”: Tommy Nutter to David Nutter, letter, July 8, 1975. DN.

  a Pioneer Stereo System: According to David’s diary, John tells him he has something for him on September 15: “I stayed in but it never came.” It arrived a few weeks later, on October 8: “It’s rather beautiful but needs wires and a cartridge.”

  first rock concert to be held there: Terry O’Neill, Two Days That Rocked the World: Elton John Live at Dodger Stadium (New York: Antique Collectors Club, 2015), 137.

  a mansion that had once been owned by Greta Garbo: Buckley, Elton, 204.

  110,000 people: O’Neill, Two Days, 31.

  “what it must have looked like from Elton’s perspective”: Ibid.

  “It seems so old-fashioned today”…“very lucky”: Tommy Nutter, quoted in Alan Cartnal, “A Return to Male Glamour,” Los Angeles Times, November 21, 1975. Tommy also discusses his plans for a Beverly Hills store in “Lookin’ Good,” Flighttime (Allegheny Air System), February 1976.

  just moved into a tiny bedsit: Tommy gives the date that he assumed residency of the flat as October 1975 in a letter to the landlord, “Mr. Lodge,” sent May 28, 1976. JJC.

  “I expected to see people dancing”: Tommy Nutter, quoted in Cartnal, “A Return to Male Glamour.”

  ELEVEN: THAT WONDERFUL SUMMER

  Interviews with: Peter Brown, Roy Chittleborough, Jimmy Clark, David Grigg, Stewart Grimshaw, Wendy Kavanagh, Tony King, Joseph Morgan, David Nutter, John Reid, Edward Sexton, Joan Sexton, Zance Yianni.

  “Christmas season”: Bernie Taupin and David Nutter, Elton: It’s a Little Bit Funny (New York: The Viking Press, 1977), 10.

  “I get depressed easily”: Elton John, quoted in “Elton John: The Lonely Love Life of a Superstar,” Rolling Stone, October 7, 1976.

  “that he might open a Nutters branch here”: David Barritt, “Suits Are Back, Says Dictator of Savile Row,” The Sunday Times Magazine (Johannesburg), March 7, 1976.

  “I’m definitely leaving”: Tommy Nutter, quoted in “Final Cut,” Daily Express, May 7, 1976.

  “took a year off”: Janet Buckton, “Nutter’s the Name They’re All Crazy About,” Coventry Evening Telegraph, August 26, 1980. Tommy offers a similar comment in an Austin Reed press release, March 1979. JJC.

  “I felt that I’d achieved everything”: Tommy Nutter, interviewed on My Kind of Music, BBC Radio Brighton, September 20, 1980. Tommy was already laying the groundwork for this narrative in his first Daily Express comment: “I feel I’ve exhausted the made-to-measure business and want to try something different—selling everything from shirts and luggage to colognes.”

  “There was jiggery-pokery going on”: Tommy Nutter, quoted in Richard Walker, The Savile Row Story: An Illustrated History (London: Prion, 1988), 123.

  “down and out”: Tommy Nutter, quoted in “Tommy Nutter: Well Bespoke,” Arena, September/October 1989.

  “I had reporters chasing me”: Tommy Nutter, quoted in Walker, Savile Row Story, 123.

  “Cutters can turn squabblesome”: David Taylor, “Pop Goes the Whistle and Flute,” Punch, March 30, 1977.

  “top model”: The only written record of Tommy referring to Antony Hamilton comes in a letter to David dated November 14, 1978: “I have found a new little friend…He is a solicitor, 27 years-old, blondish—very me. We’ll see! I am not getting into a Tony Hamilton situation, I think. This one does not have aspirations as far as being a top model is concerned.”

  Bang!, on Charing Cross Road: Details of Bang!, which opened in 1976, come from Luke Howard, “Nightclubbing: Gay Clubbing in ’70s London,” Red Bull Music Academy Daily, May 7, 2013 (http://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2013/05/coming-out-ball-70s-gay-clubbing-in-london). Accessed August 16, 2016.

  INTERLUDE: LOUDER THAN CONCORDE

  Interviews with: Tony King, David Nutter, John Reid.

  an exhausting schedule of twenty-nine performances: Bernie Taupin and David Nutter, Elton: It’s a Little Bit Funny (New York: The Viking Press, 1977), 26.

  “brown ale and cheese sandwiches”: Ibid.

  “really sincere”…“not a trace of arrogance”: From a review in Sounds, quoted in David Buckley, Elton: The Biography (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2007), 213.

  Elton’s US tour: Taupin and Nutter, It’s a Little Bit Funny, 68.

  137,000 people: Ibid., 131.

  TWELVE: THE VELVET ROPE

  Interviews with: Chris Albertson, Peter Brown, David Grigg, Stewart Grimshaw, Tony King, David Nutter, John Reid.

  at least thirty-six people had already died: David Oestreicher, “New York Declared a Disaster Area,” New York Daily News, January 30, 1977.

  Crisco Disco: David’s memories of the club are augmented with details from www.disco-disco.com, an excellent archive of defunct New York nightlife. Accessed September 4, 2016.

  Oh-Ho-So: David omits the venue’s name in his diary entry. This detail, as well as the names of other guests, comes from Jon Tiven, “Queen’s Live Act Stuns City,” a 1977 concert review (www.queenarchives.com/index.php?title=Queen_-_XX-XX-1977_-_Circus_-_Madison_Square_Garden). Accessed March 12, 2017. A review of the first Queen performance is John Rockwell, “Rocks: Quartets,” The New York Times, February 7, 1977.

  “My dear—what a calamity”: Tommy Nutter to David Nutter, letter, February 22, 1977. DN.

  “rent and all out-goings”: Tommy Nutter to “Mr. Lodge,” letter, May 28, 1976. JJC. In this letter, Tommy explains the relationship between the shop and the flat, and requests to transfer the lease into Edward’s name.

  “They are very kind”: Tommy Nutter to David N
utter, letter, October 18, 1976. DN.

  “Madame Pam is back in business”: Ibid.

  “marvelous offer”…“very shady”: Tommy Nutter to David Nutter, letter, November 3, 1976. DN. Peter Brown recalls: “I didn’t think they were trustworthy. They had a shop on one of the main shopping streets in Beverly Hills, and the idea was that we would take it over. But then the deal became really kind of odd.”

  “This might come off”: Ibid.

  “The JR thing”: Ibid.

  “almost going crazy”: Ibid.

  “When I bought Brighton”: Ibid.

  “I have put Brighton on the market”: Ibid.

  “Is he still mainlining?”: Tommy Nutter to David Nutter, letter, August 11, 1977. DN.

  “I was searching”: Michael Jackson, Moonwalk (New York: Harmony Books, 2009), 134–35.

  “the most wonderful thing”: Ibid., 135.

  “got to be somebody else”: Ibid.

  pulled him aside one day: Ibid., 136–37.

  “sexual electricity”: Ian Schrager, interviewed by Alec Baldwin, Here’s the Thing (podcast), WYNC, May 12, 2015.

  “It was like a Sodom and Gomorrah”: Ian Schrager, quoted in Bob Colacello, “Anything Went,” Vanity Fair, March 1996. Colacello himself was a frequent visitor to Studio 54.

  spent $27,000 renovating: Ian Schrager, Here’s the Thing interview.

  “fusion”: Ibid.

  “I said there was no way”: Carmen D’Alessio, quoted in Tim Lawrence, Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture 1970–1979 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 232.

  “a fire dancer working himself into a charcoal-broiled frenzy”: Maureen Orth, “The Disco Craze,” Newsweek, November 8, 1976.

  “It was hard to get people”: Ian Schrager, Here’s the Thing interview.

  the City Parks Department soon issued an eviction notice: Tim Lawrence, Love Saves the Day, 270.

  “marriage”: Ian Schrager, Here’s the Thing interview.

  “nothing much”…“They raised the money”: Carmen D’Alessio, quoted in Lawrence, Love Saves the Day, 271.

  theatrical lighting experts: Colacello, “Anything Went.” Most details about the interior renovation come from this article.

  “serious sweaty dancing”: Ian Schrager, Here’s the Thing interview.

  “the idea was to constantly assault the senses”: Ian Schrager, quoted in Colacello, “Anything Went.”

  “tossed salad”: Hasse Persson, quoted in Peter Conrad, “Studio 54: Heady Daze of Disco Decadence—In Pictures,” The Guardian, March 15, 2015. Persson’s photographs of Studio 54 offer extraordinary insight into the look and atmosphere of the club during its heyday. See Hasse Persson, Studio 54 (Stockholm: Max Ström, 2015).

  “deadwood”: Steve Rubell, quoted in Lawrence, Love Saves the Day, 275.

  yes to the horse: Ibid.

  “It seems he still isn’t used to either superstardom”: Kris DiLorenzo, “Manhattan MADNESS,” Rock Around the World, December 1977.

  “to go to the Ball!”: Tommy Nutter to David Nutter, letter, August 31, 1977. DN.

  somebody grabbed him: DiLorenzo, “Manhattan MADNESS.”

  THIRTEEN: ARE YOU BEING SERVED?

  Interviews with: Simon Doonan, David Grigg, Robert Leach, Thom O’Dwyer, Tim Rice, Edward Sexton, Michael Smith.

  “I applied to the largest”: Tommy Nutter, interviewed on My Kind of Music, BBC Radio Brighton, September 20, 1980.

  a stretch of his working life: Much of the Kilgour, French & Stanbury archive was destroyed by a fire in the 1980s. However, a trove of documents and ephemera (letters, receipts, press releases, speech drafts, potted histories, architectural plans, promotional photography, sketches, button samples, and some emerald-green tassels) related to Tommy’s involvement with KFS, were inherited by J&J Crombie Limited after Tommy entered into partnership with Alan Lewis in 1982.

  one of the most respected bespoke tailors: Marie Scott, “Living Down a Name in the Staid Seventies,” The Times, October 5, 1977. As Scott writes, KFS “is one of the four finest men’s tailoring establishments in the Savile Row area—and therefore the world—and shares top billing only with Huntsmans, Henry Poole’s, and Hawes and Curtis. Of the latter three the first is the most expensive, the second enjoys the imperishable fame of having ‘started’ Savile Row, and the third dresses the men of the Royal Family.”

  “an engaging personality”: Richard Walker, The Savile Row Story: An Illustrated History (London: Prion, 1988), 98.

  “wild one”: Rodney Bennett-England, Dress Optional: The Revolution in Menswear (London: Peter Owen, 1967), 63.

  wrestling with a coat in front of a customer: Walker, Savile Row Story, 98.

  “I want a man to look a he-man”: Louis Stanbury, quoted in Bennett-England, Dress Optional, 64.

  “a man’s success with people”: Ibid., 66.

  Fred Astaire in Top Hat: Walker, Savile Row Story, 98.

  “a shade awed”: David Taylor, “Pop Goes the Whistle and Flute,” Punch, March 30, 1977.

  “I will not have the responsibilities”: Tommy Nutter, quoted in “US Will Be Top Priority for Nutter at Kilgour’s,” Men’s Wear, February 3, 1977.

  “piquant mixture”: Scott, “Living Down a Name.”

  “hushed anonymity”…“not the place”: Angus McGill, “Power of the Pinstripe,” Evening Standard, February 1977.

  “He’s not a member of the chorus”: Tommy Nutter, undated notes for an autobiography. DN.

  “to get in there and create an understanding”: Tommy Nutter, quoted in “US Will Be Top Priority for Nutter at Kilgour’s.”

  “not a case of Tommy Nutter”: Ibid.

  “avant to old guard”: Addis Durning, “From Avant to Old Guard,” Daily News, November 5, 1977.

  “the new look”: “Nutter Item,” Women’s Wear Daily, February 14, 1977. See also Jack Hyde, “Nutter’s New Phase,” Men’s Wear, November 25, 1977.

  tightened the seat of the trousers: Suzy Menkes, “From £50 to £300, a Suitable Case for Investment,” The Times, May 5, 1981.

  “Robert Mitchum look”: Tommy Nutter, quoted in Taylor, “Pop Goes the Whistle and Flute.” This is the earliest recorded reference to the “Mitchum look” I could find, though Tommy goes on to use the description several more times. For other examples, see: Scott, “Living Down a Name”; Albert Morch, “By Appointment to Her Majesty—And the Royalty of Rock,” The San Francisco Examiner, May 15, 1978; and an Austin Reed press release, May 1979. JJC.

  “the new accessories department”: Tommy Nutter to David Nutter, letter, August 11, 1977. DN.

  “add a new dimension”: Durning, “From Avant to Old Guard.”

  “I understand they mean to use Nutter”: McGill, “Power of the Pinstripe.”

  “they want only gradual change”: Tommy Nutter, quoted in “Tommy Nutter,” Tatler & Bystander, May 1978.

  “the top menswear designer in Great Britain”: Tommy Nutter, quoted in “US Will Be Top Priority for Nutter at Kilgour’s.”

  Hardy Amies as his guiding light: See Ibid.; “Tommy Nutter,” Tatler & Bystander; David Harvey, “The Marketing of Tommy Nutter by Austin Reed,” Men’s Wear, January 18, 1979; and Janet Buckton, “Nutter’s the Name They’re All Crazy About,” Coventry Evening Telegraph, August 26, 1980.

  “bank clerks and office workers”: Nik Cohn, Today There Are No Gentlemen (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971), 72.

  “Our courage paid off”: Hardy Amies, The Englishman’s Suit (London: Quartet Books, 1994), 31.

  “a bit like an hourglass”: Cohn, Today There Are No Gentlemen, 73.

  more than a million pounds: Amies, The Englishman’s Suit, 31.

  a dozen new consultancy deals: The noted examples come from Bennett-England, Dress Optional, 55. Amies gives a figu
re of fifteen licensing deals in The Englishman’s Suit.

  “virtually pioneered”: Bennett-England, Dress Optional, 55.

  his own label: Amies, The Englishman’s Suit, 35.

  “What they want to do with me here”: Tommy Nutter, quoted in “Tommy Nutter,” Tatler & Bystander.

  “big name”…“whatever else the store wants”: Tommy Nutter, quoted in Patrick McCarthy, “Nutter to Crack the States,” Men’s Wear, April 14, 1978.

  “I must stress again that design”: A. B. Andrews to A. H. Lewis, letter, May 9, 1978. JJC.

  launch an in-store menswear boutique: Geoffrey Aquilina Ross, The Day of the Peacock: Style for Men 1963–1973 (London: V&A Publishing, 2011), 78; Shaun Cole, ‘Don We Now Our Gay Apparel’: Gay Men’s Dress in the Twentieth Century (New York: Berg, 2000), 72.

  “bachelor about town”: Marnie Fogg, Boutique: A ’60s Cultural Phenomenon (London: Mitchell Beazley, 2003), 68.

  fifty-six Cue Shops in Britain: Ibid.

  “I was extremely pleased”: Tommy Nutter to Graeme Tonge, letter, May 20, 1978. JJC.

  “quite difficult”…“I felt like”: Tommy Nutter to David Nutter, letter, July 3, 1978. DN.

  production in August: Tommy Nutter to Cowan Jamieson, letter, August 17, 1978. JJC.

  “absolutely thrilled”: Tommy Nutter to Ron Hescott, letter, September 1978. JJC.

  “the Savile Row cut”: Tommy Nutter, quoted on an Austin Reed press release, “Tommy Nutter Designs for the Cue Shop,” 1978. JJC.

  “Shades in pale earth colors”…“a new feeling”: Tommy Nutter Promotions Ltd. press release, 1979. JJC.

  “Not since Hepworths signed up Hardy Amies”: Harvey, “The Marketing of Tommy Nutter.”

  reviews were favorable: See, for example: Ann Boyd, “How Nutters Came Off the Peg,” The Observer, January 14, 1979; Harvey, “The Marketing of Tommy Nutter”; Irene Morden, “Why Tommy’s Ready to Wear a Big Smile,” The Evening Argus (Brighton), March 19, 1979; “Fashion Diary,” Evening Standard, March 26, 1979; “Suitable Nutter Gets His Mass Cue,” The Yorkshire Post, March 28, 1979; and Jessica Barrett, “Oh, Man! He’s Got Elegance,” Evening Times, April 17, 1979.