Savile Row
There was an interesting documentary on BBC4 this evening about the bespoke tailors based on Savile Row, London. The programme was called, in a suitably restrained way, Savile Row and it depicted what is truly another world.
This was best exemplified when one of the tailors described marketing as ‘vile‘, saying something akin to:
‘We’re proud of the fact that we don’t do any marketing at all and never will. The kind of people who respond to marketing are the kind of people we don’t want coming here. We don’t want that many customers. I’d prefer to employ someone to tell people to go away’.
I am torn between whether this is just good old class snobbishness or the most radical anti-capitalist thing I’ve ever heard a business owner say. It has particular resonance too when the tailors are not paid that well themselves, and are under threat from chain stores, high rents and unsympathetic developers who want to flog their traditional workshops to tasteless overpaid City boys…
Tags: class snobs, marketing moments, on TV, sartorial splendour
February 6th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Nah, just plain old snobbery, which in this instance is pretty admirable. Sometimes you need something that’s been made properly, to fit your exact needs, rather than some ill-fitting, cheaply made rag.
On a seperate, entirely un-related topic, you’ll be cheered to know that John Howard has gained a degree of Kudos among the ‘barely thinking element’ of UK office drudges. Someones lifted his tough talkin’ pearls of wisdom and sent them round in one of those odiously presumptuous chain emails. As you might expect, they reckon he’s just the type Britain needs when it comes to keepin’ them uppity Muslims and immigrants in check.
Didn’t know whether to laugh or puke to be honest.
February 7th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Great. I knew John Howard would be famous here one day… I’m going to resist the temptation to ask you to send me a copy of the email…
February 7th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Yeah, best not. I think I deleted it anyway.
February 8th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
I heard Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie talking about it last night, I’ll give it a peep on Monday.