The portrait of Sir Isaiah Berlin on my home page wearing an Anderson & Sheppard suit is to be included in the firm’s first-ever book Anderson & Sheppard : A Style is Born to be published in September 2011.
Anderson & Sheppard Press Release
LONDON
Anderson & Sheppard, bespoke Savile Row tailors, are pleased to announce the publication of the firm’s first-ever book, Anderson & Sheppard: A Style Is Born. Quercus Books will bring out the 296-page volume this September. This handsome large-format book has been curated and assembled by the Vanity Fair editors Graydon Carter and Cullen Murphy, and features gorgeous full-color photography by Jonathan Becker and Christopher Simon Sykes, as well as eight original watercolor paintings by the artist and illustrator Paul Cox.
Long the sphinx of Savile Row, as known for its silence and inscrutability as its exquisite suits of clothes, Anderson & Sheppard has recently changed its ways: it now has a Web site, a blog, and cutters and tailors who don’t mind your paying them a visit in the back rooms. And now it also has Anderson & Sheppard: A Style Is Born, an exuberantly overstuffed visual and historical companion to the in-shop bespoke experience. Whether you’re a longtime client or a style aficionado in training, Anderson & Sheppard: A Style Is Born offers a rich, almost tactile immersion in the best men’s tailoring shop in the world.
Sykes’s photographs capture the inner workings and everyday details of life at Anderson & Sheppard, from the sturdily woven fabrics and myriad buttons and threads to the leather-bound measure books in which customers’ measurements and preferences have been recorded since the firm’s founding in 1906. Becker’s photographs capture the tailors’ and cutters’ handiwork as realized on illustrious clients, among them Liam Neeson, Bryan Ferry, Nicolas Roeg, Sebastian Guinness, Nicky Haslam, Fran Lebowitz, Sir John Ritblat, Julio Mario Santo Domingo, George Hamilton, and Manolo Blahnik.
In addition, there are sublime archival images of legendary clients of yore in their Anderson & Sheppard finest: Fred Astaire, looking still more graceful than usual in a cream linen suit; Rudolph Valentino in tails; Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in evening dress; Gary Cooper in tweed; as well as George Balanchine, Charlie Chaplin, Noël Coward, Laurence Olivier, Evelyn Waugh, Somerset Maugham, Ralph Richardson, Cecil Beaton, and many others. And Cox’s paintings winningly capture the fluidity and dash of Anderson & Sheppard suits and overcoats in various situations: at the races, attending to business, aboard a liner, on the tarmac, and so on.
Anderson & Sheppard: A Style Is Born also includes a history of the firm from the days of founders Per Anderson and Sidney Sheppard to the present, and, with it, an explication of the firm’s signature “English drape” look: “softly elegant, cut to show the wearer’s style rather than impose a style upon him.” (The text is by the Vanity Fair writer David Kamp.) In addition, there are reminiscences from the staff and from notable clients. “For some odd reason,” the photographer Bruce Weber recalls of his first visit, “Anderson & Sheppard understood me more than any of my psychiatrists.” Graydon Carter, himself a client of long standing, contributes the book’s foreword.
Anderson & Sheppard is many things: a luxury bespoke clothier; a part of fashion history; a part of social history; a de facto gentleman’s club; the workplace of great craftsmen and craftswomen; and the linchpin of a thriving light industry in the heart of central London. Anderson & Sheppard: A Style Is Born is a delightful portrait of all these places. For regulars, it’s another way to visit a favourite haunt. And for those who have not yet had the pleasure, it’s a warm welcome.
Anderson & Sheppard: A Style Is Born will go on sale on September TK. It costs AMOUNT TK and will be available at the Anderson & Sheppard shop at 32 Old Burlington Street, London, W1S 3AT; online at www.anderson-sheppard.co.uk; and at BOOKSELLERS TK.
For further information, please contact A&S CONTACT/INFO TK or QUERCUS CONTACT/INFO TK.