Hand and Lock Embroidery

Savile Row’s first wardrobe mistress has the measure of tradition and inside legs

All the Hand & Lock team would like to say Congratulations to Kathryn Sargent who has just been appointed Head Cutter at Gieves & Hawkes, No.1 Savile Row. It is the first time in the history of the Row and the company that a woman has reached this top position in tailoring.

Since their foundation, both tailors Gieves & Hawkes and embroiderers Hand & Lock have been working very closely. At the time, M.Hand provided both Gieves and Hawkes & Co with all the finest goldwork and military embroidery to complete their uniforms. Today, latest collaborations between the two include:
- The Coronation of the King of Tonga in 2008
- A replica of Michael Jackson’s coat (Hand & Lock also supplied Gieves & Hawkes with the embroidery for the original coat)

For any design enquiries or to receive a quotation for military and bespoke embroidery please contact enquiries@handembroidery.com

Savile Row’s first wardrobe mistress Kathryn Sargent has the measure of tradition
The bastions of male dominance have nearly all fallen now. There are women judges, women chief constables and women bankers. There has even, if memory serves, been a woman prime minister.

But Savile Row is not the City of London, or the judiciary; they hold on to their traditions with a bit more determination there, and it has taken until the second decade of the 21st century for the heartland of bespoke tailoring to appoint the first woman as a head cutter.

She is Kathryn Sargent, and she has just been promoted to the position at Gieves & Hawkes, the tailors who have been dressing English gentlemen — from the Duke of Wellington to the Prince of Wales, by way of David Niven and Noël Coward — since 1771.

At 35, Ms Sargent may have been born five years after her predecessor, Peter O’Neill, first worked on Savile Row; she may also be the only cutter on the Row to wear a big, heart-shaped ring of Swarovski crystal (“my bling”, she calls it). But to say that she is a woman with a feeling for tradition is an understatement.

She developed her interest in tailoring while studying fashion at Surrey Institute of Art and Design, and started collecting old-fashioned tailors’ instruction manuals. They include such volumes as The Modern Tailor, Outfitter and Clothier from 1928, a compendium of advice on the wearing and making of everything from court dress to military uniforms.

Among its gems is: “Plus fours and gay pullovers are out of place in the shop, office or counting house. In the City the black jacket suit is still considered correct, and in Throgmorton Street is often worn with a silk hat.”

Armed with such inspiration, Ms Sargent knew exactly what she wanted to do. “I have always liked men in suits; my dad used to get suits made in a local tailor. He even did the gardening in a suit.

“I was fortunate enough to get a work experience placement in Savile Row, and realised this was what I wanted to be a master of. It is all the tradition and the fact that we are still making clothes by the methods they were using in the early 1900s.”

Starting at Gieves & Hawkes in 1996 as a trimmer — the dogsbody, sorting out buttons and threads and the like for the tailors — she was not the only woman there. But she was the only one who wanted to be a cutter. “They said, ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ ” Persistence and enthusiasm paid off, and she rose through the ranks to become first an undercutter to Mr O’Neill — a man who can remember the days when head cutters could expect to be called Sir by their juniors — and then a cutter in her own right.

In 2008 she made the clothes for the coronation of the King of Tonga. “It was a huge order, 25 uniforms,” she said. “He was a real gentleman, as you would expect with a king.”

Sexism among her colleagues may be a thing of the past, but what about customers? Do they not expect a man to be measuring their inside leg? “Sometimes they are a little surprised,” she said. “But hopefully, my professionalism proves I can do the job.”

THE TIMES, January 14th 2010