In fashion today, we often see higher-end brands try and emulate an especially curated and encompassing “lifestyle” experience. The cafés in Aime Leon Dore and Kith that give the shopping in-store a much more casual and relaxed vibe. Loewe’s ‘Casa Loewe’ storefront in Barcelona functions as a fusion between an art gallery and retail space, with a variety of sculptures, installations, and ceramics for customers to enjoy whilst perusing racks of clothing. All of this, though, it thanks to one man: Tommy Nutter.
In the 1960s, Tommy Nutter pushed vibrant personal expression and welcoming charm to a place where it seemed doomed to fail: Savile Row—the world’s epicenter of traditional men’s tailoring. With ambition, charisma, and talent, Nutter broke through the Row’s veneer of austerity. His bold designs shaped the style of The Beatles, the Jaggers, and England’s glitterati. His influence is still felt in countercultures, decades after his untimely death from AIDS-related causes in 1992.
Tommy Nutter was raised in Edgware, London, with a modest but happy upbringing. He went to the theater with his brother David and the beach with his mother Dolly. But Tommy felt his life was leading nowhere fast. In 1960, while dealing with the suffocating monotony of working as a clerical assistant, Tommy saw an ad in The Evening Standard for a tailoring apprenticeship. With no experience but plenty of boredom, he jumped at the chance. Soon, he was working as a delivery boy for Donaldson, Williams, and G.Ward.
Despite finding the style of the house to be exhaustingly traditional, Tommy was driven and attentive to detail. Within a year, Tommy was promoted to a cutter, training to be a tailor. He left DWGW with the skills he needed but no longer wanted to work in such a rigid environment.
Seeking more creativity, he went to Michael Fish, the founder of ‘Mr. Fish,’ a boutique famous for flamboyant designs worn by David Bowie and Mick Jagger. It was the only place Tommy enjoyed shopping. Tommy liked how even though their style had a lot of flair and theatricality, Fish’s training on Savile Row meant that the clothes were still made incredibly well. Although Fish turned him down, he gave Tommy crucial advice: “Open your own place.”
In 1967, Tommy had a chance encounter at a party that paved the way to that reality, thanks to one Mr. Peter Brown. Brown was best friends with and personal assistant to Brian Epstein – the Beatles’ at-the-time manager. Brown and Nutter would soon become romantically involved quickly. After Epstein’s devastating suicide that year, the two became near inseparable. With Brown’s help and connections they secured financial backers for Tommy’s own shop, as Brown, in turn, became the Beatles’ new manager.
In 1969, Tommy opened Nutters of Savile Row at 35a Savile Row, partnering with lead cutter Edward Sexton. Nutters was designed completely unlike any other house on the Row. Before Nutters, storefronts sheathed from the public eye by frosted glass, with only a bronze nameplate separating one from another. Tommy, despising all of that, took a completely different approach. Tommy Nutter was a new type of tailor for a new generation. Unlike other shops on the Row, which emphasized subtlety and functional tailoring, Nutters was bold and artistic.
Walking up to Nutters, guests saw the name stenciled in a shimmering gold on the clear-sheet windows. Tommy would showcase various artistic installations – like paintings, puppet shows, and a variety of other visual spectacles – for passersby. Those who entered through the front doors were greeted with clinking of champagne bottles dangling from red ribbons. Instead of the antiquated and formal environments of the other houses, Tommy Nutter used Modernist furniture, a Greek frieze, and a chocolate brown rug to make the place, as Tommy put it, ‘elegant with a touch of somber’.
Beyond the store’s design, the tailoring was radically different. Tommy and Edward, both influenced by London’s queer subcultures, wanted to reflect that style at Nutters. The pair drew inspiration from the Teddy Boys to the mods to the neo-Edwardian dandies. “We weren’t two clever guys who wanted to go out and create history; we just wanted to express ourselves through our work,” Sexton affirmed in Nutter’s biography, Lance Richardson’s House of Nutter.
Nutters combined craftsmanship with flair, creating suits that were unlike anything Savile Row had seen. The traditional Savile Row suit was narrow and modest, designed for function. In contrast, Nutters’ suits featured large, double-breasted lapels, tight fits emphasizing the chest, and voluminous skirts with large pockets. They were groundbreaking, injecting sex, theatricality, and irreverence into a street that had long been defined by rigidity.
Nutter’s tailoring was quickly catapulted into the public eye thanks to the regular patronage of The Beatles. The band would become massive fans of the house style, with John Lennon and Yoko Ono getting their wedding outfits done at Nutters’, as well as all four members sporting full Nutters’ ensembles on the album cover to their magnum opus, Abbey Road, just months after Nutters’ opened its doors. Nutters became the go-to shop for London’s elite, from pop stars to actors. Tommy’s suits made a statement, standing out in a way that no suits had before. He even compared Nutters’ house style to Christian Dior’s “New Look” for menswear.
For a minute, it seemed Tommy wasn’t wrong. Aside from all the public and celebrity adoration that Nutters’ was receiving, there were also some quiet but resolute acknowledgments of respect from the other houses on Savile Row, with some going even so far as to take a note or two out of Nutters’ book. Samuel Cundey, the owner of Henry Poole & Co. (often referred to as “the founding father of Savile Row”), was inspired to take after Nutters’ clear-sheet glass displays at the front of the store a few short months following them, as Cundey’s son was himself a fan of Nutters’.
And through the early 70’s, Nutter’s would create some of the most enduring and eye-catching looks in style history, whether it was fashioning multiple looks for Elton John’s tours around America or a wardrobe for Mick and Bianca Jagger for a holiday in St. Tropez, these would be moments that would influence fashion for decades to come. Even now, this eras of Tommy’s stylistic influence is seen in menswear through designers like Tom Ford and Ozwald Boateng. This suggestively tight tailoring and broad, peaked lapels on single-breasted jackets has retained its rapturous acclaim over the years.
But the sun of success was not to shine on Nutters forever. Despite being an irresistible charmer and the face of Nutter’s on Savile Row, Tommy was a very poor businessman. By the mid 70’s, Nutter’s was struggling financially. Tommy became inattentive, often prone to leaving for days or even weeks at a time on unannounced vacations, until one day in 1976, he came back to find himself pushed out of Nutter’s by his business partner, Edward, who had removed Tommy as the leading shareholder of Nutters.
Losing Nutters was a serious blow, especially since Tommy had invested much of his own money into the business. He was left teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, but he still had his skills and vision. He took a job as a salesman at Kilgour, French & Stanbury, and within two years, began to expand the “Tommy Nutter” brand. Yet, soon he would find a new opportunity with Austin Reed on Carnaby Street.
At Austin Reed’s boutique, Cue Shop, Tommy brought Savile Row-quality tailoring at ready-to-wear prices. His first collection, released in 1979, redefined everyday style. His designs earned praise from the British press and appealed to a broader audience. But with Tommy bringing his Savile Row mastery to the design table, this quality was increased ten-fold. Tommy Nutter became synonymous with quality – even in everyday pieces like sportcoats, Shetland cable knit sweaters, and oxford shirts.
With his success at Reed’s, investor Alan Lewis helped Tommy return to Savile Row. By 1982, “Tommy Nutter, Savile Row” opened its doors at No.19. Tommy was once again at his most artistically ambitious, fabricating outlandish ideas into reality that were polarizing, to say the least. The suits were often crafted in a familiar pattern with a subtle subversion, like a navy worsted with green pinstripes, along with generous padding and sharp, boxy shoulders. The look was divisive, but it was unmistakably Tommy; and, as long as the innovation and craftsmanship were, there was still a large audience waiting to see.
At the time, a young Central St. Martin's student by the name of John Galliano had become quite a fan of the store, and was quickly hired on, doing small things like redressing the window displays or just simply observing the tailors as they conducted fittings. Nutter’s new style was also still very popular with the British prestige, fitting models and singers, with Elton John even remaining a faithful client of Tommy’s thanks to his brother David (Elton’s longtime photographer and friend), even designing John’s wedding suit. Tommy would also receive a call from Warner Brothers, who hired him on to do some work for the 1989 Batman film, for which Tommy’s eccentric style was employed for the suit of the Clown Prince of Crime himself, the Joker, played by Jack Nicholson.
In 1990, Tommy was diagnosed with HIV. Though he continued working for a time, his health quickly declined. By January 1992, Tommy retired, and on August 17th, he passed away from AIDS-related causes at 49.
Tommy Nutter’s impact on Savile Row was immediate and wide-reaching. He revolutionized tailoring, proving that one could be bold, dramatic, and sexy without compromising on quality. His legacy lives on in designers like Richard James and Tom Ford, who continue to push the boundaries of Savile Row style. More than just tailoring, Tommy Nutter changed the culture of Savile Row. He showed that tailoring could be a form of self-expression, not just tradition. His influence continues to beat in the heart of Savile Row today.
